To "Jump The Shark" is a Hollywood term that dates
back to the 1970's, when "The Fonz" made a water-ski jump over a
shark on the sitcom "Happy Days."
It identifies the point at which a TV show or series has turned the
corner from legitimate to ridiculous, and usually marks the beginning of the
end for the program.
That moment has come for the long litany of
"talent" shows on television.
For starters, there are a lot of them.
It's no secret that networks ran out of imagination and
creativity about a decade ago. Instead,
here's how things now work in Loopy Land:
A struggling last-place network, desperate to try anything,
will trot out an idea they stole and repackaged from the earliest days of
television. For example, the new ABC
show "What Would You Do" is touted as this ground-breaking hybrid of
reality TV and news documentary.
Yeah. It's
"ground-breaking" all right.
As in, the ground should break open over the grave of Allen Funt, the
creator of the old "Candid Camera" show from the 1950's, and the dead
host should start handing out butt-whoopings and lawsuit subpoenas to anyone
even remotely involved with this tired ABC ripoff.
But the show will probably skyrocket the way Simon Cowell's
blatant copycats "American Idol" and "X-Factor" hit the
stratosphere on the wings of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour," similar
television gold from the 1940's. Of
course, even stealing Mack's idea (which he actually stole from radio host Major
Bowles in 1948) isn't particularly original, since Ed McMahon did the same
thing with "Star Search" back in the 1980's.
Anyway, once the new version is rolled out and gets some
ratings attention at a dying network, executives at every other network on the
planet will scramble to "create" their own version of the same lame
ripoff instead of actually offering something original of their own.
And that, children, is how you wind up with the
"America's Got X-Factor Voice Idol Singing Bee Talent" hodgepodge of
screeching Kelly Clarkson wannabes.
Fortunately, the signs of the apocalypse have arrived,
heralding the end of the world. Or at
least, the end of these no-talent shows.
And it came upon a pale horse named Kardashian.
Initially, I thought the end of the era was marked by
American Idol's decision to blend their Star Search clone with the reality show
"Real Housewives of Atlanta," a mess created when they hired has-been
Mariah Carey and talentless never-was Nicki Minaj as judges. The catfight queens were hired to replace
two real musical stars -- Steven Tyler of "Aerosmith" and Jennifer
Lopez of big-butt fame -- who must have been humiliated or seriously hung over
to have ever agreed to appear on this farce of a show.
According to recent news reports which have carefully and
salaciously been leaked by Fox, a very ghetto feud has erupted on the set
between Mariah and Minaj.
Even President Obama has weighed in on the nonsense, which
is just ratings gold for the network whose news sibling has made a career out
of hating the president.
But the real "jump the shark" moment for singing
shows was announced earlier this week.
The X-Factor is so starved for attention, it took a similar
dip into the reality-TV cesspool and came up with its very own Kardashian. According to the report, Khloe Kardashian
will be co-hosting the show with Mario "Dimples" Lopez in the
upcoming season.
In its own way, the hiring is another
"ground-breaking" move. It
will now spotlight a host who isn't attractive, can't act, can't talk, can't
think, and can't do anything much beyond whining about her more famous but
equally untalented older sister.
Basically, she's the Anti-Vanna.
Who would have thought it possible that the show which
features singers who can't sing has finally managed to find a host that can't
host?
So the era of the singing show is officially over. And we should be grateful.
All that's left is to find Simon Cowell a leather jacket and
a nice pair of skis.
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