Snippitts of Illusions

I hate AFHV

I hate America's Funniest Home Videos. I don't know why this show is still on the air.

Why?

Why?!

I don't hate the videos themselves, a lot of them can be pretty funny or cute or what have you, the show that was built around the concept of it. Now I can't really say I ever really liked the show, but I could tolerate it considerably more in my youth when it first started airing than I could today. Today I hate it. My mother however likes it. She watches it faithfully, to the point that it's one of her must watch shows. She'll even watch old episodes that are on syndication.

Of all of her must watch shows this is the only one I deride her about. I find myself actually enjoying Antique's Roadshow, despite myself, the Biggest Loser I don't like but I can understand the appeal for her. Hell I introduced her to Storage Wars, Pawn Stars and her love of those shows plus Antiques Roadshow made American Pickers an obvious fit.

But America's Funniest Home Videos is... Well it pisses me off for two reasons: Youtube and Tom Bergeron.

See America's Funniest Home Video honestly doesn't offer you anything that isn't already on Youtube. Want to see cute pet tricks? Youtube. Want to see kids doing funny stuff? Youtube. Want to see men getting hit in the crotch? Youtube. It's all right there. In fact you can narrow it down so it's just kids dumping bowls of food on their head, or dogs having dreams and barking and kicking. You have absolute control what you want to watch or not watch.

My complaint about Tom Bergeron, is he's a T.V. Personality. He's not an actor, he's not a comedian, yet it's his voice that narrates the videos. He's really nothing but a glorified news anchor. A personality to talk to you and keep your attention between segments. He also narrates over half the videos. Which leads to another problem, one that isn't his fault: The writers of the show suck. Not going to mince words here. Could I do better? Probably not, but I don't want to. It would be awesome to have a writing gig on a television show (or an acting gig) but I'm not disciplined enough in my writing to consider that realistic, and I'm not down a path that would net me an acting job. So no, I couldn't do any better than the writers of AFHV, but I'm sure I could do as well.

There's an art to writing comedy, and to narrating comedy and Tom Bergeron is... horrible. Not that he's a bad human being. Actually I think he's probably a cool guy and would be fun to kick back and have a beer with, but he's not funny. HE'S NOT FUNNY. Why does he narrate? Well it's pretty obvious, because the videos that he narrates aren't funny by themselves. What's funny is they aren't funny with him either. In fact many are worse. The same thing was the case when Bob Saget was the host. Why show us shitty unfunny videos. The home movies that are actually funny don't have much in the way of narration, and you know what? They don't need it.

I point out to my mother every few months that she could watch Youtube and see funnier stuff. She either doesn't hear me or ignores me.

I actually do know why the show is still on. It's a game show. There's a prize at the end, a large chunk of change. Three videos are picked and the audience votes on them. I would really like to know what the producers criteria is for picking the three finalists, because they are usually not that funny. In fact it seems at least half the time they pick videos in which they have written narration for, and typically a lot funnier videos, that don't have narration, aren't picked at all.

Now I know that humor is somewhat subjective. I find a lot of shit unfunny, but friends, family and co-workers think is hilarious and vice-versa. But really does this show need to persist? No. Will it continue to as long as people hope they have the funniest/cutest/ridiculous video out there and think there's a chance they may get cash for little Jimmy shitting himself while dumping spaghetti on his head and while riding a dog.

Yep.

Labels: Personal, T.V. Reviews

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 10:43 AM