This Week In Terrifying Hybrids 1. Interview Magazine + TV Cameras + Questions cribbed from a slumber party personality quiz + 2 minutes of Oprah saying "Good job!" = The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special
Evidently, in order for a TV show to be named "The Oprah Winfrey [fill-in-the-blank]" it only needs to contain about 5 minutes of Oprah footage, which means we are only mere months away from "The Oprah Winfrey PGA Tournament Special" (in which famous golfers interview each other for an hour before the camera pans to a framed photo of Oprah and holds there for a minute), and "The Oprah Winfrey NASCAR Round-up" (in which NASCAR drivers have a round-table discussion about tires and stuff while a TV in the background is tuned in to an old episode of
Oprah).
Still, despite its glaring lack of Oprah, The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special was far more enlightening than the usual fluffy fare that clogs the airwaves in the days before the Oscars. Why? Because it wasn't TV reporters drooling all over Oscar nominees and winners, but rather Oscar nominees and winners drooling all over each other.
And those winners weren't afraid to ask the important questions like, "What's your favorite time of day?" (George Clooney likes "early morning." OMG!) and "Do you prefer to love or to be loved?" (Russell Crowe likes "to be the one doing the loving." Evidently, he's a top!) Thanks, Oprah, for making this kind of knowledge about Oscar-winning actors possible! 2. Groundhog Day + Sandra Bullock – humor = Premonition
It's probably a question for Alessandra Stanley, but what does it mean when a culture keeps churning out songs (Beyonce's "Deja Vu") and TV shows (that awful Taye Diggs show, Daybreak) and movies (Uh, Deja Vu) that are about deja vu? Are we searching for some way to know and change our future (maybe), or are we just completely out of ideas (more likely)?
And also, how many more horrible warmed-over dramatic remakes of Groundhog Day do we have to endure before the culture moves on to some other kind of supernatural phenomenon? (I'm rooting for wood nymphs.) 3. Jeff Foxworthy + Fox + the need to compete with Deal Or No Deal = Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?
What do you get when a network wants to create the dumbest game show on TV but can't afford those shiny, shiny numbered suitcases? A trivia show with questions culled from 5th grade text books hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. (Sample questions, and more information than you would ever want about any game show
here.)
Still, Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? has to be one of the most provocative questions ever asked. It's right up there with, "You stupid?" and "What happened to your thinking muscle?"