I want my MTV to be better than this
April 4, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
A few thoughts come to mind while I watch three new shows on MTV. First: Leave it to MTV to be one of the only networks to give this much prime time to talented black professionals.
But second: Leave it to MTV to cheat its audience down to 20-minute half-hour shows -- a third of each half-hour is commercials -- and to turn that 20 minutes into a bunch of seen-it-before, who-cares culture clashes.
On Thursday, the three dull shows start up on the network geared for 13-year-old boys and, um, I'm not sure if 14-year-olds are young enough to fit into MTV's demographic anymore.
There are many skilled performances in the new series -- by rappers Three 6 Mafia and comedians Kat Williams and Aziz Ansari -- but they mostly go to waste from weak writing or direction.
With all the other TV choices robbing MTV of pop-culture status, you'd think the channel hardly could afford not to spend more money developing its shows. (Thirteen-year-olds deserve good production values, too.) And yet ... this.
First up -- following the faded "Pimp My Ride" (it's still on?) -- comes "Nick Cannon Presents: Short Circuitz." It's a sketch-comedy show featuring Cannon, Williams and other skilled comedians. They do dead-on impressions of pop culture figures extremely unfunnily.
Black actors broadly represent an armed robber, inarticulate rappers and courtroom characters. How refreshing.
A sketch about a black hostage negotiator named "the Negrotiator" falls flat. And there is nothing new in a "Judge Judy"-type bit about a guy suing a date after he spent $300 on her dinner, and "that beyotch didn't put out." See how funny that is? Not?
But Paris Hilton does a cameo. How can that go wrong?
Next up is a reality show called "Adventures in HollyHood" starring Three 6 Mafia, the first black rappers to win a best-song Oscar (last year). "Adventures" has promise. As D-listers go, the Memphis musicians come across as natural, amiable guys with a fair amount of talent and wit.
But the show doesn't rise above the played-out setting of putting people with lots of leisure time into a house of cameras and lingering for something to happen.
A white neighbor tries to figure out what Three 6 Mafia's assistant Big Triece is saying when he states his name in his Southern tongue. She thinks he's saying "Big Trees." A hilarious use of TV time?
There's also missed potential in the last of the debuts, "Human Giant." It pains me to say it's not great. One of the stars in this sketch show is one of my favorite budding comedians, Aziz Ansari.
Ansari gets one of my few laughs when he walks through New York holding a boombox playing the worst mix tape ever made for such public consumption (OMC's "How Bizarre," Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"). MTV discovered the group Human Giant because it was already posting that and other videos online.
There are other good ideas in "Human Giant" and other good performances in "Short Circuitz." But MTV, typically, lets them flounder in cheaply made copycat shows. Then again, what should MTV care, I guess, as long as enough 13-year-olds tune in for the action-movie commercials?
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
A few thoughts come to mind while I watch three new shows on MTV. First: Leave it to MTV to be one of the only networks to give this much prime time to talented black professionals.
But second: Leave it to MTV to cheat its audience down to 20-minute half-hour shows -- a third of each half-hour is commercials -- and to turn that 20 minutes into a bunch of seen-it-before, who-cares culture clashes.
On Thursday, the three dull shows start up on the network geared for 13-year-old boys and, um, I'm not sure if 14-year-olds are young enough to fit into MTV's demographic anymore.
There are many skilled performances in the new series -- by rappers Three 6 Mafia and comedians Kat Williams and Aziz Ansari -- but they mostly go to waste from weak writing or direction.
With all the other TV choices robbing MTV of pop-culture status, you'd think the channel hardly could afford not to spend more money developing its shows. (Thirteen-year-olds deserve good production values, too.) And yet ... this.
First up -- following the faded "Pimp My Ride" (it's still on?) -- comes "Nick Cannon Presents: Short Circuitz." It's a sketch-comedy show featuring Cannon, Williams and other skilled comedians. They do dead-on impressions of pop culture figures extremely unfunnily.
Black actors broadly represent an armed robber, inarticulate rappers and courtroom characters. How refreshing.
A sketch about a black hostage negotiator named "the Negrotiator" falls flat. And there is nothing new in a "Judge Judy"-type bit about a guy suing a date after he spent $300 on her dinner, and "that beyotch didn't put out." See how funny that is? Not?
But Paris Hilton does a cameo. How can that go wrong?
Next up is a reality show called "Adventures in HollyHood" starring Three 6 Mafia, the first black rappers to win a best-song Oscar (last year). "Adventures" has promise. As D-listers go, the Memphis musicians come across as natural, amiable guys with a fair amount of talent and wit.
But the show doesn't rise above the played-out setting of putting people with lots of leisure time into a house of cameras and lingering for something to happen.
A white neighbor tries to figure out what Three 6 Mafia's assistant Big Triece is saying when he states his name in his Southern tongue. She thinks he's saying "Big Trees." A hilarious use of TV time?
There's also missed potential in the last of the debuts, "Human Giant." It pains me to say it's not great. One of the stars in this sketch show is one of my favorite budding comedians, Aziz Ansari.
Ansari gets one of my few laughs when he walks through New York holding a boombox playing the worst mix tape ever made for such public consumption (OMC's "How Bizarre," Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"). MTV discovered the group Human Giant because it was already posting that and other videos online.
There are other good ideas in "Human Giant" and other good performances in "Short Circuitz." But MTV, typically, lets them flounder in cheaply made copycat shows. Then again, what should MTV care, I guess, as long as enough 13-year-olds tune in for the action-movie commercials?
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