After watching the evil Yankees spank the Red Sox for a few innings, I flipped channels to see what else was on. I landed on CNBC to see the end of Dennis Miller’s show, which is not completely wretched, he does get some interesting guests and commentary. Afterwards came on the McEnroe show, which I had seen once before.
Is this awful or what? The script is lamer than public-access TV standards, the humor would be overrated if I called it sophmoric, the guests are lame, and McEnroe is boring. I googled “McEnroe shoe ratings” just for fun, and found out that recently his show has received ratings of 0.0! The show has had viewership of under 100,000 people regularly. Take out those who left the TV on after Miller and were eating dinner and those that fell asleep on the couch and barely 10,000 people are watching his show.
I haven’t seen it so I don’t know if it’s the worst…but it would have to be really, really bad to be worse than Chevy Chase’s show. I think they could have brought someone in off the street to do that show and they would have been less self-conscious, intimidated and in-over-their-head than Chase was. I couldn’t believe someone someone so used to performing on television could be so awful. It was painfully obvious he needed joke writers and/or a script to go from.
I was going to mention Chevy Chase. I loved watching his show, because it was soooooo bad. His set had a big fish tank in the background, which I’m sure someone thought was clever idea. But I doubt they expected that watching the fish would be more interesting than watching Chevy.
It was like watching a train wreck every night. I was actually disappointed when they cancelled it. So maybe I should check out McInroe.
(Although now that I think about it, part of the reason Chevy’s show was so horrible was that we had high expectations. We knew he could be funny, and he just kept refusing to do it.)
McEnroe is AWFUL. I’ve seen it a few times because I watch Dennis Miller fairly regularly and sometimes forget to change the channel. Usually I’ve managed to dive for the flipper within 30 seconds of that execrable show starting.
It had a really funny start though, in an unintentional way. Dennis Miller introduced him the first night, and McEnroe’s ‘sidekick’ says, “Dennis, thanks very much. You’re a great warm-up act for us.”
To which Miller replies, “Yeah? Well SCREW YOU, sidekick.”
Miller’s ratings are slowly improving - he’s getting a couple of hundred thousand a night now, which is good for CNBC. I heard that last week McEnroe’s show recorded the lowest ratings for any show on a major cable network, ever. Less than 8,000 viewers. That’s pathetic. My blog has a bigger audience.
McEnroe is truly deadful. But Sam, surely you’ve seen Mike Bullard?
Americans haven’t seen it, I don’t think, but Bullard is a Toronto insult comic who a few years ago convinced someone he could host a late nite talk show. Jesus God in a sno cone, it was bad. The guy would go entire shows and never tell a single funny joke. He was every bit as terrible as Chevy Chase - maybe not quite as terrified, but “made up for it” by being an asshole.
They were determined to make a Canadian talk show work so they kept that idiot on for a few incarnations of his show, never realizing that he wasn’t funny. I could find 10,000 people just in Toronto who would do a better job. I would start by just picking the first 10,000 people who auditioned, including children and senile old people and people who couldn’t speak English.
As horrible as McEnroe is, Bullard and Chase were oh, so much worse.
McEnroe’s shoe size may actually exceed his show’s ratings.
The problem with McEnroe is only when he talks. He is unable to inflect his voice. Listen to a professional news anchor. The pitch of the voice goes up and down. Words are accentuated by volume and duration. McEnroe has one of the worst monotones ever.
Oh wait, there’s also his hair. It’s a little bit better now, but for so long it was a copy of Larry of the three stooges.
Oh, and there’s his lack of poise. You think an athlete wouldn’t be so stiff, so tense, so awkward in stance… like a dead tree listing at 45 degrees, just waiting to finally fall.
Oh, and he’s not terrible bright. And an egomaniac.
Other than that, there’s no problem.
Remember ‘Friday Night.’ (or was it just ‘Friday’?) The SNL clone that was on Fridays? They’d fill their studio audience with college boys so that every time they made reference to marijuana, the audience would go crazy with hootful laughter. And then, they’d make every other joke a reference to marijuana. Boy, were they really popular. At least, it seemed that way by the reaction of the studio audience.
(Yeah, I’m gonna be flamed by those of you who remember that show fondly. But think back. Do you remember any of the jokes, skits, or characters? And do you still find them funny even though you’re not high right now?)
Peace.
