I had hoped to harness all my blind rage yesterday into a post about the news that CBS has paid jackass, blowhard, tough guy ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd to do a TV show based on his life. This is remarkable for two reasons.
Number one, his life is unremarkable. Well, unremarkable to the extent that they needed to pay him and give him producing credit to write a show about a guy who is keeping it real by telling it like it is and urging losers who don’t buy his opinions to get a life. Since I don’t believe 90 percent of what comes out of his mouth, I wonder why TV executives couldn’t just come up with a loudmouth radio guy who ruffled feathers on their own.
Second of all, the press touts this as being based on Cowherd’s life, but that will never see the light of day. I don’t think CBS will air the episode where he stole material from a website and taunted the guys who actually wrote the jokes. Sweeps might not go well in the show when he insults an NBA player by saying he’ll never succeed as a leader because his father died when he was young (all because the player had the gall to do a dance when introduced for his first home game as a rookie). I can’t see the Emmy panel lining up the trophies for the very special episode where he urges his callers to destroy a website which had the temerity to criticize him.
In short, it will suffer from the same thing that plagues the show based on the Shit My Dad Says Twitter feed – TV comedy doesn’t succeed based on the train wreck sadness that both the SMDS Dad and Colin Cowherd peddle. They aren’t sit-com funny. They are uncomfortable funny in a “God, I’m glad I’m not like that” way. So TV will sanitize them, cast cuddly characters who get near the line of inappropriateness that the real ones cross on a daily basis, then make everything OK because, gee whiz, deep down inside they are just great guys.
But Colin Cowherd isn’t, so you have to give him credit for selling CBS on his unremarkable life which they will not be able to use because he’s such an arrogant, hateful person who only succeeds because his chosen field, for some reason, rewards people for hating everyone except themselves so the show will be about some hijinks in sports radio they could have made up without cutting him a check.
That’s what I wanted to rant about because I hate it when TV hurts my soul. Thankfully, I did enough work and put off the blog post that television gave me a reason to hope for its future, at least as far as network sitcoms go. A rumor started early in the afternoon, then was announced officially later in the day.
Parks and Recreation is returning to NBC on Thursday nights.
The decision by NBC to shelve the top-notch comedy until mid-season rankled me and many like-minded people. When “Outsourced” actually started to do OK, I worried that Parks and Rec might be given an awful time slot and allowed to burn through the final set of episodes, then left to die. But this change gives me hope that the show has a strong future.
So, starting Jan. 20, “Community” will play at 8, followed by “Perfect Couples,” which does not look perfect. The 9 p.m. hour will be chock full of goodness with “The Office” followed by “Parks and Rec.” Then you can DVR “30 Rock” at 10 and ignore “Outsourced” because it is smelly and thinks you are fat.
Now I can rest easy knowing that TV does get some things right.
Occasionally I’m forced to listen to The Herd when one of my co-workers is around. Having had to put up with that disaster, I’m wondering how they will base a show on complete negativity, self-centered rants, “ummm’s”, awkward silences, and manic displays of mental retardation.
Of course, I guess that’s what Fail Blog is all about too…