A Startling Admission

Lets start with an admission: I'm watching How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? on the Ceeb.

I'm not a huge fan of reality shows. To me, they are the scourge of modern television programming, continually the second half of the age-old statement "I never thought television could get any worse, but...". I only watch one other reality show regularly, that being the raucous Hell's Kitchen. But only for the non-stop stream of bleeped profanity that issues forth from Gordon Ramsay. His abusive cursing seems, to me, to be the only real bit of "reality" programming out of all these shows.

Maria? is interesting to me though. Not the least of reasons being that we have since bought tickets for the Toronto showing of The Sound of Music, the North American premiere of the Andrew Lloyd Webber revival of what has to be considered the pinnacle of musical theater. So I guess you could say that we've wagered on the Canadian public picking the right actress to play Maria, and I'm curious to see what our ticket money will have been spent on.

The opening shows were pretty good, featuring the culled hopefuls attending a singing and acting boot camp lovingly referred to as "Maria School", were pretty good. Instead of all the back-biting and useless manufactured drama of other reality shows of this ilk, it seemed like they were really trying to get to the core of what these women will need to perform the role on a professional stage. However, watching the latest episode featuring the selected 20 singing a la the Idol programs, was akin to dropping acid. The sight of them singing a strange choice of songs in weird outfits to a symphony channeling Meco was pretty disconcerting. But hands down, the worst part of this whole exercise is Gavin Crawford, the host of the program. Sure, we're not talking about a cure for cancer here, but a revival of The Sound of Music is a pretty big, even (in the world of musical theatre) Important deal. Crawford never fails to drag the whole thing down into ridiculous farce. It's true that in Canada we tend not to take too many things too seriously. But I think we usually draw the line at crapping all over them.

I'm going to close out this entry with the sad death of George Carlin yesterday, at the age of 71. Carlin celebrated 50 years in show business last year by releasing a huge boxed collection of his works, called All My Stuff. It is truly the mark of comedic genius when you can be pretty sure that the government has a huge dossier on you just for what you say. Carlin was perhaps most famous for his bit about the seven words you can never say on television, which resulted in him being arrested in 1972 on obscenity charges and which became the impetus for a legal case that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a world seemingly built on hyperbole, we can safely say that George Carlin was one of the greatest comics the world has known. In these crazy times, his words of reason will be sorely missed. I'll leave you with one of my favourite bits of his. R.I.P. George.