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‘Crossballs’ is fake and fun
“Crossballs” is loud and contentious, just like “Crossfire” and “Hardball,” the shows it spoofs.
But this new Comedy Central series (6:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays), which began an eight-week run last night, is also funny — intentionally funny.
It’s a half-hour talk show that purports to be both real and fake, with improv actors posing as real people and real people supposedly unaware that the people they’re debating aren’t real. I’m not so sure the real people actually believe they’re on a real talk show, but that’s sort of beside the point.
Chris Tallman is the Chris Matthews-style host, caught in the middle of two screeching sides debating an issue. The topic of Tuesday’s debut was reality TV. The on-screen crawl screamed, “Reality TV: guilty pleasure or pop culture plague!”
On one side of the fake debate was Matthew Henson (played by Matt Besser, who happens to be one of the show’s executive producers), a red-neck professional reality TV veteran. On the other side is an appalled and disgusted actor, Corey Williams, defending scripted fare.
Henson, who demonstrated his reality “talent” by ingesting a moist-looking cow patty (which we desperately hope is fake), refers to actors as “actor/liars.” Williams defends his trade by pointing to the idiocy of the guy’s stunts.
“How much talent does it take to eat a cow patty?” Williams asks. Another expert brought in to defend reality TV is a fake professor, who claims acting is a thing of the past.His idea for a new reality show is a real-life “Hogan’s Heroes,” with neo-Nazis imprisoning and abusing not only Jews, but gypsies and gays as well.
And there’s a richly pathetic reality TV wannabe, played by improv actor Andy Daly, whose lone goal in life is to be “tricked” on a reality show. He doesn’t understand that a person can’t be willingly tricked and still be surprised. A truly dim bulb.
Sometimes the decibel level of this fast-moving satire is a bit much, and the cow patty was definitely too much. But “Crossballs” is a clever concept that’s loaded with potential. I won’t watch it three nights a week, but I’ll check it out again.
I tried … I fled …
As promised in yesterday’s blog, I watched the first half-hour of “Amazing Race” last night.
The 90-minute fifth season premiere introduced 11 duos and sent them off to Uruguay on the first leg of their around-the-world trip. One guy fell on the Santa Monica Pier and had 25 stitches in his leg, and one couple began what is bound to be a relationship-shattering argument.
But mainly they all huffed and puffed from one stage of the journey to the next. To me, this show is nothing more than extended travel anxiety served up for public amusement. Having experienced lots of travel anxiety in my days, I choose not to watch others similarly suffer.
“Amazing Race” may well be the reality show for smarties, but I don’t like it, so I’m outta there.
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