By Thomas Chambers

Years ago, perhaps before reality shows even existed, Homer Simpson was accused of sexually harassing the babysitter after he couldn’t resist peeling the gummi Venus de Milo off her rear end. He went on the Rock Bottom show to explain, apologize and defend himself, doing a rather good job. But when the show aired, it was so heavily edited and cut, Homer looked like a guilty personification of evil. The clock on the wall in the background jumps to all different times to show how hacked the editing was. Funny. Or was it?
And so it is with Jockeys, the “reality” show that mercifully came to its season end last week. The show has jumped the shark like Willy the Whale over Navy Pier.

Read More

Posted on March 20, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

It’s been said that all of television is a soap opera. You might even be able to say that for sitcoms, as in “What are our wacky friends up to now?”
Jockeys has gotten awfully sudsy. And your silks will stay Downy fresh as it’s been announced that the show has been renewed for a second season. This is good for racing with its potential to draw new fans to the game, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see what new angles they can come up with because I don’t see any. Does that mean reality (shows) escapes me?
This week’s two half-hour episodes went directly to “As the World Turns, Can It Get 10 Furlongs?” It’s the brink of a breakup as Hall of Famer Mike Smith and his girl Chantal Sutherland confront the many issues of their relationship.

Read More

Posted on March 13, 2009

By Scott Buckner

For anyone either too poor or too Fuck-The-Man because there’s something fundamentally wrong with Comcast charging the gross domestic product of Peru for basic cable, an advantage to the analog TV conversion is the dozen or so additional digital channels you get absolutely free. This is a welcome development for anyone with a lot of useless UHF channels because you don’t speak Spanish or Korean.
Among the digital spawn is NBC’s Universal Sports on channel 5.3, which is pretty much the free-TV equivalent of ESPN2. This is fine by me, because ESPN’s mother channel doesn’t air neat stuff like World’s Strongest Man competitions from Iceland. This week, Universal Sports was busy covering a whole slew of World Cup events like bobsledding, luge, and skiing from Bulgaria and Slovenia. Defend Summer Olympic events like javelin throwing and pole vaulting all you want, but they don’t hold a candle to a ski jumper floating breathtakingly-perfect through the air only to land with the style and grace of someone getting pushed off the end of a pier during a Red Bull Flugtag.

Read More

Posted on March 2, 2009