Use the search up top for previous chapters, fans.
I'm afraid this show is now starting to lower my opinion not only of the Second City school of comedy...but of Canadians in general.
I've never been a serious student of improv, but I'm not a totally uneducated, disinterested observed either and I remember something about one rule being to always work from the top of your intelligence.
If that's what this current crop of Canadian comedians is doing, I cry for the country (and apologize for the aliteration).
But really, the biggest fault does not lie with the cast members, or with the judges, or with the "mentors" from the current Second City cast. The fault lies with the concept. A Second City reality series, at least done the way this one is, was a terrible idea and the result doesn't make it as good TV, comedy or otherwise.
It's become like watching a road accident, you know it's wrong but you...you can't look away! Tonight's big scene was an American Idol parody, which is not quite as stale as last week's Survivor swipe, but still at least one year too late.
Once again, no celebrity guests...am I cyncial to think they caught a whif of what this show was turning out to be? More than any reality series I've ever seen (which admittedly is not a lot) this one brings to mind images of producers banging their heads against their laptops.
For those cast members (or their friends and family) looking themselves up...I realized watching tonight's episode why I don't want to try to rate you any more. I'll have more about that in a minute.
That said...
Jeannie Cole won my sympathy this week in dealing unapologetically with her admitted lack of singing ability...and picked up a little more when the producers were snotty about it.
Two cast members whom I've liked from the beginning, Kayla Lorette and Megan McDowell, were asked to improvise an eighties pop song. This is what's known in the trade as "baiting me." They actually did a good and credible job, but the performance, like most of them, was lessened by being accompanied only by a piano.
You can't play eighties pop without a synth. You can't play folk without an acoustic guitar either, which was also tried, but I know they had a synthesizer there, it was visible in-shot...mocking me.
Further to my musical-nerd-qualities, Ali Rizvi lost a point or two by not knowing who Leonard Cohen was. And you call yourself a Canadian artist. And possibly by misidentifying Art Garfunkel as the writer of "The Sounds Of Silence" (I thought that was Paul Simon...but I could be wrong).
Is it fair to condemn an aspiring comedian for his limited musical ear and/or poor memory for songwriting credits? Certainly not. But this show doesn't give me much to go on to judge him, or any of them, as a comedian...
I don't watch series like America's Got Talent or So You Think You Can Dance, but maybe someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this: On such shows, don't you get to see an entire performance, whether it's a dance routine or anything else?
On the Second City reality series, all I'm getting to see is what somebody has decided I should see. If, for some reason, the producers decided they wanted to favor one cast member or another, they could easily make them look better via editing. Or vice-versa.
This removes almost any investment that I might have as an audience member. American Idol fans are invested in their favorites, as I know from painful experience. But since I'm never allowed to see one of this show's cast members in an uninterrupted performance...who am I to judge them as sketch comedy/improv performers?
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