Sunday, October 08, 2006
THE WORST TELEVISION SHOW OF ALL TIME
Sorry I've been away so long; I'm now working for a Japanese company. And whenever there's a slight linguisic or cultural misunderstanding (not too frequent, thankfully), my mind always slips back, as people's minds often do, to PINK LADY AND JEFF.
The contenders for the Worst TV Show of All Time ribbon have been myriad, yet Pink Lady and Jeff has repeatedly come out on top--not bad for a show that debuted and bit the dust way back in 1980, long before waves of television nausea much stronger than anything the musical comedy/variety shows delivered pummeled the American public. For my money, I have yet to see anything that made me want to devote my life to destroying television sets as much as MTV's The Real World--the show was a true abomination, I don't care what Chuck Klosterman says. But while the Real World ushered in an era of 'Reality' programming that we're all still wrestling with, Pink Lady and Jeff was the grand finale to a reign of camp that sticks at least partly in the mind for its humor value. The comedy/variety genre was all but over by 1980, but no one told Fred Silverman at NBC. Somehow, putting two non-English-speaking Japanese pop stars that no one in the U.S. had heard of together with a mediocre stand-up comedian whose signature punchline was "Buttsteak!" and weighing the whole thing down with frightful writing and has-been guest stars seemed like a good idea on paper.
Thanks to the Internet, I've learned that Pink Lady was the biggest pop act in Japan for much of the Seventies, popularizing dances as well as bubblegum songs. Pink Lady nostalgia remains so deep in Japan that apparently Mie and Kei, the two women who identified themselves as the singular 'Pink Lady,' regularly reunite for shows and the occasional album, even now in their mid-40s.
I've always been curious to know what Mie and Kei thought of the show, and if their disastrous attempt to win fins in the U.S. still smarted. It sounds like, on the contrary, when Pink Lady mania lurched into its final stages following their Statesite bellyflop, the girls were releived to take a break. As proof that all things in this universe, even Pink Lady and Jeff, are connected to comic book uber-genius Jack Kirby, one of the 'writers' on the show was Kirby's onetime assistant Mark Evanier, who gave a revealing interview to a Pink Lady fan website (!). Poor Mie and Kei were as frustrated as everyone else with their inability to gain even a toehold on the English language.
Mie went on to win kudos for her dramatic portrayal of a junkie; Jeff went on to, if I remember correctly, appearances on Letterman and the Cinemax Comedy Experiment. The show was released on DVD, with Jeff providing commentary. And what "Carrie: The Musical" was to Broadway, Pink Lady and Jeff remains to television; a gold standard for awfulness.
Sorry I've been away so long; I'm now working for a Japanese company. And whenever there's a slight linguisic or cultural misunderstanding (not too frequent, thankfully), my mind always slips back, as people's minds often do, to PINK LADY AND JEFF.
The contenders for the Worst TV Show of All Time ribbon have been myriad, yet Pink Lady and Jeff has repeatedly come out on top--not bad for a show that debuted and bit the dust way back in 1980, long before waves of television nausea much stronger than anything the musical comedy/variety shows delivered pummeled the American public. For my money, I have yet to see anything that made me want to devote my life to destroying television sets as much as MTV's The Real World--the show was a true abomination, I don't care what Chuck Klosterman says. But while the Real World ushered in an era of 'Reality' programming that we're all still wrestling with, Pink Lady and Jeff was the grand finale to a reign of camp that sticks at least partly in the mind for its humor value. The comedy/variety genre was all but over by 1980, but no one told Fred Silverman at NBC. Somehow, putting two non-English-speaking Japanese pop stars that no one in the U.S. had heard of together with a mediocre stand-up comedian whose signature punchline was "Buttsteak!" and weighing the whole thing down with frightful writing and has-been guest stars seemed like a good idea on paper.
Thanks to the Internet, I've learned that Pink Lady was the biggest pop act in Japan for much of the Seventies, popularizing dances as well as bubblegum songs. Pink Lady nostalgia remains so deep in Japan that apparently Mie and Kei, the two women who identified themselves as the singular 'Pink Lady,' regularly reunite for shows and the occasional album, even now in their mid-40s.
I've always been curious to know what Mie and Kei thought of the show, and if their disastrous attempt to win fins in the U.S. still smarted. It sounds like, on the contrary, when Pink Lady mania lurched into its final stages following their Statesite bellyflop, the girls were releived to take a break. As proof that all things in this universe, even Pink Lady and Jeff, are connected to comic book uber-genius Jack Kirby, one of the 'writers' on the show was Kirby's onetime assistant Mark Evanier, who gave a revealing interview to a Pink Lady fan website (!). Poor Mie and Kei were as frustrated as everyone else with their inability to gain even a toehold on the English language.
Mie went on to win kudos for her dramatic portrayal of a junkie; Jeff went on to, if I remember correctly, appearances on Letterman and the Cinemax Comedy Experiment. The show was released on DVD, with Jeff providing commentary. And what "Carrie: The Musical" was to Broadway, Pink Lady and Jeff remains to television; a gold standard for awfulness.
# posted by toner_low @ 11:44 AM 
