"[Trump] would fire the absolute wrong person.... [He] had no idea what was going on, and he would just make something up."

"He just had to choose a name... And maybe that was the only name he remembered of the people sitting around.... Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron.... to make the person who he fired look not as good."

Said Jonathon Braun, who was a producer on "The Apprentice" (and on "Survivor"), quoted in "The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump’/The inside story of how the producers of 'The Apprentice' crafted a TV version of Mr. Trump — measured, thoughtful and endlessly wealthy — that ultimately fueled his path to the White House" (NYT).

The article is adapted from the book "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success," by NYT reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

Isn't selective editing like that the norm in these competitive reality shows? I remember reading Television Without Pity contemporaneously with those old "Survivor" and "Apprentice" episodes, because sophisticated fans enjoyed watching the show and analyzing the edit. The ultimate winner would get a "hero's edit," and the loser's mistakes would be highlighted. The show had to make sense, but still keep you guessing. That was the method, already developed on "Survivor," but here's Braun trying to impose an interpretation of Trump by selectively presenting his observations — editing! As if Trump was a special sort of bungler, and the editors were covering for him. Trump did the show brilliantly. By the way, what about Jeff Probst? Does he watch the rough footage before he conducts the "tribal council" on "Survivor," or are the editors making him look more savvy than he is? And how would you badmouth Probst if he were running for President?

Why should we trust the purchaser of TikTok to keep it going? Remember when NBC bought and then killed Television Without Pity?

Here's the Wikipedia page for Television Without Pity, in case you don't remember that wonderful website.

Here's my post from 2014:

"'From a friend (who is very shy, so I can't attribute): "Pretty sure Brett about to enter the lexicon as the male equivalent of Karen,"' [Brett] Alder tweeted."

"He then started to try to get the term trending by saying a coffee shop Jo's Coffee was being a Brett after an image surfaced of the store with writing on its wall reading: 'I love you so much *except for Brett Alder.' 'Don't know why @JosCoffee is being such a Brett about all this...' he wrote." 

From "'Douche' father-of-seven sales exec who moved his family from California to Texas then BACK again is blasted for complaining about Austin's 'rude locals, bland culture, oppressive heat and Yelp's bad food choices' in scathing Op-Ed/Brett Alder, a director at Hamamatsu, moved his family from San Diego, California, to Austin, Texas, in 2015/He wrote an op-ed about the '10 reasons that Austin is not the "California of Texas"'" (Daily Mail).

My main problem with Austin is not even on the list: The traffic and the drivers. I wrote about it back in 2014:

My most harrowing driving experience was yesterday, just trying to get downtown in Austin. The highways there are evil, and there are local fuckers doubling down on the evil, making it a nightmare. I will never drive in Austin again. Whatever good there is in Austin is severely diluted by the hell of its roads.

Ha ha. How often have I called people "fuckers" in print? 

I think there's only one other example, NBCUniversal killed Television Without Pity: "You bought it, it was what it was, so perfectly what it was that you couldn't change it, so you killed it, you fuckers." 

I did also imagine Bill Clinton's thoughts, when he appeared at the 2008 Democratic Convention: "Bill Clinton is doing a fabulous job tonight. His superiority to everyone else who has spoken is painfully obvious. 'America will always be a place called hope.' Brilliant. He's the greatest! And, now what is going through his mind? And that's how it's done you losers. Screw you for rejecting Hillary. Enjoy your doom, fuckers."

Anyway, I felt awfully aggressed upon in Austin in 2014. And, by the way, I am still outraged by the killing of Television Without Pity. 

"Soooo... I assumed they were all killed and the blackout was just to spare us from seeing it."

"But over on Television Without Pity, everyone's all confused, saying what happened, curse you David Chase, and I thought my cable went out."

