Thursday, November 19, 2020

Non-political TV

    I've absorbed all the news I can for now. I get it. No mas. So I turned to ordinary tv shows. I've always been tuned in to Wheel of Fortune, just so I wouldn't miss Jeopardy, now so sad to watch. I gave up watching Kelly and Ryan when they began filming at home---so boring. I still watch Dancing with the Stars, even though the judges now seem to  pander to the social climate, and despite the misfit of this season's host, so bizarre in every respect. 

  Desperate for some innocuous viewing, I sat through a show, The Costumed Singer,  where the object is to have a panel of judges, including the annoying Dr. Ken,  guess the identity of elaborately costumed performers.  Nope, not for me, so the other night I decided to watch  a show called I Hear Your Voice. Improbably, it appears to be a spin-off of the mind-numbing Costumed Singer, with a judge being  the now   even more obnoxious Dr. Ken, among other judges apparently contending for that title. 

    The show may have had potential, even in the room of its creation, most likely formulated through the drug fueled aspirations of out-of-work performers, but it is doomed to failure, at least through my lens, for its outright phoniness. Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right and other quiz shows are held to a pretty rigid standard, FCC rules strictly adhered to after the Mark Van Doren scandal. I think this show is staged. (In addition to a complicated and absurd premise. Here's my take:

     The contestant is a poised young woman bearing a remarkable resemblance to Katherine, Prince William's wife. She is impeccably clad in a stunning dress. Her quest for fortune, way more than the meager amounts on Jeopardy for any first contestant, depends on her figuring out which of the presented performers, all of whom are lip-synching, is a real singer or a non-singer. The contestant is poised, only briefly and charmingly indecisive,  as she listens to the advice of the show's panel of judges, one of whom is no other than the inimitable Dr. Ken.  A round of performing, a round of questioning, with answers given in a muffled voice, a round of dissecting the judicial opinions, before she presses the button selecting her choice. She wins--20K. She loses 40K. But don't despair; her fortune soars again with another correct choice. And, oh, at one point the performer enters a sound booth and screams as loud as possible. The Decibel Rating could be a clue. Or not. The real singer is allowed to lie or dissemble. Only the bad singers are held to the truth. 

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