Mr. TV: Ugly Situation

I’ve hit rock bottom. Yes, I’m still Mr. TV. No, my wife has not kicked me out. And the recently concluded Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour was, overall, extremely beneficial for me. But I knew there was nowhere to go but up when I was asked by a burly bodyguard at the Press Tour not to get in the hotel elevator with one of the cast members from MTV’s Jersey Shore. Yo, are you friggin kidding me? Since I’m never one to let something go, I decided to devote this week’s column to the definition of what the word celebrity actually means.If anyone from Jersey Shore happens to read this column—I might be going out on a limb here assuming they can actually decipher the English language—maybe they’ll think twice about behaving like such dicks. Sorry if I seem a bit agitated, but if I can converse at the Press Tour with a two-time Academy Award winner like Tom Hanks, Mike “Mannix” Connors or Carrie Fisher, I don’t think a bevy of bodyguards should be keeping the Jersey Shore lowlifes away from the people who are giving their show ink. It ain’t gonna last forever, Snook and Co., so you may wanna tell your bodyguards to back the you-know-what off .Dateline: Aug. 5. Beverly Hills, California. The Beverly Hilton Hotel. As I was putting the finishing touches on The Programming Insider, my 16-year-old son frantically crashed into the room. “They are here, they are here,” he managed to screech while gasping for air. “The cast of Jersey Shore are in the lobby.”From the way he was acting, you would have thought it was the mid-1960s and the Beatles were setting up to play an impromptu concert.Being the dutiful father that I am, we headed to the lobby and, yup, there they were…Pauly D, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola, Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, their bodyguards and a coterie of clownish hangers-on in tow. Unlike the cast of ABC hit Modern Family, legendary performers like Linda Evans and Martin Landau, or the wide array of current TV stars who could not have been more gracious at TCA, these aspiring reality fame freaks completely ignored my son and the other teenagers gathered in the background. Not even the slightest eye contact. Disgusted, I headed to the elevator for that now surreal moment.The next day, the whole crew made an appearance at an MTV session where The Situation tried to explain the appeal of Jersey Shore. “We all have personalities, and we all bring something special to the table,” he said. “MTV happened to just find this special group and we all shined.” Note to MTV: You may want to explain to The Situation and Snook that fame is very fleeting, particularly if your greatest skill is getting wasted and generally portraying yourself as a shallow moron. After years of squawking about the time Jerry Seinfeld dissed me (long story), this is countless times worse. Seinfeld may be a jerk, but at least he’s not an F-bomb dropping no talent. MTV needs to protect their Jersey Shore franchise by teaching these boneheads how to act in public. Maybe they should create a character called “The Solution” who can tell the bodyguards to back off when the cast shows up at a gathering of the press whose coverage is the very life blood of your unfathomable fame.As much as I do favor certain reality series, the definition of celebrity has become completely blurred. Unless your name is Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson or the many other successful contestants on American Idol who actually have talent, participating in a reality series doesn’t automatically make you a celebrity. Given the limited talents of this group, I think their 15 minutes will quickly come and go. But speaking as someone who lives on Long Island, it’s nice to see buffoonish stereotypes shift to another state. We put in our time with Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher. Rememba them?

Convergent TV

Mr. TV: Ugly Situation

Marc Berman

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Marc Berman