I wrote on June 7, 2007, and today I'm seeing what I thought was confirmation that I was right: "Sopranos writer David Chase originally had a 'death scene' in mind for the show's finale" (Daily Mail):

Chase [said] 'Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end. I remember talking with [writer/ executive producer] Mitch Burgess about it. But it wasn’t - it was slightly different.... 'Tony was going to get called to a meeting with Johnny Sack in Manhattan, and he was going to go back through the Lincoln Tunnel for this meeting. It was going to go black there and you never saw him again as he was heading back, the theory being that something bad happens to him at the meeting. But we didn’t do that.'

After what the journalists described as a 'long pause,' Chase responded, 'F*** you guys.'

According to Uproxx, Chase told [the journalists] he 'didn’t want to do a straight death scene,' and that the idea behind the scene [in the end at the restaurant] was that 'he could have been whacked.' Chase remained coy when [they] asked him directly if viewers would have been mistaken to believe Tony would have been killed in the scene, saying, 'I’m not going to answer that question.'

Ah, well. We'll never know. I miss "The Sopranos." I miss Television Without Pity.

"I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people."

"It’s a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn’t require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can’t see me. And, and, they’re there for me, and I can, I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive. The problem is it’s also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I’ve gotta do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I gotta pay attention to him. You know: I watch him, he watches me. The stress level goes up. But there’s also, there’s something nourishing about it, because I think like as creatures, we’ve all got to figure out how to be together in the same room. And so TV is like candy in that it’s more pleasurable and easier than the real food. But it also doesn’t have any of the nourishment of real food. And the thing, what the book is supposed to be about is, What has happened to us, that I’m now willing—and I do this too—that I’m willing to derive enormous amounts of my sense of community and awareness of other people, from television? But I’m not willing to undergo the stress and awkwardness and potential shit of dealing with real people."

David Foster Wallace, quoted in "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace," by David Lipsky.

I'm reading this book after watching the movie based on this book, "The End of the Tour" (which is free on Amazon Prime). The movie is good for those who (like me) enjoy watching 2 people have a long conversation.

ADDED: "I mean, I can see them, they can’t see me." But just the other day, on one of his Periscopes, Scott Adams deadpanned the joke that the app had been upgraded to enable him to see his viewers. And remember how "Romper Room" regularly assured children that it was able to see them through the TV:



And of course the TVs in "1984" were spying on everyone everywhere, and who doesn't worry that our computer/phone screens are 2-way?

DFW was expressing sadness about the 1-way quality of television. But that was in the context of also feeling sad about using TV as a substitute for in-person human interaction. He confessed to an "addiction" to television and — in the book — says "I’ll watch five or six, I’ll zone out in front of the TV for five or six hours."

Did Google screw Metafilter?

Google must fend off websites that game its ranking system, but did Metafilter get caught in the crossfire? Sad! I don't think there's anything on line that I've been as devoted to for as long as Metafilter. At least it seems that it will continue to limp along, unlike Television Without Pity, my other longtime favorite, which has died.

Shame on NBCUniversal! It's shutting down Television Without Pity and even making all its old content unavailable to the public.

Incredible! I've been reading Television Without Pity since... I think as long as there's been the web. Since long before I started blogging (in 2004). Before I even owned a laptop, before there was WiFi, I used to print out pages of TWoP recaps to have something with me to read when I went out walking and stopped in a café. And don't tell me that sentence makes it look like I read while walking. I did read while walking in those days before iPods and digital audiobooks. I read Television Without Pity! What was the point of watching a show like, say, "American Idol" if you weren't going to laugh at it reading Television Without Pity?

Is there any NBC show that I've watched in the last 15 years? "Seinfeld" ended 16 years ago, so maybe not. Damn them! I guess I didn't need TWoP to watch NBC because even with TWoP, it wasn't worth watching.

Why is NBC destroying this internet treasure?

The sassy TWoP TV review and recap site — its motto is “Spare the snark, spoil the networks” — was purchased by NBCU’s Bravo cable unit in 2007. Both were founded in the Web 1.0 era.

I guess the network decided it wanted to spoil itself. It wants to be spoiled. Or it already was spoiled and not even snark could save it. Damn them!

The closing impacts 64 employees at the women-focused DailyCandy and three at TWoP....

