The Tiki Crisis of 2001 is now officially over, thanks to Tikis by Bosko. They’re fabulous, check them out for all your Tiki needs! (and you have Tiki needs, even if you don’t know it).
I do this just for you:
I decided to give the (fetid) Sandra Bernhard show another chance, in the interest of giving you the most complete and accurate information possible.
Last night’s episode was actually worse than Monday night. How is this possible? Shouldn’t Sandra and her sidekick be displaying even the tiniest bit of chemistry by now? Suddenly, Regis and Cathy Lee seem like geniuses to me. At least they have some sense of comic timing…
We start out with a monologue about beauty magazines. I agree with every critique in spirit; but her delivery is so bad, her timing so off that it just hurts. Little did I know that the Deep Hurting hadn’t even begun yet. Next she sang a song about Angie Harmon. I wish I was making this whole thing up, but I’m not. She sang a song about Angie Harmon.
The only thing that made the first 10 minutes of the show tolerable was that we had the stereo on, at a slightly lower volume. The exotic sounds of Arthur Lyman made the whole opening sequence strange and kind of cool, but not in the way Sandra intended.
Gloria Steinam was the first guest. She was great, but Sandra kept interrupting her to say stupid and pointless things. When Sandra isn’t interrupting the guest to say stupid and pointless things, her sidekick Sarah is intrerupting the guest to say stupid and pointless things. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
Next up was necrophiliac fashionista Andre Leon-Talley. This guy held forth forever about his obsession with Marie Antoinette’s crypt and with his mad dash to visit the room she gave birth in so he could touch the curtains. Later he segued into another story about mausoleums. In between, he and Sandra talked about how awful television is now. Clearly, they’d watched the first two epsiodes of this program together.
By the time we got to the Pam Greer interview I’d pinpointed one of the things that contributes to the Badness of this program. The editing. Throughout the Pam Greer interview, the camera jumped between 5 shots. 5 static shots.
1. Close-up of Pam talking
2. Close-up of Sandra talking
3. Three shot from the center/left of the stage
4. Long shot of the set from the extreme right, through some stupid piece of scenery. You can see the three of them sitting on the stage, but can’t distinguish facial expressions, you’re so far away.
5. Very long shot, from the left of the stage from the top of the set (think security camera), also through a piece of the set. This shot is so far away you can barely distinguish who’s who on the stage.
Through the whole long interview, we jump from shot to shot, always one of these 5 static shots, at a nearly dizzying rate (5-10 seconds for each). The only thing that would make it more annoying was if the camera was handheld. And they had a masturbating chimpanzee as the cameraman. And the show was 2 hours instead of 1. Actually, I’m not sure those things would make it any worse.
The saddest part is, I actually like Sandra Bernhard. I can’t imagine what someone who doesn’t like her thinks of this god-awful mess.