I remember Fridays, but not very fondly. I never thought it was very funny at all. It was just a lame attempt at copying SNL. I do remember that it was where Michael Richards (Kramer of “Seinfeld”) first became known, and I remember Melanie Chartoff. That’s about it.
Until I see evidence strongly pointing to something else, I will always regard Charles Grodin’s show the absolute worst. I used to watch just to see if Chuck ever changed expressions or put together a meaningful sentence.
Never happened.
“Well, you see, it’s kinda like, well, if you don’t…um…understand what I’m, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, no…I don’t, um, but…”
He had one on Fox News a few years ago. But I’m sure you mean the CBS late show.
One night Rush Limbaugh was a guest host, the guest was Sydney Biddle-Barrows the Mayflower Madame. Nothing happened. Ironically, Rush became a national figure by appearing on Letterman’s CBS show a few years later. And Rush’s own TV show never quite worked.
I’m quite surprised at this. McEnroe’s a regular host/commentator for the BBC tennis coverage, and is highly rated in this country. He puts his opinion forward, certainly doesn’t speak in a monotone and interviews other Tennis players well, in front of the camera.
Perhaps if you take him out of his natural environment he flounders, like that Flounder I once caught and took from its natural environment (the Sea).
Still, unsurprisingly, I haven;t seen it, but thats what he’s like on British TV.
Chevy Chase’s show was god-awful, and I’d say that it was the worst I’ve ever seen, except for . . .
The Jerry Lewis late night talk show that aired in syndication for five episodes in 1984. Because it wasn’t on a network, not many people saw it, but it was jaw-droppingly bad, even with top-shelf guests like Frank Sinatra. Lewis was nearly incoherent much of the time. I remember one of his comments to Sinatra to this day: “Your talent goes beyond the universe and back again”.
I’ll take the bait. I’ll grant that Fridays was uneven, but it was occasionally brilliant. I remember many of the sketches fondly even a quarter century later (the monks, Bruce Mahler’s Mexican DJ, Michael Richards’ plastic army men boy, Mark Blankfield’s addicted pharmacist, etc.). And Melanie Chartoff (rowr!). And as Astorian mentions, the musical guests were often outstanding (there’s a full list at http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/EpisodeGuideServlet/showid-3599/Fridays/).
I recall liking Fridays, mostly for the times when they let Michael Richards do physical comedy. I remember watching his toy soldiers sketch, among others, and thinking, This guy is as brilliant a physical comedian as Chaplin or Keaton (Buster, not Michael). We saw a little more of that brilliance in UHF, but very little in Seinfeld. He was easily the most talented member of that cast, but was largely wasted there.
I watched a few minutes of McEnroe last night, and was not impressed. My main impressions were the complete lack of originality in the opening credit sequence (warmed over SNL-like mock-film city scenes with McEnroe doing pretentious things like hitting baseballs in an empty stadium and driving a fire engine) and the set (faux cityscape backdrop, how original!), and the overwhelming sense of ego of the man. His attempts at humor in the first few minutes mostly fell flat, but humor is a pretty hard thing to do, and he’s completely new at it, so I’d cut him a little slack there. But he just didn’t come across as very likeable. I didn’t hang around to see him interview the loser guests from The Apprentice.
Saw it the night it premiered. His guests were, among others, Sting. McEnroe was amazingly, wretchedly bad. His wife, Patty Smythe (formerly with Scandal), actually asked at what point what the hell McEnroe was talking about because he kept rambling on disjointedly.
Perhaps the only interviewer that could give him a run for his money in the hall of shame is Arsenio Hall. Some nights he was funny. Most nights he was cringe worthy. He must have been the laziest man in Hollywood because I don’t think he ever even bothered to read the cheat sheets on his guests. Whenever the conversation would stall, which was often, he’d he’d put his hands together in a prayer position and say, “Ummmmmm.” and act like he was just trying to figure out how to word the next question. When in reality, he had no freaking idea what he was going to ask next because he had no idea who the person was sitting in front of him.
Saw a glimpse of McEnroe’s interview with Sir Elton John the other night and while he was not great by any stretch of the imagination, it wasn’t as wretchedly bad as that first night. And I do appreciate how he gives musicians a chance to talk. Most talk shows just have the singers come in to perform and then they leave. Perhaps his wife has some leverage in getting top acts in but so far the quality of his musical guests has been decent. That’s probably the kindest thing I can say about his show.