It only took 3 employees to run TWoP?! You can't string along 3 employees? (As for DailyCandy, sorry, I don't follow it, despite being a woman, or perhaps because I am the kind of woman who doesn't want my reading woman-focused).

The reason for the closing down was pretty basic: Despite creating laudable sites, there was still not enough traffic and, therefore, a difficulty monetizing the properties, especially in the wake of increased competition since the pair were first founded.

You bought it, it was what it was, so perfectly what it was that you couldn't change it, so you killed it, you fuckers. Great value had been created, you cast your greedy eyes upon it, you thought you could leverage that value, and all you did was destroy it.

Why did NBC buy it, to ruin it? Is it like the Koch Brothers buying the NYT, keeping it going for 7 years, then liquidating the whole operation? Except NBC — and Universal, it's apparently one atrocious entity — is a media operation, reaching out to us, wanting our eyes, ears, and minds. NBCUniversal needs our love or at least our tolerance. I absolutely hate them for this.

Here's how the message is delivered over at Television Without Pity:



Here's the discussion at Throwing Things, where I learned the news. The general opinion seems to be that NBC is only closing what it had already ruined, and "classic Television Without Pity" was already dead. Typical comment:

I can't remember the last time I visited Zombie TWoP. But the quality of the writing and the crazy depth and detail of each recap on OG TWoP was phenometastic.

I'd love to get a scraped archive of the recaps (without having to click through each link.)

And:

Once they had a Project Runway recapper who didn't know what a bias cut was, I was gone, but man, I used to spend days deep in the forums debating Veronica Mars, and it was great for catching up on missed shows or shows you started late or when you wanted to read a dissertation on a "Battlestar Galactica" episode. So, yes, not surprised, but sad.

"It was the first time I've had to hide a New Yorker post from my Facebook feed. Blech."

Says a commenter at Television Without Pity, responding to another commenter who said:

Wow, I don't think I can watch any more of this.

This, being the HBO series "Girls."

I hate the nudity and everything else. And, yes, I am shallow and I don't enjoy [Lena] Dunham's very odd body and the unnecessary reveals. And I HATE those freaking tattoos. That's part of the problem when she dresses up for something like the Globes. The dress was hideous on her and those tats were gross as always. The nudity for no reason? Like when they stopped to hike?...  Hannah lies down on the ground and we -- lucky lucky us -- can see up her skirt. Why? It's distracting and unattractive and took me out of the weird scene because I was trying to figure out if she had underwear on or not. And why her ass was hanging out at all.

Here's the New Yorker item with the photograph of Hannah in the is-she-wearing-underpants position that needed to be hidden in the TWoP commenter's Facebook feed. The New Yorker writer, Sasha Weiss, describing the relevant scene in episode 2 of the new season, says:

"No Randy... Keith Urban, Sole Survivor... The Return of Jennifer Lopez... Less Awful Contestants... The Elevator of Doom... Not Just A Cappella Anymore... It's All in the Edit... Harry Connick, Jr., Comedian..."

Television Without Pity says "American Idol" might be worth watching again this season.

I can boil that list down to one reason why I will watch: Harry! I love that guy.

"After a string of five similar winners, ['American Idol'] understandably would prefer a different kind of winner."

"Whether by accident or design, this goal has been guaranteed by a total absence of straight, white males with sex appeal in the top 10."

"That is actual misanthropy disguised as entertainment, appealing to the grossest things inside you, and I hate it."

Jacob of Television Without Pity explains why he "fucking hate[s] zombie things" — a propos of last night's Ford commercial on "American Idol," with Scotty, et al., made up as zombies:

... I hate zombie apocalypses, because they imply that other people are an obstruction to you getting through your day and would be better off getting shot through the head. The sweet release of just opening fire on a crowd of people because they're not as special and alive as you are: That is disgusting. That is actual misanthropy disguised as entertainment, appealing to the grossest things inside you, and I hate it.... 

[T]hink about the people you know that love zombies the most. Not the girls who pretend to like zombies and video games so boys will think they've found a unicorn, because those girls are worthless anyway; not the AMC dads or Twilight moms who are trying to be down with the kids these days. They have no effect on culture whatsoever.

