|
I'm a bad person.
I missed "Mr. Personality" last night. There were
reasons.
I know that you count on me to devour any new reality product,
chew it into a fine paste, and spread it on the finest crackers
for your consumption.
But I've reviewed the coverage of this new gift from Fox this
morning, and I think I have pieced together enough to post
a brief recap of the proceedings.
The premise is simplicity itself: One beautiful woman, twenty
men in masks. She has to choose a man without the benefit
of seeing his face. On this show, personality is king, declares
all the promotional materials.
Oh yes, everyone's favorite Presidential knee-pad and Cuban
cigar tester, Monica Lewinsky, is the host. Now some of you
might object to the gratuitous reference to Ms. Lewinsky's
notorious fellating of the Most Powerful Man in the World.
But those were good times, no? Political satire was no more
complicated than the nimbly-worded blow-job joke. The economy
was, er, humming along with the dot-com boom, while Monica
was getting knots on the top of her head from the underside
of the stately oak desk in the Oval Office as President Clinton
talked on the Red Phone to various members of our government
and foreign heads of state. Her repeated servicing of the
did-we-mention-he-was-The-Most-Powerful-Man-in-the-World was
almost certainly based on the merits of his personality alone.
So who better to be our Virgil through this latest circle
of the reality-TV underworld? Certainly not the "Are
You Hot?" guy. I can't remember his name either.
The first ten minutes of the show set up the premise. The
host is introduced, met with wild applause from the frothing
studio audience, who have been starved like animals in the
Baghdad Zoo for three days and then fed Twinkies with a creamy
methamphetamine center. There is nearly a riot as a montage
of Monica's greatest hits plays on the thirty-foot screen
behind her: clips from her HBO special, "Black and White";
sound bites of President Clinton pointing a thumb defiantly
at the camera and declaring, "I did not have sexual relations
with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and "it depends
on what your definition of 'is' is..." This is followed
by another montage of the three-thousand-forty-five monologue
jokes Jay Leno dedicated to Monica's prowess with a bent Presidential
unit. After the video screen goes dark, an audience member
hops on the stage and demands that our host provide him with
oral satisfaction; when she demurely refuses, he claws out
his eyes. It seems the Twinkies did not agree with him.
We then meet the One Beautiful Woman who will be separating
the personality wheat from the good-looking chaff. Hayley
was raised in a small town, helped her family tend their farm,
then went to business school. She now is a corporate raider
and part-time model making more money than the twenty men
laid out before her like a blue-light special buffet.
She is the archetypical American woman: beautiful, successful
beyond all measure, a Madonna on your arm, a whore in the
bedroom... There is a gauzy glow surrounding her at all times.
A bluebird alights on her outstretched finger. Another audience
member rushes the stage, demanding oral satisfaction. Hayley
refuses, there is more eye-clawing, and the producer who dreamt
up the speed Twinkie idea is promoted to head of programming
at Fox. A scroll on the bottom of the screen implores us to
"Watch the Fox Fall schedule for 'Crank Addicts Beg for
Oral Satisfaction'." We laugh because we realize that
reality TV has long been a self-parody, and no snarky comment
on the programming decisions of television executives could
possibly surpass what actually will be produced in the coming
months.
The twenty men are paraded by Hayley. Only their chins are
exposed by the colorful Mexican wrestling masks they wear.
Hayley thinks aloud that they all look Mexican and that she's
not "particularly fond of beaners," so this will
be a true test of her suitors' personalities. Monica makes
an off-color joke about her pool boy's conversational skills.
They laugh.
Hayley then proceeds to eliminate ten men solely on the relative
attractiveness of their jawlines. She and Monica praise the
personalities of the survivors.
"This is going to be a really hard decision for you next
week," says Monica.
"I know," says Hayley. "Will they still be
Mexican?"
"We'll see what we can do," says Monica.
The credits roll. The eliminated doff their masks. To a man,
they are hysterically crying. A plastic surgeon has been retained
by Fox and is already sketching improvements on the losers'
chins with a grease pencil. A twitchy audience member bursts
backstage, demands oral satisfaction from one of the eliminated.
His tears quickly dry.
This time, there are no eyes clawed out.
|
|
Above:
Monica Lewinsky in Mr. Personality, a show Bunsen did not
see
SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A FRIEND!
|
|
