The Smarmy Carny

Thanks to the success of MXC and then Wipeout, we're seeing a rash of Japanese game imports coming to the U.S.

I'm not sure about the rules exactly, but it really does seem straightfoward. The contestant stands at the end of a runway in front of a pit of water. A large wall with a certain shape comes toward them, and the contestant has to contort their body into the shape of the hole so they remain in the playing area instead of being swept into the water. Some holes/shapes require laying down, jumping, and teamwork.

Fox's casting call earlier this summer requested same-sex teams of three players, which seems to have been the format for the original show as well.

Of course, reading about the show tends to be fairly boring, while watching these people play the game is much more enjoyable:

Now go ahead . . . start filling out that application. You know you want to try it yourself!

American Idol 7 started up this week, bringing us two episodes full of hilarious and frightening auditions. As usual, Idle Idols is blogging the funniest and most entertaining auditions.

We've only had two episodes thus far, but don't miss articles on the female linebacker, the crazed, hyper glitter woman, a song from a Paula Abdul stalker, an enthusiastic worshiper of Simon, a man willing to wax his chest hair, a psycho Star Wars fan, a fingernail collector, an unconvincing transvestite, and even a politician.

Be sure to stay tuned to Idle Idols for more updates during the rest of the audition season, which should last for three more weeks.

Just when you thought network TV was about as low as it could get, Hollywood's ineffective and misdirected attempts to push environmental issues this week brought network television to a new low.

NBC celebrated "Green Week" this week. It was one of the oddest campaigns or ratings stunts of television history, all under the motto "Green is Universal" — perhaps a reference to NBC Universal, the company that owns NBC, Universal Studios, and other media companies.

Probably the only successful change is that NBC's "The More You Know" PSAs were environmentally focused. They are, after all, PSAs, so they can easily fit the theme. Granted, the environmental topics pale in comparison to the standard TMYK themes of domestic violence and drug use, but that's no matter.

The worst of Green Week is that NBC has directed their shows to adopt an environmental theme in this week's episode. What this accomplishes is that each show on NBC suddenly creates an awkward, contrived environmental situation. These environmental themes have been shoved into this week's episode, regardless of the episode's plot or the show's season-long plot arc.

• ER — The ER experiences a blackout after an unseasonably hot Chicago Day. Sam spends some time with a conservationist doing an energy usage study on County General and Morris has a run in with door of a Hummer.
• Heroes — The Heroes logo turns green — literally — for the week.
• Life — Charlie randomly decides to purchase a solar farm because of a dream he had.
• My Name Is Earl — The Warden instructs Earl to toss in some environmental teachings into their "scared straight" program.

The silly theme only thrives in silly, random shows that enjoy being silly, random shows like Scrubs and Deal or No Deal. One of the worst examples is My Name Is Earl: The warden randomly orders that Earl insert an environmental theme into their "scared straight" program for young children. Furthermore, the awkward, forced moments degrade the episodes' content and don't do much to increase awareness of any sort. These are theme's we've heard for the past 15 years. I'd expect environmental snippets like this in a children's program, perhaps, but not in programming geared toward adults.

I'd love to see the writers of any show stand up against this theme — not the environmentalism theme, mind you, but the NBC-mandated "Green Week" theme. No wonder the writers are on strike this week.

TV Envy also has a great article on NBC's Green Week this that delves into the subject that is worth the read.

There was another bit of Spanish in this week's episode of My Name Is Earl, Frank's Girl. Throughout the episode, Joy and Catalina get into a war over . . . pooing themselves, of all things.

After Joy exacts her revenge on Catalina and takes a picture of the result, Catalina pops her head outside of the women's bathroom door and shouts:

Esperamos que no te daba asco este cuento, nosotros pensabamos que era chistoso!

The "unilingual" viewer assumes that Catalina is yelling at Joy and is possibly promising her own revenge. What Catalina is actually yelling at Joy, however, is:

We hope that this tale doesn't disgust you. We thought it was funny.

At least the writers of Earl know when they may be close to crossing the line on their humor.

My Name Is Earl has done it again. Previously, we have seen several Spanish-language jokes that break the fourth wall, and now they're expanding their efforts to Japanese.

In this week's episode, The Frank Factor, we see the origins of the various characters before they all end up together. As Catalina has freshly landed in the United States, she is walking along the side of the road just as Darnell (a.k.a. Crab Man, f.k.a Harry Monroe) is dropped off by FBI agents. She walks up to him and starts speaking Spanish to him in a concerned tone. She says:

¿Disculpe, disculpe — señor? Mira, yo sé que ésto no tiene sentido con este programa porque como hemos visto yo vine después de "Y2K", pero en realidad quién quién pone atención a esos tipos de cosas?

