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"HAUNTED
(Minus Elvira's Hills !)" Hmmm. There appears to be some confusion in the wake of last week's rant on the show HAUNTED. Maybe permanent damage has finally occurred from the weekly head-trauma I've been receiving at the hands of our merciless overlord Count Gore, but apparently the ABC Family Channel program I reviewed last time was the WRONG Haunted ! If it even existed at all... Ok, guess I'd better come clean. There was no show on the ABC Family Channel called Haunted two weeks ago -- in fact there is no ABC Family Channel. I just made the whole thing up to avoid having to discourse on the UPN series of the same name. Sort of a defense mechanism. But having been busted and having my chops busted by Gore, it looks like I can't avoid the topic any longer. There is a word for tv shows like UPN's HAUNTED. It's right on the tip of my tongue. The kids have a word for it nowadays. Oh yeah, I've got it --DULL ! The French would call it "merde", and for once their assessment of something in the entertainment world would be on the nose. It sure caused my nose to wrinkle a few times in reaction to the stench of bad acting, writing and production. Even the odor that could make smelling-salts seem like roses in comparison wasn't enough to keep my eyes open for any more than fifteen minutes of this outstandingly ponderous program. To be totally candid, I switched over and caught the last half of the FRASIER Halloween episode before Haunted could lull me completely to sleep. I was feeling haunted all right -- by the Sandman. The theme of the show is nothing new. A cop's family is tragically killed, and he too dies but is revived to find that he is still in unwanted contact with the other side. It's an interesting premise that writer's like Stephen King, James Herbert and many, MANY others have spun well in the past; unfortunately here it's just completely unengaging and uninteresting. The only mystery my mind was trying to unravel was the Gordian knot of trying to figure out how crap like this gets on the air. I couldn't have cared less about these shallow, cookie-cutter characters, and the obvious attempts to make this the new X-Files. Hell, even if I'd been able to SEE the characters in the bad lighting provided us, I probably still wouldn't have cared about them. This show was just bad, and I really don't want to expend any more energy talking about it -- any publicity is good publicity and all that, y'know. The only thing duller than a dull show is TALKING about a dull show ! Haunted was so dull as to make Bill O'Reilly look like he has a point. Then again, sometimes the point to some things is that there is no point. Thus spaketh, spoketh and has bespeakeded your humbly doomed commentator. Oh yeah, and have I mentioned the fact that you shouldn't waste your time trying to watch the Video-Ny-Quil that is UPN's Haunted? Things are much scarier, and much more entertaining over in my little made-up fantasy-world of the ABC Family Channel's HAUNTED anyway. If I want to see poor lighting and bad acting I'll just watch my own show, fer Gore's sake! 'Til next we swing her on The Gallows, don't take any wooden Haunteds, and may all your spirits be at least 100 Proof... Your ol' pal,
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