2005-03-08 - 12:01 p.m.
Kirstie Alley SHUT UP!!!!!
I realize I am fairly free about my exclamation points but those seriously deserve to be there. I decided to watch Fat Actress last night. It was a big fat disaster. As a fat person myself, I was very interested in a show whose central premise is that Kirstie Alley is fat. Unofrtunately, this show makes Shallow Hal look like a Naomi Wolf treatise on body image. It was billed as a reality show so I was hoping for some Jessica Simpson stupidity and bad behavior.
What I got was so much worse. First of all, this show is modeled on Curb Your Enthusiasm - a show about a not likeable real person doing not likeable things. I find that show boring. I find this show a travesty. If this was reality, there'd be some enjoyment in watching Ms. Alley act like a train wreck and thanking god it wasn't me on tv. But this shit is SCRIPTED. So I was severely not entertained by the opening sequence of a pathetic slovenly Kristie doing her rendition of a pathetic slovenly Rebecca Howe/Veronica.
And it screams, ha ha ha I'm a television show. The writing is completely fakey and the acting is Passions horrible. Jeff Zucker is having a horrible time playing himself. It sounds like he's reading the Yellow Pages.
Of course the show is trying hard to be politically incorrect and make fun of society's view towards fat people. And it fails compeltely. It suffers from the Shallow Hal effect of putting in every stupid fat joke ever known to man with a wink that says they really don't buy into it. Of course the problem with that is that you aren't making much fun of the people you are making fun of fat people. Jeff Zucker isn't presented in a crazy, over-the-top light. Neither is John Travolta. Mark Curry looks fairly normal as a tv exec with a crush on Kirstie's curves. Yet Kirstie is on the floor being fed a whole steak by said Mr. Curry. And the whole point of the joke is that it's hilarious that black men would be attracted to fat white ladies. Kirstie Alley is seriously the butt of her own joke.
And the thing is, the joke is not funny.
