“Hi, this is Rick Reilly, and welcome to Homecoming, the show where we interview famous athletes in their home towns. Our first guest is Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton, who overcame drug addiction to thrill us all in last year’s Home Run Derby. Josh, my first question to you is HOLY SHIT, THERE’S A TIGER COMING RIGHT AT US!!!”
I know how hard it is to start up a network. I mean, not personally. It’s not something I’ve ever done myself. I just imagine that it involves an intense amount of preparation, planning, and elbow grease, on top of the nuts and bolts inherent in running any company. It’s hard enough to put one show together, let alone a whole new lineup, and hire brand new studio personalities, producers, camera crew, etc., while also wondering when the soda machines are gonna get delivered.
I realize it takes a while before a new network can find its way and forge a unique vision. I’ve been watching SNY since it debuted, and those first few months were pretty rough. But hey, look at that lineup now, huh? *crickets*
So I’m willing to cut the brand new MLB Network an enormous amount of slack. I don’t expect them to have compelling programming just yet, especially during the baseball free month of January.
I mean, sure, MLB has cracked down on everyone who’s ever posted any footage of professional baseball anywhere online, so you’d think that they’re sitting on acres of vintage film that they refuse to let anyone else show in any form. And sure, they’ve had several years since they announced the launch of this new network to digitize all that old film, so they wouldn’t have to show the 2004 World Series highlights and last year’s playoffs over and over again.
I would like to applaud NBC for their brand new show Superstars of Dance. Not because the show is any good, but because it demonstrates that the network has mastered time travel.
At least I assume they did, and used it to pluck a producer from the 1950s and bring him back to modern times. Because there’s no way that any producer born in the last 40 years would take grown-ass men and dress them in such demeaning costumes just because they’re from foreigny lands.
Or maybe they went back to the late 1800s, and got old timey editorial cartoonists to do the costume design. Because all of the judges on this show are forced to wear stereotypical garb from their native land. The audience couldn’t possibly enjoy a well-performed dance routine from, say, a Japanese man. No, he must wear a samurai robe and carry a katana at all times!
The Chinese judge wears a saffron Buddhist monk’s robe. The Russian judge wears a traditional puffy blouse, like he’s gonna start step-dancing with a bottle of vodka on his head any second. I’m pretty sure I saw a Swiss guy in Tyrolean hat, and a Samoan guy in a muu-muu, and an African with those weird neck rings. It’s really a spiritual cousin to It’s a Small World After All: an attempt at “international understanding” that just betrays the superior, condescending attitude of the perpetrator.
Remember when Michael Richards said some crazy racist stuff a few years back and it ruined his career? Well, if he said anything as racist as this show looks, he would have been stoned to death in the street.
NBC also turned back the clock to get its audience. They must have come from a time before Dancing With the Stars premiered, because these people are simply AMAZED that dancing has returned to television. They must also be blissfully unaware of So You Think You Can Dance, Pants Off Dance Off, Someone Marry My Mom While Dancing, and the roughly 8 billion other dance-reality shows that have aired in the last 5 years.
Or they got their audience from roughly 15 years ago, the last time Michael Flatley was famous and relevant and didn’t vaguely resemble Lawrence Welk.
Actually, they probably got their audience from a lot farther back than that. Some time when entertainment hadn’t been invented yet. Because these people will apparently applaud anything done in front of them.
Irish step dancing straight out of Celtic Nightmare or some other bullshit diddly-dee PBS special? Yippee! Indian dancing that wouldn’t fly in the cheapest Bollywood movie? Huzzah! Some Argentinean chick convulsing in something that barely resembles rhythm? Oh joy!
Kudos, NBC. When you’re done raiding the past for inspiration, see if you can figure out that whole “who killed JFK” thing.