I'm talking about your nerdy grumpy jerkoff friend who likes porn and zombies and dark shock-humor and hates women because he's scared of them and loves Tyrion Lannister more than anything and thinks his sarcasm is a defense or that being a cynic opts you out: That asshole. That's who you're being when you play along with the zombie bullshit. Don't do it. It's bad for the part of you that is still alive.

Hmmm... Jason seems to think he's more alive than those people he hates because they think they are more alive?

That reminds me of this part of "My Dinner With Andre":

ANDRE: [W]e're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance! We're walking around like zombies! I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things, we're just going around all day like unconscious machines, I mean, while there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us!

So is the current fascination with zombies because, in some ways, we feel like zombies — we identify or we want to scare ourselves into coming back to life? Or is it that we perceive others as the zombies, and there is something pretty sick about our misanthropy?

"It pains us that you have this fab figure and put it in the most hideous things."

"The color is not good on her and instead of curvy she just looks lumpy."

Television Without Pity reviews the year's Best & Worst Awards Show Fashions, and you might not look at these pictures the same way they do.

Did you watch "Sarah Palin's Alaska"?

I watched for about 20 minutes. I might have been interested in a reality show — more like "The Osbournes" — where we see some semblance of everyday life in this unusual family, but — as the title warns us — it's more of a travelogue — with Sarah Palin talking almost constantly. They went fishing and saw some bears. Sarah said "wow" and "oh my gosh" a lot. They fished, Todd caught fish, and Sarah complained that Todd caught all the fish. Why shouldn't Todd catch the fish?

Here's the Television Without Pity forum for discussing the show. I love the stern moderator's rules:

What’s on topic in this thread?

• Things you saw on the show.

What’s not on topic here?

• Politics
• Bristol's appearance on DWTS
• Politics
• Your personal judgements about Palin's fame/family/career
• Politics
• Posting to tell us that you're not going to watch.
• Politics.

In other words, this isn’t a thread to snark on Palin at will. Please take extra care to follow the rules of the board and the special rules for this thread. If you don’t pay attention to the rules, and treat this as a general thread given to you to bash or praise Palin or your fellow posters, you will be warned. Thanks.

Good rules!

"And when in doubt, go with the particularly American feelings about gender that would rather see Martha Stewart go down than Lee Iacocca..."

"... that would choose almost anybody, for any public office, over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sarah Palin's entire narrative is based on the audacity, the sheer gall. Accusations of female arrogance have been big over the last year, taking up about half of the political discourse and even more of the conversation about entertainment...."

I said Lady Gaga looked like she'd been swimming in seaweed, got caught in a net, and then, without removing the net, took up beekeeping.

But let's hear how Television Without Pity's Jacob describes her woeful "American Idol" performace:

A giant angel statue under blue lights, a naked gay man having spazzers on the floor, and Gaga at the piano covered in spray-painted black branches, herself in a black chiffon version of the costumes they had to wear in The Handmaid's Tale....

Link added.

She's still got a fishnet thing over her face, because she's weird about her face. Because it's weird.... The song is very slow and not my favorite of the catalog...

Yes, it was slow. Leaden. Odd when a [big star's] mediocre performance takes place on the "American Idol" stage. Even though the judges won't judge it, you construct judgely comments in your head. Man, if she were a contestant, they'd flay her. They'd peel off that seaweed and netting and flay her.

Lady Gaga stalks over to a giant Halloween Tree/Meat God, and plays the piano hardcore and things get kind of Shakira for a second, musically, but now she's singing about somebody named "Roberto." Maybe this song is actually written from the perspective of somebody named Roberto and she's even more about appropriating gay men's sex lives than usual, taking it global. Or maybe those are the names of two of her dancers and she's just making this song up as she goes along. Or maybe this is a tribute to Cinco de Mayo, because she keeps talking about Mexico....

