Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Judging the Current Crop of CBC Show Entirely by Their Subway Advertizing

Everybody,

So how the hell are you? I'm freezing. The heat is off in my office for some reason and I'm THISCLOSE to actually lighting some furniture that we're not using on fire. For real. T'will be a bonfire... of the vanities... literally... they're some actual vanity hutches suitable for storing and applying makeup in front of in the corner... hence, again, the bonfire of the vanities...

I sure do know how to open. Balls. Anyway - the opposite of cold? The absolute Carol Channing-FEVER that everyone has broken into since I posted this earlier this week. Apparently it was this 'thing' that everyone saw when they were a kid and didn't know whether or not they dreamed it... but no... the shit is as REAL as the nose on m'face. So, if you LOVED that, make sure to express that Channing-love by voting for Carol Channing in the Bitch YOU Loved This Month!!! Conversely, show Tom Cruise or Shirley Phelps-Roper or Britney Spears or Jessica Sierra or Jean "Poopie Pants" Mansel who's boss by voting for them in the Bitch YOU Hated This Month!!! Polls close Friday, and this is an effin' tight race so far.

So... anyone who frequently rides the Subway in Toronto may have noticed, from time to time, that the CBC - the Canadian Broadcasting Company A-K-A Canadian Tax Dollars Well-Spent - has a very... let's say, formulaic approach for advertising its new series each season.

They buy out an entire car and plaster it with several adds depicting the core cast of characters with some devastatingly glib line that's supposed to represent a snapshot of the character. When they were promoting "Little Mosque On The Prairie" for its second season, shit like "Prophet for Profit" next to the main Muslim guy, and "Practising Islam... Until She Gets It Right" next to the white chick who marries the Muslim guy and needs to covert blah blah blah blah blah. I know... it's shit that the dowdy, "Sarah-Plain-'N-Tall"-lookin' student teacher from your high school English class would have written/found amusing.

Baaaanyway - as somethin' fun to do, I thought I'd offer snap judgement on three new shows premiering on the CBC this winter based solely on their Subway advertising. I will judge them based on what looks to suck the least to what sucks the most...

Looking to be sucking the least...

1.) THE BORDER

The Premise: A high-strung drama revolving around the comings, goings and doings of the ICS (Immigration and Customs Security). At first I was like "this show is about them bitches up in Customs?", because as anyone who's passed through Canadian Customs knows, A.) they're straight-up cunts, and B.) it's not terribly exciting. What the fuck would the show be about? People apprehending fruit and dramatically cheaper foreign booze or over-reacting to Canadian Entertainers going to L.A.? Yeah. But no... apparently it's about terrorists trying to get into the U.S. via Canada which is a very real and present threat.
What I Can Gather From The Adverts: Yeah... I know everything I need to know from looking at that picture. From left-to-right: Cocky womanizing hero-type who constantly clashes with his superior, Pretty/Brainy chick proficient in many languages, Boss-Man and Father-figure, Icy No-Nonsense Sexy Chick who becomes romantic conflict, and lastly, Computer Guy/Bimbro. Leave it to CBC to S-P-E-L-L I-T A-L-L O-U-T for ya...
Snap Judgement: Well, I can't really recall what the Subway 'snapshots' said - which is probably a good thing... in that they weren't horrible. Meh. It looks good. Nobody can say that it isn't an attractive company. I'd probably say it's like a Canadian version -automatic-ergo- Poor-Man's version of 24.

Looking to be sucking...

2.) SOPHIE

The Premise: Sophie runs a talent agency. Sophie finds out she's pregnant. Sophie's baby-daddy, Rick, recently dumped her and starting seeing her best friend and top-grossing client. He's also planning on starting his own talent agency and poaching everything that's great about hers. Annnnnd SCENE.
What I Can Gather From The Adverts: Sophie is down on her luck and surrounded by a 'colorful' cast of characters in her daily life... A gay best friend, a spastic assistant, a domineering mother. Wow. They're blowing my mind right now. Subway snapshots say shit like: "Life is a bit brighter when I sip tea... and think about slashing my ex-boyfriends' tires!" and "My favourite place is... anywhere my control freak mother isn't!"...
Snap Judgement: Yeah... this is gonna suck. It looks like they took those unbelievably annoying Special K commercials about those three 'office buddies' who talk about how fabulous being on the Special K diet is and made into a mothafuckin' sitcom... full of cliches and archetypes and gah it just makes my head spin... PLUS that bitch totally looks like Teri Hatcher, which is never a good thing.

Looking to be sucking most...

3.) MVP: THE SECRET LIVES OF HOCKEY WIVES

The Premise: I gather it revolves around hockey wives and how rich and skanky they are. To be perfectly honest, this looks so terrible, I couldn't even be bothered to even b'google it d'once.
What I Gather From The Adverts: They might as well have just fucking slapped Leafs jerseys on the cast of Desperate Housewives...
Snap Judgement: Hmmm. Okay. This is the lamest shit I've ever seen. Did some douchebag in first year television production at Humber conceptualize this? Does he have a sexy tennis drama in the works called "40-Love"? Or a sexy drama that takes place on the diving boards of an Olympic swimming pool called "The Sexy Diving Board Drama Show" or something equally as fucking lame BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS LAME!!! It is such a maladroit effort to make this sort of show Canadiana. Look at those fucking martini glasses - SO AS TO IMPLY THAT THEY'RE RICH, Y'SEE. Meh. At least they got the hockey hair right.

So that's that. I won't watch any of them. Nope. Not a single one. I think the only thing I've watched on the CBC in the past year was something on sex trade workers/sex slaves in Canada. Did you know that a lot of sex slaves are brought here from foreign countries under Canada's elusive "Exotic Dancer Visa". Yeah. We totally have one. In that if you're an "Exotic Dancer" (*cough-Straight-Up-Whore-cough*), you can be granted temporary citizenship. Isn't that skanky?

Anyballs... I'm off to do whatever it is that I do...

--- Aj