Bad Teen Soap Operas and Jimmy Buffett

469 words written by dylan
Posted July 31, 2002 @ 03:22 PM
1 comments

Last night, after some significant pain involving a balky P2-400 giving up the ghost, I settled down to watch me some television. Two shows were on simultaneously: The MTV "Gen Y" soap opera Undressed and CMT's reruns of Austin City Limits.

Undressed: O the writing, O the acting. It was painful. It was like listening to Brittney Spears Interprets All Your Favorite Songs With A Dance Beat And A Lot Of Wailing. The plots seem to go something like this: Twentysomethings playing teenagers acting like they're twentysomethings are horny, and they want to have sex with just about everything that has breath. Stupid hijinks ensue. Thing is, they seem to sleep together, but it doesn't seem like they ever have sex; they kiss a lot and act like that's intercourse, as if this is 1955 and kissing will lead to marriage and 50 years of twin beds. The acting was abysmal. The writing was even worse. A good soap opera is a mix of plausible relationships and implausible events. The relationships on Undressed are wooden yet paper-thin, as plausible as a dining room set made from balsa wood. The implausible events here are implausible, but not in a campy soap opera coma/tidal wave/fatal hangnail way; instead, you're left feeling that you've just watched a guy with ten seconds of experience writing downright awful erotica fulfilling his lifelong dream of getting a bunch of twentysomethings playing teenagers acting like they're horny twentysomethings to be as stupid as his pointless and impossible scenarios. This has to set a new low water mark in the soap opera genre. It's so bad it passes through good and returns to bad again. And here's the scariest part of all: It's exec produced by Roland Joffé, as in The Mission and The Killing Fields. Then again, as in Super Mario Bros and the over-the-top Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter.

Austin City Limits: CMT bought 27 years of ACL tapes and are reshowing some of the best (and earliest) shows. Last night it was Jimmy Buffett, 1984. Three things:

  1. He had hair back then.

  2. The crowd was surprisingly old -- mid 30s or so. Didn't see a lot of 20-somethings. And 18 years between then and now is about when you start asking "Why did they ever dress that way?"

  3. I've always thought Jimmy was overrated (partially because of the Sweatervest's obsession with him), but I think I've changed my mind. Unremarkable songs played extremely well live. If he didn't become the big recording artist he is today, I could see him living on a houseboat and playing bars, frat parties, and cotillions all over central and south Florida. Thing is, seems like he's pretty close to that now....


Note that I am finally using the title function. It's blue.

Comments

  1. could you please!!! send me an email about bad things for soap operas...
    BY NINO...

    Posted by: Nino | March 11, 2004 10:31 PM