| Sunday, February 1, 2009 |
20:24 - Wet Blanket Central
|
(top) |
Okay, seriously: what's up with all the freaking downers on Comedy Central these days?
I haven't had my TV on the cable networks for some months now. Tonight, for whatever reason, I flipped on Comedy Central and tuned in to a South Park marathon. Good, classic episodes all; laughter was had in abundance. And yet... in one commercial break after another, there was downer PSA after downer PSA. Sarah McLachlan with a weepy two-minute depressathon for the ASPCA. Some guy I've never heard of with another two-minute wail about how global warming is killing all the polar bears (which, by the way, is laughable on so many levels I won't even bother addressing it).
My question is: who greenlit these things for these time slots? Prime time on Comedy Central on a weekend? Who thought it was worth bumming out all the post-Super-Bowl viewers who'd tuned in for some cheap laughs? Who figured it was worth risking those viewers' eyeballs in the name of airing some politically-correct feel-good-by-feeling-bad flagellations?
It's like how some movie theaters never seem to mind putting their dumb comedic branding bumps right before the Feature Presentation card, even when it's a completely serious and/or epic movie whose mood has been properly set up by appropriately themed trailers preceding it. The little dancing filmstrip character comes pratfalling through the cartoon orchestra, ruins the mood, and prances out again, making us shift uncomfortably in our seats and try to gather up the pieces again in time for the credits to roll.
Until now I might have used "like a Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial in the middle of a South Park episode" as an illustrative hypothetical to describe the most inappropriate and unwelcome pairing possible. Only now I have to come up with something worse. Thanks a lot, Comedy Central.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
