Labor Day Special: Since When Did Outsourcing Become Funny?

- by Noah

Reality shows? You want reality shows? I’ll show you reality shows! I got your reality shows right here! WTF!



OK. NBC’s about to premier Outsourced show doesn’t fit the normal definition of a reality show. No, instead, NBC thinks it can turn an ugly reality for millions of Americans into a putrid stream of bad “jokes.” It’s safe to say that my contempt for the decision makers at the media corporations knows no bounds. Hollywood, in particular, strives to explode my inner contempt-o-meter on a near daily basis. (Actually, it’s not inner. I wear it on my sleeves.) Today, the news reached me that NBC, through its association (think contamination) with Universal, has a brand new zippy TeeVee show called Outsourced, based on the 2007 John Jeffcoat movie of the same name. The film was generally well thought of but it was a romantic comedy centered around a guy who was sent to India to train his replacement; not a happy task, but one people can relate to and empathize with. The TeeVee show? That’s another matter. It’s a sitcom! Ain’t outsourcing grand! Let the laughter begin! It’s about a guy who has a job with a company that sells vulgar, tasteless novelties. He goes to work one morning only to find that everybody in the call center is gone. He has a choice. He can lose his job, or, he can go to India to run the brand new, no doubt innovative, fresh, and synergistic, call center over there. The whole show seems to be built around jokes about whoopee cushions, fake vomit, beer helmets, “jingle boobs,” and fake dog poop. From there, the synopsis claims, comedy ensues!
 
I know actors need jobs too but this is downright shameful. There’d be more dignity in dancing around a pole. Here we are in a time when people are starting to build tent cities in this country because some a$$sholes in suits have decided that Americans don’t matter and that their jobs are fair game to be shipped overseas and Hollywood thinks that’s funny and turns it all into a bunch of fart jokes. Wow. What will the drugged out, overly self-preoccupied airheads of Hollywood think of next? It’s bad enough that LA people spend most of their time worrying about having the right press agent and worrying about whether they are driving the right image car or wearing the right image shoes or watch, now they think the plight of people who used to have real jobs is grist for humor! The calls for boycotts have already begun. I hope someone takes a good look at the show’s sponsors to see how many American jobs they have outsourced!

I’ve spent a lot of time in LALA over the years and I’ve always been struck by two things. One is that it’s a whole city given over to plastic surgery addicts. The other is its near total obliviousness to the fact that there is a whole rest of the country on the eastern side of the mountains; mountains that you can only see about 3 days a year, due to the smog of brown flatulent gas that is really Hollywood’s number one product. Obviously, the situation isn’t getting any better when the average price of a movie ticket ($12.00 here in NYC) for a crap movie exceeds the figure of the average unemployment rate (hovering around 10%, nationally), but, I digress. I’m writing just about TV today.
 
In response to this particularly egregious example of corporate insensitivity, I have decided to pitch my own TV shows, shows that more realistically express the feelings of the viewing audience, to the dunderheads of Hollywood:

1. Hit The Streets- A gang of merry unemployed 99er pranksters, deeply in  debt, starving, wondering how they’re going to feed their kids, and dressed as pirates go to a different corporate headquarters each week, starting with Wall Street, and do a peoples’ hostile takeover, set up a plank high up on the roof of the glass tower and make the CEOs walk the plank!
 
          2. Bail Out!– Weekly plane ride. No parachutes. A cattleprod. You get the picture.
 
           3. With Truth And Laughter For All- This is my comedy entry and it’s very low budget. Each week, I simply select a series of speeches by politicians, clips of corporate morons in suits and ugly ties, and useless, barely glued together TV personalities like Bill-O, Neil Cavuto, or Wolfie, and I add a laugh track from an old sitcom underneath every word they utter. It adds perspective!
 
           4. The Dispossessed!– Corporate heads and bank swine are kidnapped and airlifted to an uncharted island, where an unseen enemy lurks and causes weekly mayhem. A talking volcano that demands sacrifice makes for numerous innovative twists in the last 3 minutes of every episode.



5. I Have Your Family– Remember that old weekly drama called The Equalizer? This one takes off where that one left off and creeps further into the ever-darkening Noahworld. Each episode begins with a phone call to a CEO or politician’s desk right after that goon has done something heinous to something or someone, be it an individual employee, union busting, an attack on the environment… Viewers get to voice their choice of punishment via texting; selecting from a delicious menu of punishments, designed to specifically match the crime. Plenty of Tony Haywards get to figuratively or literally drink the oil and meet their just reward.

Every night, I dream of a world where these corporate toe-tapper studio turds never exist. Having worked in the music business all of my career, I’ve met so many of their kind. They just want us to laugh it all off. We’re supposed to accept their mindless drek and jive, just like we’re supposed to get used to permanent war. NATGEO is even offering a show called Giuliani’s 9/11. I kid you not. He’s turned it into a TV show where 9/11 centers around him. That’s not a show. It’s a mental illness syndrome that will someday bear his name.
 
Rest assured though. I do know that none of my pitches will ever get “into development.” My show ideas might be something people can actually relate to in these harsh days; at least people outside of boardrooms and Hollywood studios. No, instead, I can all but guarantee you that somewhere, right now, in some Hollywood office bungalow, there is some little TV weasel planning a sitcom based on a New Orleans family’s experiences during Katrina. It’ll be called Five Feet High And Risin’ or, maybe Movin’ On Up, as in movin’ on up to the roof top where the family will be fishing for catfish from the roof, swimming, diving in the deep end of their street, and holding candlelight suppers. Good Times!  If the ratings take a dive, that weasel can always come with his Plan B- Auschwitz- The Musical!