I thought it might be some sort of commentary on the immigration crisis. What I heard was: hostile words for a series of men with Hispanic names — get away from me Hispanic men. I imagined that she might be on the anti-immigrant side of the debate — or trying to tap into that side of The American Brain.

But we can read the actual lyrics here:

You know that I love you boy.
Hot like Mexico, rejoice.
At this point I gotta choose,
nothing to loose.

Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Alejandro.
I'm not your babe.
I'm not your babe, Fernando.

Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch.
Just smoke one cigarette and hush.
Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Roberto....

Don't bother me.
Don't bother me. Alejandro
Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Fernando.

My theory is not so far-fetched now, is it? She even cites Mexico as their country of origin.Yes, I realize there's love relationship talk in there, but I'm talking subtext. (Remember interpreting "American Woman" by the Guess Who?)

Jacob has nothing to say about the immigration subtext. He's all about her questionable relationship to homosexuality:

Lady Gaga creates culture, but more importantly if you have a subculture of any kind, Lady G would like to be a part of it, because she's an upper-class prep school New Yorker and thus has been exposed to subcultures her entire life that do not admit her. So when that happens -- when you are too interesting for your world -- you have to do things like this, which are awesome, but also things that are not so awesome, like glomming onto gay culture so hard you actually have to pretend that your bisexuality is more than hypothetical. 

Glomming!

IN THE COMMENTS: Daniel wrote:

I got into Lady Gaga because of American Idol. Her first performance last year. Playing that bubble piano then rocking out, with that S&M zippered leather eye cover. Whew! Hot.

Now, symmetrically, I'm souring on Gaga because of American Idol. Yesterday was a snort fest. Her cheap costume. The dude skirt shorts -- a weird mix of rib-high waists (because you're not a woman, you're a mom!), bike shorts and mini skirts. The gallons of sweat pouring off the dancers shaved chests. The fake tree. The flame spitting angel -- because that's what angels do, they shoot flames out of their heads. Gaga's apparent boredom (the only part of the performance that was dead on for me). TERRIBLE. Between that and her crappy telephone song, I really don't care how many women she makes out with -- she's sucking hard right now.

"American Idol." The Final 3 is tonight. The finale, next week. And here I am in Ohio with no TV.

Gah! I've watched the whole season! Now what? Read Television Without Pity recaps?

""My wife’s dead' 'Oh yeah well my eyeballs are dead.'"

The "American Idol" "tragedy off"... and other things.

I can barely force myself to watch AI anymore, but reading descriptions of the show is great fun. Yes, I know, maybe you had fun reading my descriptions of the show in year's past, but the problem there is that I have to watch it, and my current watching involves the kind of fast-forwarding that compresses a 2-hour show — why the hell is the show 2 hours?! — into about 15 minutes. I'll hear 2 seconds of a singer and know it's too horrible to watch. Even the good ones are annoying me now.

The link above goes to Trooper York. I also like Jacob at Television Without Pity. When I was trying to actually watch the show, I thought Jacob's recaps were ridiculously long and meandering. Well, the solution to that is not for Jacob to rein in his effusions and digressions. It's quite simply for me to stop watching the show and read Jacob (who absurdly gives every episode an A+):

First up we're going to group sing -- mostly seated, because of the Scott [blind guy] factor -- a Katy Perry song, "Hot & Cold," which is the third Katy Perry single that has to do with boys and girls and boys who like girls who do boys like they're girls and reinforcing gender stereotypes while congratulating itself on not doing that. Let's talk about Katy Perry for a second. I actually heard this cover of "Electric Feel" that she did, and it was totally lovely. She has a wonderful voice under all that bullshit, which makes me hate her more and not less. It's not even the horrific Diablo Cody/Betty Page cute/burlesque crap, although they do contribute to the overall '90s-ness of her, which is admittedly yucky.

