Last Night’s TV

Because of nasty incident involving a plate of knives and my groin, last night I was unable to go as planned to the Toronto Spinderella Ballroom and check out hot new band Gruntfuck Episode, so my review of their gig will have to wait until they return to the city. Instead, I was forced to sit on my arse and enjoy several hours of prime time television. Here’s my review of that, instead.

At 6:00 I watched America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC, and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed as people fell over. They fell into pools, off tables, off tables into pools, off pool tables, off pool tables into pools and out of pools and into tables. Oh, and there was a cat that could open doors. And then the cat fell into a pool. Brilliant stuff.

7:00 saw the first episode of an excellent new show, America’s Prissiest Waiters (NBC). Security camera and home video footage captured some of the most outrageously prim and proper food servers in the US. I watched with awe as a guy with a pencil-thin moustache wearing a waistcoat told a child not to throw meatballs around an Italian restaurant. I gasped as a man with a ridiculous combover informed a couple that there were no remaining specials, and laughed as he then came back to apologise for the fact that there was, after all, a single serving of vegetable soup remaining. Hosted by Jon Favreau, this is a superb program.

America’s Youngest People (8:00, E!) was a very watchable and shocking tale of those forgotten children of the nation: children. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of these babies, some of whom were just minutes old. Indeed, these had to have been America’s Youngest People. How they sleep at night, I do not know. Lullabies, probably.

One of the best shows of the new season has to be America’s Americanest Americans (9:00, ABCBABC). Hosted by Ted Nugent, this program highlights Americans living in America who epitomise being American in the most American way. This show has more stripes and more stars than the Republican Convention, with eagles and apple pie and a CGI animation of Jesus kissing the Statue of Liberty while simultaneously shooting Arabs. Do you really need me to tell you how awesome this was?

At 10:00 I switched over to CNN, where I watched America’s Currentest Events, and then before I sank into a cold, passionless slumber I caught the first two hours of America’s Adjectiviest Nouns, a show in which the most adjectivey nouns were shown on CCTV, phone camera and home video doing those verbs that make them so adjectivey. To be honest, this was a little formulaic for my liking. I’m not sure what it was, but I felt like I’d seen this all before.

I’ll see you all next week after Thanksgiving, when hopefully the morphine will have started to work on the crippling agony that floods my very being! See you then!