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Last updated 15 January 2000


Going from Mindless to Pointless

David Bianculli, New York Daily News TV Critic

Monday, December 06, 1999

Going From Mindless To Pointless
'Springer,' WWF can soften their acts, but to what end?

By DAVID BIANCULLI Daily News TV Critic

The syndicated "Jerry Springer Show" has cleaned up its act a bit, and has the lower ratings to prove it. Now UPN's "WWF Smackdown" claims it is softening its act a little for network TV, though Thursday's show offered scant evidence of the allegedly softer approach.

The bottom line, though, is this:

On TV, there's only one thing worse than undiluted garbage.

Diluted garbage.

The way any of these popculture flash points rise to prominence is to stand out from the pack by going down the road not taken (i.e., the low road). Yet as soon as people get used to the novelty, or the hot ticket of the moment begins to placate detractors to reach an even larger audience, the game is not far from over.

Read silently as I say it aloud: "The Morton Downey Jr. Show." There was a time, a decade ago, when Downey's talk show was all the rage. Matter of fact, it was all rage, period. Guests came on to attack other guests verbally, or to defend their positions while Downey berated them sneeringly and the studio audience booed and carried on like torch-carrying extras storming the castle in some cheap horror movie.

The only thing the guests didn't do was attack each other physically. Hence, the inevitable rise, in the last years of the 20th century, of "Jerry Springer" and "Smackdown."

When Springer's talk show was well-mannered, it was nothing. When violence and the ratings erupted hand in hand, the show became really hot — so hot it began to attract too much other heat, so the program's distributors vowed, several times, to tone it down.

It's now toned down, and so are the ratings. The topics are drawn from the same murky and shallow emotional tide pool — "I Have a Secret ... I'm a Call Girl" was the title of one recent installment — and there are as many bleeped obscenities as usual.

Now, though, the guests don't slap and punch and kick and tackle one another. That's the only change. With that ingredient missing, though, "The Jerry Springer Show" loses a ring or two from its freak-show circus. Its time has passed, and Springer's audience, like Downey's, is in search of bigger confrontational thrills.

Hence we have "WWF Smackdown," part of the laughably lucrative soap-opera miniseries posing as a series of professional wrestling events. To follow the sagas of their favorite WWF personalities, fans are encouraged to watch not only "Smackdown" Thursdays on UPN, but the WWF's other shows — carrying on the same stories and confrontations — Sundays and Mondays on USA.

Then they're encouraged to drop big bucks on monthly pay-per-view specials, which — because of their delivery system — become more in demand as they establish themselves as even more raw and violent than their cable and UPN counterparts.

For the WWF to pledge to soften its Thursday show, then, is nothing but another savvy business move. People without cable, or the money or inclination to purchase the pay-per-view specials, will continue to support "Smackdown" in the short run. Meanwhile, USA's installments can get away with a little more, while the get-what-you-pay-for shows raise the bar by lowering standards to subterranean depths.

It should be noted, though, that if Thursday's "Smackdown" is supposed to be a diluted version, someone in charge must be confusing "diluted" with "deluded."

The program, as broadcast, carried a rating of TV-14 — same as previous installments. Also similar were those charming signs held up by audience members at the Anaheim stadium — sporting catchy little slogans such as "DX Sucks!"

There's also The Rock, the most charismatic of the current WWF performers since Stone Cold Steve Austin stepped painfully aside to deal with the accumulated injuries from 10 years in the "sports entertaiment business." Rock seemed loath to talk, much less wrestle, under any kinder or gentler guidelines.

"You want to jump The Rock from behind like a true candy ass?" he asked fellow wrestler Al Snow.

Then there was the spectacle of Stephanie McMahon, the daughter of WWF grand panjandrum Vince McMahon, whose wedding to a wrestler named Test was called off last week — as part of USA's "Raw" — when another wrestler, Triple H, unveiled a video tape showing him and Stephanie getting married at a drive-through Nevada chapel.

"I know I was drugged," Stephanie told the crowd, with a level of emotion that made her the worst actor in the entire show. Or would have, if father Vince and brother Shane had not come out and topped her with even more awesome displays of lack of thespian talent.

"I was just as shocked as anyone last Monday night on 'Raw,'" Stephanie said, not quite shaken up enough to forget to deliver a prominently placed cross-network WWF plug, "when Triple H aired the video of us getting married. I felt disgusted ... "

You and me both, lady.


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