The problem is that, just like this show is not so much about selling your soul as speculating against the real estate market of the place your soul would normally be located, Katy Perry took a pretty face and a fantastic voice and leveraged them against this stupid-ass dead-end offensive gender stuff: "You change your mind like a girl changes clothes" tells you everything you need to know about Katyworld, where men have minds and girls have clothes, and girls only kiss girls to impress guys because they are drunk. It's not even a one-trick pony, it's just a trick, and a cautionary tale for these kids, who have not even begun to sell out yet. Katy Perry is to sexuality what Gwen Stefani is to racial equality.

"Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event."

Jacob at Television Without Pity gives last night's episode "The Apprentice" an A+. It was rather good. (Spoiler alert.) Is Markus out of his mind? Who talks like that? Who thinks he's got something to say, even thinks he's articulate, and then meaninglessly jumps from one empty phrase to the next? It was so satisfying to see him so severely shredited. And the cab ride where he kept trying to explain himself until, it seemed, he too had gotten tired of hearing himself speak -- hilarious!

Jacob:

You'd think that Markus getting fired would be the best part. It isn't. The best part is in the Boardroom leading up to Markus's firing, where Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event and goes completely apeshit. And I mean to say that you have never seen this kind of behavior in your life. He first abruptly asks Clay if he's gay, acts stunned that Clay is gay, ascertains that Clay is therefore not attracted to women, clarifies that this Venn diagram excludes even women such as Alla, and then explains to us that this is why restaurants have menus: while Trump likes steak, other people like spaghetti.

Later, without even stopping to breathe almost, he: asks Adam straight up if he's a virgin (he is, but won't admit it), counsels him not to be afraid of sex because it is "not a big deal," posits that Adam will ten years from now be more "comfortable with sex," shares that sex has gotten him into "a lot of trouble" and cost him "a lot of money," discusses at length whether Adam is "soft" or "hard," and wraps up by telling Adam that there's "nothing like" sex, and that he should look forward to having it one day, in the creepiest, ickiest, most pervuncular way imaginable.

Ha, ha. I love the way the TWoP recaps bring all the memories of the show flooding back -- and even funnier. Ah, yes, Trump was exceedingly Trumpy last night. He should talk about sex more often!

The new TV season — do you care?

Throwing Things lists some things they care about. Here you can see which new shows Television Without Pity is going to recap.

And, hey, the recap from the final "Six Feet Under" is up already. The recapper, M. Giant, reveals on the last page that he's moving on to recap that big new HBO series, "Rome," which starts tonight. Are you going to watch? Can we transfer our "SFU" habit onto "Rome"? Are we going to try?

MORE: I cared deeply about the new TV season when I was a teenager — and so did all my friends. We eagerly awaited the TV Guide issue that described all the new shows and talked a lot about which ones we thought we're going to be good. We made a point of trying nearly every one. That was back in the days when shows like "Bewitched" and "That Girl" were coming out. We were so into TV. Half of us started affecting the vocal mannerisms of Elizabeth Montgomery and Marlo Thomas!

UPDATE: I watched "Rome" for about 20 minutes. It was the sort of roiling, writhing ancientness I expected. I found I just didn't care.

The deep chasm of extreme nothing. The Apprentice revealed its essential emptiness tonight, as Gordon's simulblogging documents. I don't really want to throw good time after bad by talking about it, but basically, the whole thing is bogus. First, I can't believe that when Bill and Kwame got to pick teams that Omarosa wasn't the last one picked. She wasn't even close to last. And Kwame got stuck with both Omarosa and her nemesis Heidi? How did that happen? I can't believe that was just Kwame picking. Then what was the competition? Interviewing?? Some damn golf course thing that seemed to only have to do with moving a lot of boxes (incomprehensible!) and then making sure Jessica Simpson got from the airport to the hotel (a flunky's job!)? And we're left with a "To be continued" cliffhanger about the "missing rock star"??? Cut back and forth to worried faces while playing the chiming music of doom all you want but that is just nothing! Nothing!!

So next week is the finale. The two hour finale. Let me make a public vow: I will not watch it!

UPDATE: Wow, Miss Alli at Television Without Pity totally disagrees with me. She gives the episode an A+ (seemingly largely because she agrees with Trump's choices--why should I care!?). I've never disagreed with TWoP more.