Sixteen Volts

Ooh, ooh, television has started to show us sneak ads for the great shows coming next fall! So much great stuff is playing here that you don't even know what to watch. Of course, the natural selection will take of this so that most of the new shows die within a few weeks, and only the strongest survive. Until then, let's take a look at the stuff that is currently playing. Some of these shows will eventually find their way to Finland too, so my Finnish readers, assuming I still have any, can consider this a heads up.

But first, Spike TV finally started playing Extreme Duudsonit, or as the show is renamed here, "The Dudesons", with Bam Margera introducing and mainstreaming the dudes for the American audiences. It's always great to see that somebody from the cold, distant and small country can make it in the international stage. I had never seen this Finnish version of Jackass before, and I didn't even know that these delightful hillbillies can speak English, but I sure did laugh at the "Human Dartboard" and "Knight Rider" stunts. My wife watched a little bit of this, and then just slapped me on the arm and asked "What the hell is wrong with boys?"

Speaking of Knight Rider, if you wonder what David Hasselhoff is doing these days in addition to being big in Germany, he works as one of the three judges in the show "America's Got Talent" that is like Idol but for all kinds of showmanship, not just for singing, so that there are jugglers, magicians and all kinds of acts. Another difference to Idol is that the truly hopeless hordes are not let in for their humour value, so a remake of The Gong Show is still waiting to be done. I think that my favourite "talents" so far have been David and Dania, the quick change magicians, as seen on this YouTube video.

"Lucky Louie", the new HBO sitcom that over here follows Entourage on the Movie Network Sunday night, is a truly new depressing low in the realistic depiction of the urban white working class living in New York, I guess somewhere in The Bronx or around there. Certainly not Manhattan. Next the people who write and produce this could perhaps turn the comic strip "Piranha Club" into a TV show. Because that is exactly what this show is like.

Next fall's trend seems to be to ape "24" and "Prison Break". And you know what, I seriously didn't know that Robert Vaughn could still be alive. Next somebody will probably try to tell me that Richard Widmark is still alive. Yeah, right.

Now, of course I am not saying that I really understand women. There really aren't that many shows that we both like. But when "Flavor of Love" started, she watched it for a while, but then got into it and after that never missed an episode. She even watches some of the early episodes again in reruns, and in other life, she occasionally happily yells "Flavor Flav!" when something is good. When I asked her why she likes this show, she simply said that the show is funny. Well, yes, it most certainly is, just not in a way that I would have expected her to like. But since the winner left Flav pretty much as soon as the taping ended, there will hopefully be a second season!

In that show, I really have to say that "Goldie" was my favourite contestant. She was not the prettiest, but you could just tell that she had this lovable country girl personality that kept her in the show while the prettier and hotter girls were eliminated. It was no wonder that she left sixteen of the other nineteen girls behind her in eliminations and ended up herself in the final four. (And this despite her drinking a little bit too much champagne in the first episode.) Or if her persona in the show was an act, it sure was one freaking great act. But if she really is the way she was depicted in the show, she will later make a great wife for some lucky guy.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Thursday, July 13, 2006 at 7:56 AM