I’m not a fan of VH1’s trashy style of reality TV, even if I’ve been sucked into shows like America’s Most Smartest Model on occasion but tonight sees the debut of one show I’ve been highly anticipating, Margaret Cho’s new “reality sitcom” The Cho Show. Viacom has been previewing it all over the place and it’s one very entertaining show. Unlike Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List, The Cho Show is firmly an ensemble show and everyone gets a chance to show their funny side, in fact Cho really seems to thrive on being around people who are as witty and creative as the gang that surrounds her. If the first episode is any indication of what we can expect for the rest of the season, this is going to be my all-time favorite reality show.

Fox News host Gregg Jarrett apologised for making transphobic remarks about a transgender competitor on the upcoming season of America’s Next Top Model but I’m wondering when will the apology come from gossip magazine US Weekly, their “editor at large” went along with Jarrett’s comments:

Yes! It’s finally happening! Rachel Maddow is finally getting her own show on MSNBC starting September 9.

It’s a smart move, Maddow is one of the few people able to mix snark and gravitas, something that perfectly captures the zeitgeist as noted by the New York Times’ recent profile of Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show resonates not only because it is wickedly funny but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic. Indeed, Mr. Stewart’s frequent exclamation “Are you insane?!” seems a fitting refrain for a post-M*A*S*H, post-Catch-22 reality, where the surreal and outrageous have become commonplace — an era kicked off by the wacko 2000 election standoff in Florida, rocked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and haunted by the fallout of a costly war waged on the premise of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist…

The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is reviewed. That meeting, Mr. Stewart said, “would be very unpleasant for most people to watch: it’s really a gathering of curmudgeons expressing frustration and upset, and the rest of the day is spent trying to mask or repress that through whatever creative devices we can find.”

That, of course, is also the dynamic found on Maddow’s future lead-in, Keith Olbermann, one that’s given the network enough ratings juice to kill off those constant rumors about the network being dismantled eventually.

With Julia Child in the news, I started getting nostalgic for a classic comedy sketch by legendary Hawaii comedian Rap Replinger. I figured I’d see if I could find the clip online and here it is:

Even better, the clip comes from a video company that put the special Rap’s Hawaii out on DVD. Replinger died before I was old enough to appreciate his comedy, but Rap’s Hawaii, as well as a special he recorded with his former comedy troop Booga Booga, would get occasional repeats for a few years. It’s nice to see those sketches get to continue to live on because a lot of Replinger’s work (I’m trying to pretend the “Eulogy” sketch never happened) isn’t ‘good for a local act’ but something that could stand next to a lot of the sketch comedy work getting a national audience (though at the time Replinger’s use of Hawaiian Creole probably stopped him from finding success outside of the islands).

As a bonus, here’s Replinger’s “Room Service” sketch:

Uhm, wow, am I the only one thinking this sounds like something out of a comic book? Julia Child was part of a WWII spy ring which also included the likes of Ernest Hemmingway’s son.

They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.

It’s probably that it sounds like these people didn’t grow up in the field, that they were civilians who ended up working in intelligence out of patriotism that gives it a “Experts from various fields gather to fight for their country” feel, I mean nowadays our people come from various fields too, but they’re on a well-trod career path, so I suppose the comic-booky feel comes from the “We’ll put on a show in my parents’ barn together an espionage force using the skills we have.” nature of this story.

But I think plenty of people are pretty eager to find out what the grand dame of celebrity chefs did in service to her country.

Okay, so I wasn’t expecting to be happy when I saw the headline of Topless Robot (an LA Weekly blog) Ten Reasons No One Cares About Wonder Woman but writer Alicia Ashby disarms me right at the beginning:

In fact, here are ten reasons why nobody really cares about Wonder Woman, even if they say they do. At best, people care about all the things that Wonder Woman could be, but isn’t, thanks to the character’s long history of editorial mismanagement, bizarrely bad writing, and a near-total lack of focus.

Okay, as someone who has repeatedly started and then dropped Wonder Woman that does resonate. I do love the concept but it’s hard to find someone who can do it justice — and that includes her biggest fans like Phil Jiminez. (Though I certainly did enjoy Greg Rucka’s run until it became wrapped into various big events.)

Oh, and, despite all the praise, there’s always something that leaves me cold when I try to sample the George Perez run.

And Ashby’s first issue with Wonder Woman is an interesting point:

In the ’40s, a woman in short-shorts was telling you she was no housewife! She was going to go out and do all kinds of unladylike things that involved exercise and possibly building muscle. In the 90’s, a woman who’s rolling into battle wearing a leotard resembles… um… nothing so much as an extremely angry underwear model.

For the most part, however, the rest of Ashby’s problems tend to come down to William Moutlon Marston’s stories being terrible and giving no good foundation for any later writers to build on. While I agree, there are plenty of problems current Wonder Woman has to deal with, I think Ashby overlooks the bigger problem. Moulton Marston was rare as a feminist writer of superhero comics and in the history of superhero comics there have been very few writers who understand feminism enough to write a Wonder Woman who continued the feminist themes while fixing the badly written stuff like the bondage obsession.

