Devalue of Fame
NBC
Last night was one of those nights when TV critics earn their paychecks. No, I don't mean staying up until the wee hours to review Conan O'Brien's first Tonight Show. I mean watching two hours of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! on NBC.
Now, this franchise has been running on UK TV for some time, and ABC did an installment in 2003. I was a TV critic at the time; I'm sure I must have had to watch it; but time has repressed that trauma and I suspect only a Sidney Friedman-style therapy session could bring it back. So it is possible that the earlier version and its guests were just as insipid. But it's also possible that there is a Moore's Law of D-list vapidity, in which every 18 months our reality stars get twice as inane.
Spencer Pratt, the most aptly surnamed man in show business, is living evidence for the second theory, and he—and to a lesser extent his wife Heidi—was the main reason to watch the show at all. Spencer's crowning moment was getting on the phone with NBC programming chief Ben Silverman to whine—well, basically, "I'm a celebrity ... get me out of here." Pratt, he said, "was too rich and too famous" to be cleaning latrines and sharing screen time with insignificant basic-cable nobodies. (Pratt, you see, is a significant basic-cable nobody.) And he uttered what others will have a hard time unseating as The Greatest TV Line of 2009: "This cast is devaluing our fame!"
The man either completely lacks self-awareness, or he is the greatest performance artist since Andy Kaufman. But you know—he had a point about the celeb-wattage of the rest of the crew. I'm pretty sure that hosting I'm a Celebrity automatically qualifies you to compete on the next season of I'm a Celebrity.
The second-most interesting trainwreck was Patti Blagojevich, taking a bullet for husband Rob (who was prevented by the courts from doing the show) and telling a gaggle of credulous celebs—who seemed to be hearing about the Senate-sale scandal for the first time—that her hubby had been railroaded.
Spencer and Heidi, meanwhile, didn't look good, figuratively or literally. Flushed, sweaty and—in his case—with a scraggly beard, the pair were negative testimony to what artistic geniuses the producers of The Hills are. Stage-managed into an L.A. hotspot, framed and lit with honeyed light, and given a pop-music soundtrack, even this pair can seem interesting and tragic. But goggled in the unforgiving flat glare of NBC's HD cameras—whoo, boy, was the illusion gone. It was like watching a silent-film actor with a bad voice try to adjust to the talkies.
But I've done my hitch. Even the prospect of seeing the celebs strapped into a torture chamber with rainforest bugs dancing around their heads is not enough to bring me back. Even professional duty has its limits. Anyone plan on watching again? Correction: anyone else willing to admit having watched in the first place?
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1
Hmmm, just a thought, but maybe if you have to worry about the "devaluing" of your fame, you're not really that famous to begin with.
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I'm curious to know what that therapy session would look like. Instead of bombs, you'd hear...whiny celebrities? -
2
[...] And I have to agree with Time mag’s James Poniewozik, who gives Spencer the award for “The Greatest TV Line of 2009″ when he told NBC honcho [...]
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3
only saw it cause it was on at the gym... no sound though.. so pretty much i saw Spencer complaining about something for about 20 minutes while riding a stationary bike.. Must see TV, I'm sure...
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4
I remember watching the one on ABC in 2003. And I hate to admit it, but I think I watched most of the season. But I was 15. So give me a break. I just can't watch any kind of reality TV now days (even the "good" ones like Project Runway.) I look forward to watching the clips from this show and other trash on this week's The Soup.
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5
Yes.
I caught the last few minutes of this show and it was so mind-boggling low-rent and terrible I kep thinking "I can't believe this is on NBC." Then I realized that does not mean anything anymore. And I was just glad.
Yo, Spence, fire your agent! What did you think this show was going to be all about? Please America, keep him here as some sort of penance to pay for his part in The Hills.
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6
Not that I am defending this series or any piece of reality TV, which I have not watched, but can't you make the argument (if you wanted to play Devil's advocate for some reason) that this show at least combines the adventure quest/challenge premise of Survivor with a trenchant satirical jab at our own celebrity-obsessed narcissistic culture? I mean we get to know the players and we root for the ones with most heart and intelligence and we laugh at the celebrities who are too self-involved and vapid to "advance" in the trials or challenges. The "celebrities" who are mean, solopsistic and stupid get weeded out--a metaphor of how they should be treated in our culture, banished from our conciousness until they do something worthwile--and the ones who are team players, kind, thoughtful and decent win the competition and we are glad.
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It's sort of a corrective to, say the Hills or Big Brother, where these self-obssesed people become famous for doing nothing becuase millions watch. In this show, these kinds of reality TV stars, and politicians (or their wives) who have too much self-regard and too little self-awareness get thrown into the Darwinian state of nature where those traits will not help. There are no assistants, no phones, no laxity and comfort. They have to survive using brains and they have to learn how to get along, cooperate with each other. The ones that can't, fail. So, in essence, this show rewards virtues but punishes vices, making the audience cheer for the good guys while reprimanding us on how vacuous our culture has become.
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Or something. I think I just may haved used the exact rationale that these shows' creators pitched. Never mind. -
7
I like the way you are thinking Rosseau. But maybe the pitch was more like "What if we took some really annoying semi-famous people and humiliated them. Wouldn't that be funny?"
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 4 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 5 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 6 hours ago
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