Mediacrity!
by William Ham
Not on Lollipop’s Announced Fall Schedule
In just a couple of months, the networks, like the benevolent corporate parental units they are, will send their favorite progeny out to tap-dance before us all in hopes of being clutched to our nation’s collective bosom while we coo and stroke their heads, joyfully allowing them into our extended family as one of our own. But shed a tear for the abandoned children of the television clan, the pathetic offspring terminated in the first trimester of the TV season. I’m speaking, of course, of the plight of the unsold pilot. As a public service of this magazine, I give you several of the forgotten seedlings, lost in the unforgiving shuffle of TV Land, U.S.A.
True Stories of the Zamboni Patrol – Video verite on ice with true-to-life tales of those selfless individuals who risk life, limb, and several degrees of body temperature cleaning up the ice after hockey games. The sequence in the pilot involving the attempt to get grape juice off the rink is not for the squeamish.
World at Lunch – The remains of the late Richard Burton host this documentary series, depicting, through documentary footage, re-enactments and shadow puppets, the mid-day meals of the Axis forces in World War II. In the opener, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels’ attempts to suppress reports of the Fuhrer’s fondness for kosher salami.
Later Than You Think with Jim Quycklyme – A new late-night show featuring the multi-phobic star of !-TV’s Talkfree. By his own admission, Quycklyme is deathly frightened of strangers, which makes for unique television as he avoids making eye contact or any but the most halting conversation with celebrity guests Meg Ryan, Bobcat Goldthwait, and 8-year-old bookie Skippy Valachi, eventually retreating under his desk by the second commercial break and refusing to come out.
Got Your Nose! – A sitcom featuring the wacky exploits of a mismatched group of twentysomethings in a leper colony in the South Pacific. One-liners, sexual tension, hilarious misunderstandings involving misplaced limbs – now, why didn’t they pick this one up? C’est la tee-vie.