I certainly think the character can be worth caring about but you really need to keep writers like John Bryne, who are terrible at writing women, from writing Wonder Woman. The title also probably needs to have a moratorium on any more stories about how another writer’s idea was crap and the current writer knows how it should be done. Seriously, we don’t need any more attempts to make the Invisible Plane make sense so just stop trying.

Too bad there are so few good superhero writers, much less good superhero writers who write a good superheroine. Still, that would be why I’m looking forward to seeing the first Gail Simone trade come out.

Oh, holy @#$%:

On the August 10 edition of ABC’s This Week, ABC News political analyst Cokie Roberts criticized Sen. Barack Obama — who was born in Hawaii — for “going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii,” which she said “does not make any sense whatsoever.” Roberts stated: “I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place.” Roberts continued: “He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he’s going to take a vacation at this time.”

Yes, apparently Roberts can acknowledge that Hawai’i is a state but she doesn’t say it like she believes it’s a real state (Crooks and Liars has the clip), the rest of the country just let Hawai’i into the union to have a vacation destination. It’s not like anyone expected Hawai’i to ever do ever do anything significant like be a part of a serious Presidential candidate’s history.

Look, I may be proud of being part of the brain drain of Hawai’i. I found that state a stifling place to live (which might have something to do with being born and raised there) but I can still empathize with the frustration over how some mainlanders (which includes Roberts, apparently) treat it like it’s not really part of the USA. If you know people who’ve worked in tourism, they’ll eventually have that story about the mainlander not sure if the stores will take American dollars, who feel the need to the APIs they encounter how well they speak English — or, if they’re accompanied by the irony fairy, how good they speak English — among other stupidity.

This outrage gets doubled since Hawai’i is a state with a majority Asian-American population and Asian-Americans are sometimes treated that they, too, aren’t real Americans — that even if their family has been in the country for generations they’d relate more to some foreign country just because they have the same slanty eyes.

So. Yeah. With that history, that statement might as well been followed by “Why can’t his grandmother visit him in Myrtle Beach, where regular people vacation, you know white people?” Roberts didn’t help herself with that talk of “exotic” which is usually a signal you’re with some racist twit who’ll express surprise the first time they see you eating with a fork instead of chopsticks.

So, shut up, Roberts. Your sense of white entitlement is showing. Go have dinner with David Brooks at Applebees’ non-existent salad bar.

Taking a look at what’s coming up on the TV schedule I just realized that BBC America highly-anticipated drama Skins — a teen drama that comes from the producers Shameless, a critically-praised drama with a very loyal following (I’m way overdue to sing the praises of Shameless) — will debut on Sunday August 17 at 9PM.

You know what else airs on Sundays at 9? Shameless.

What the @#$% kind of logic is that? Okay, so it’s true that BBC America has a tendency to try their best to kill shows that didn’t originally air on the BBC (Skins is a Channel 4 show) but that’s kinda like if, when UPN stole Buffy away from The WB, they scheduled it against Angel.

So far, I don’t have a good history with BBC America’s “Supernatural Saturday” lineup. Hex started out interesting but when I got to an episode I just couldn’t stay awake through, I realized it was time to give up. Robin Hood’s obvious low budget nature was too hard to ignore throughout the first episode — it’s never a good sign when you’re noticing the ways they tried to make things look bigger over the story. Then there’s Torchwood a series I’ve found to be really hit-or-miss. While I was ready to give it a second chance, the spouse had written it off in the first season and the first time an episode replayed all the problems with the first season — an episode that centered on Gwen being stupid, naturally — it just became too clear that all the improved episodes weren’t so improved.

Still, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for their new action series Primeval, which focuses on a team of scientists investigating why beasts from other time periods — including, of course, dinosaurs — are suddenly appearing in modern day. The spouse does enjoy some decent dinosaur CGI so we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed this isn’t another one of those shows (y’know, like the first season of Torchwood) where the plot relies on the heroes being stupid to get them in exciting action/chase scenes.

Oh, and speaking of sci-fi on BBC America, I wish they’d air the second season of Afterlife, which was a really great show.

Last Friday, G4 TV (which certainly does have an identity even if I have no idea how to sum it up) debuted its first British comedy, The Peter Serafinowicz Show, featuring the talented mimicry of Serafinowicz, an actor who the BBC says has had scene-stealing roles in Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Black Books, though I know none of those well enough to remember his performance. Maybe it was a case of his chameleon-like quality getting in the way of his recognizability…. even after watching plenty of clips I’m not sure if I’d recognize him on another show.

Anyway, Serfinowicz has that same sense of the absurd that makes me love… well, it’s the same sense of the absurd found in just about every sketch comdey show that I love. Serafinowicz manages to make good use of this ability to imitate celebrities, which sometimes comes so fast and furious that you can forget they all come from the same performer. Serafinowicz also shows an ability to play out a running gag, plenty of his recurring sketches have only small differences but they never have that “Waiting for the catchphrase” feel that Saturday Night Live got during the Dana Carvey years.

Check out one of Serafinowicz’ many inspired pop culture parodies below in the “Darth Vader in love” sketch: