Must See TV?

Hey peeps! I know it's late, but I had my writers group tonight and needed to work on the piece I was presenting during the day. Of course, it is still Monday and I never attached any specific time caveat to my promise... Go ahead and check, all you legal fanatics. [Ducks is huge with the "legal fanatic" crowd, I assume.]

Anyhow, here we are. Yep.

They say that showing up is 80% of success. (Actually, "they" is "Woody Allen.") I have to disagree. I'm here, but it still feels like this is requiring a lot more effort on my behalf than just 20%.

Of course, the Ducks is all about giving a very cliched 110%. (So maybe I need to contribute more like 30%.)

You know, NBC's television show "100 Questions" must have taken that Woody Allen quote a little too much to heart. ("Genius segue!" says the masses. "Thank you," says I.)

On Friday, I had promised the revelation of one of the worst shows I have ever seen. "100 Questions" takes the cake. (Who really offers cake as a prize? If so, that is an incredibly lame contest. I mean, they should be serving cake as the prize is handed out. At least, that's how civilized people do it. Anything less is cruel and unusual.)

Now, back in 1997 -- for all you hip young kids, the world was still around back then -- I remember watching one night of NBC's Must See TV with my college roommate at the time. For those keeping score at home, it was Baloo (once again, not the Disney character).

Well, we watched some show between Seinfeld and Friends (or whatever) and it might have entailed a restaurant or pizza place of some sort, but after it was done, we established that -- in spite of the not-so-subtle cues from the laugh track -- there was literally no point which made us want to smile or laugh.

It was so bad that Baloo wore black for a month thereafter. I started listening to The Cure and lost my zest for life. Later I got my zest back, as is recorded in the award-winning documentary "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." (As you probably suspected, that movie is about me.)

100 Questions tops the magnitude of the suckage that was "that one other show." (I have no idea what it was called and only remembered just now, while writing this, that it had something to do with a restaurant.)

For a tv show to be watchable, you probably shouldn't hate all the characters so much that you want them to die horrific, violent deaths. The writers of 100 Questions do not understand this complicated premise.

Also, good acting -- or at least "acting better than that found in most kindergarten plays" -- would probably help. Now, acting is a skill and I'm not saying that I can do it better than the actors featured on the show. I'm just saying that I hope they were doing it pro bono.

There must be some silver lining to the show, though. I mean, there isn't much in life that is all bad. Actually, this calls for a list!

List of Things That Are All Bad

• Torture: Never acceptable
• Rape: See Torture
• NBC's 100 Questions: Zero goodness

Okay, so maybe it is all bad. The production values of the show are exceeded by videos found on YouTube and created by men and women without Hollywood budgets.

I follow some very talented individuals here in the blogosphere. I don't mean to exclude anyone, so please do not misconstrue this list as comprehensive, but: Kathryn (From the Inside... Out), Moooooog35 (Mental Poo), Sara (Sara Spelled Without An H), and the Straight Guy/Gay Guy team (Gay Guy / Straight Guy) are all incredibly hilarious.

If NBC was smart, and I don't mean to imply that they aren't (but they did greenlight "100 Questions"...), they would have hired those guys to write something decent for that show.

Wednesday's post: Heroic High School Cross Country Exploits

Editor's Note: It's late, I'm tired and I will possibly edit this in the morning. I apologize if this post isn't up to usual Ducks quality, but the aforementioned tiredness has certainly played a role in that. I'm taking a self-induced pay cut over it. (Let's see, 50% of 0 is...)