The viewer is left to believe that the new arrival is concerned about finding a place to live, to eat, or may just be concerned with what to do now that she has finally reached the United States. What Catalina has actually said is this:

Excuse me, excuse me — sir? Look, I know that this doesn't make any sense with this show because we have seen that I came after [in the episode] "Y2K", but in reality who — who pays attention to those types of things?

Catalina is talking about the fact that in the Y2K episode, she is seen starting her journey to the United States while Earl and the gang are meeting Darnell at the Crab Shack for the first time. In this episode, the timeline/canon is broken because Darnell has just been dropped off by the FBI van and certainly has not started working yet, however Catalina has already arrived in Camden County. The writers have skewed the show's timeline to have the origin stories line up better for this episode, and they wanted us to know that they are aware that we viewers notice these sorts of things. My wife also translated the phrase as "I2K", and I have to assume this is a mispronunciation of the Y2K flashback episode. Another blog has also verified this mispronunciation.

The episode also has two Japanese lines spoken by Patty's Japanese "client". He speaks only Japanese in the scene, and none of the characters are aware of what he is saying. Randy keeps cracking up about him speaking "gibberish".

Update: I was finally able to get a partial translation of the Japanese. After Patty introduces Yoshi to Earl and Randy, the Yoshi character says a phrase in Japanese, and right before they exit the scene, he speaks again. Here are the two lines in Japanese:

tenkeiteki na nihonjin no yaru ga kirai da. demo agent ga kore wa yaru no hou ga ii to itta

kare wa dokyun ga kare wa zenbu nandemo shite wo wakan nai no. ikou!

Though this seems to be poor grammar according to the people translating, the two lines are roughly translated as:

I really hate doing Japanese stereotypes, but my agent said I should do it.

He's a dumba**. He has no idea what he's doing. I'm going!

I'll keep posting updates as I get them.

The blog Spanengrish Ramblings posted the following translation, which varies a bit from what I got:

I really hate doing Japanese stereotypes, but my agent said I should probably do it.

Where is he? He's always doing this to me. Let's go.

Let's hope that My Name Is Earl keeps up the great work and inside jokes to multilingual viewers!

On the second episode of NBC's new series Chuck, there was a rare cross-network reference.

The basic plot of the show is that Chuck accidentally "downloaded" all of the United States government's secrets into his brain via a government program designed for exactly this purpose. When Chuck sees a seemingly harmless picture from this program, a government secret is brought to the forefront of his mind.

In this second episode, a doctor tests Chuck by showing him images that trigger these secrets. As the images fly by, Chuck begins spewing out government secrets. The audience hears only half-secrets, so we don't know the full details, but we are aware that the secrets are out there. After mentioning something about a presidential assassination attempt, the next fragment of a secret we hear is:

Oceanic flight 815 was shot down by –
.

Of course, this is a reference to the airline and flight that crashed in the series Lost. We obviously don't hear the rest of the secret, but hearing that in the list was certainly fun.

What's amazing is that NBC allowed an ABC reference on one of its shows. Clearly, the writers of Chuck are aware that many of their viewers are also Lost fans, and this is why they slipped the reference in. Can it be that the NBC staff responsible for viewing the program let this one slide, or did they simply not recognize the reference to the ABC show?

With the Simpsons Movie out now, I might as well toss in something movie-related. Here are a small assortment of some minor characters from The Simpsons:

• Barney Gumble: B Barney is the town drunk who makes Homer look sober. He has a good line now and then but rarely carries a scene. Favorite line: "Aaah! Natural light! Get it off me! Get it off me!"
• Comic Book Guy: C+ Jeff Albertson is the owner of The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop. His character is intentionally annoying, but often not to a comic effect. Favorite line: "Worst episode ever."
• Disco Stu: C It's always fun to see Disco Stu enter the frame, but in comparison to the other characters on the show, Disco Stu just doesn't shine through. Favorite line: "Disco Stu loves disco music!"
• Dr. Nick Riviera: B+ The graduate of Hollywood Upstairs Medical College always makes me laugh. Favorite line: "Hi, everybody!"
• Nelson Muntz: A- Ha ha! Need I say more? Nelson needn't, that's for sure.
• Ralph Wiggum: A Everyone embraces the lovable dumb kid. Until he turns into a prepubescent. Ralph is lucky that time stands still in the Simpsons universe. Favorite line: "Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which items do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?