flipit
06-27-2007, 07:42 PM
Fourth Impressions By Noah
It’s week four of The Next Best Thing, ABC’s impersonation of a reality show. Host Michelle Merkin, the woman who answers the question, “If Paris Hilton were marginally lest detestable, would she be attractive?” (answer ... sorta), welcomes us to Las Vegas, which she describes as a city famous for impersonating other cities. I suppose that is nicer than saying it’s a city famous for mob ties, marital infidelity, and venereal disease.
This is the final round of auditions before the semi finals. Exactly what those will entail is hard to guess. Perhaps the bald guy who looks and sounds only a little like Jack Nicholson will have to beat the guy who looks and sounds only a little like George W. Bush at Hungry Hungry Hippos.
We’re joined again by our panel, Lisa Ann Walter, Elon Gold and Jeffrey Ross -- three fairly funny comedians who apparently did something bad in a previous life.
Our first auditioner is a guy named Marcel Forresteri who seems to have put a lot of work into his Jay Leno impression. And it’s actually pretty good. Just like Leno, he was probably a lot funnier in 1985. Elon likes him, but then proceeds to lecture him on how to do a Jay Leno impression by doing his own Leno impression, which is much, much worse than Marcel’s. Basically Elon is doing a B+ imitation of Dana Carvey’s B+ imitation of Jay Leno from fifteen years ago, while Marcel is actually sounding like Leno. But Elon, being a magnanimous egotist, allows him through to the next round even if he doesn’t approach his work in a 100% Elon-approved manner.
An Ozzie Osbourne impersonator follows who looks good, but sounds like a community theatre actor in an Agatha Christie play. He sings that classic Black Sabbath tune “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. This continues the trend of performers attempting to imitate singers by singing songs those singers never sang (got that?). I assume this is because ABC didn’t want to pay royalties for more than a dozen non-public domain songs, hence all the Elvises singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amazingly, the combination of a woman who died too young and a man who probably should have died fifteen years ago doesn’t make it through.
There is no more luck for a Garth Books impersonator who has friends in low places, but none at the judges’ table, an Oprah who won’t find a pass to the next round under her seat, or a guy doing something vaguely resembling a John Travolta impression. He has some complex skit planned where he tries to interest the judges in a “business proposal” ... this may be based on Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction, except that Vincent Vega didn’t really handle that side of things and mostly concentrated on shooting people. To complicate matters further, Jeffrey makes a joke that alludes to Reservoir Dogs, which, of course, Travolta wasn’t in.
A more successful wannabe is Sharon Owens’ pretty good Barbra Streisand, to whom she bears a surgery-free resemblance (“Would you get your nose made to look like this?” she asks). The judges ooh and aah over her and Jeffrey makes a Funny Girl reference, for which I hope he is raked over the coals at ever Friar’s Club roast until the end of time.
We get a peek at a Billy Idol impression even worse than that guy who played Billy Idol in The Wedding Singer (wait ... what do you mean that was the real Billy Idol?). An Austin Powers impersonator follows, who looks quite a bit like the character, but does an impression even worse than everyone you knew who was doing Austin Powers impressions from 1997-2002. Bizarrely, Elon kinda likes him, but Lisa and Jeffrey shout him down and Austin is tossed into the tank of sea bass with lasers on their heads.
This raises a question. Is it fair to mimic a character rather than a real person? Is there anyone on Earth who can’t do a pretty decent, say, Hans and Franz imitation? But if you’re just doing a silly accent invented by a comedian who specializes in silly accents, why are you eligible for this show and not for, say, a lethal injection?
A strong Frank Sinatra impression by Sebastian Anzaldo makes it through, despite Jeffrey’s a capella trumpet sounds interjected between lines of “The Best is Yet to Come.” Then a woman suggests that her Dolly Parton impression starts from the inside out ... which somehow explains why her performance is a duet of “The Gambler” sung with a Kenny Rogers hand puppet that was probably the free toy in a kiddie meal at that roast chicken franchise. An Alice Cooper impressionist looks terrified to be there, which is probably not the best way to summon up “Satanic Shock Rocker.”
A Pee Wee Herman follows. He pleasures himself, but not the judges. He demonstrates he can also do a pretty good Pacino, a passable Seinfeld, and a great Scooby and Shaggy. This leads to a montage of people dressed as one celebrity, doing impressions of other celebrities including an Elvis and a Johnny Mathis as Sammy Davis Jr., that same Elvis as Johnny Cash, and John Wayne as Katharine Hepburn. At this point, pop culture may have officially turned into one of those snakes that eats its own tail.
Elon likes the next guy’s frenetic, breathless James Brown, but Lisa and Jeffrey agree that spasms don’t actually count as performing. Somehow we’ve gone the whole episode without a Cher. When one does arrive, Jeffrey accurately says she looks like “a hooker from Battlestar Galactica.”
And, of course, since this is Vegas, we get a boatload of Elvises. The good news is the producers sprang for the rights to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Suspicious Minds” so we didn’t have to hear Elvis singing “Home on the Range” or “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” or something. The bad news is we had to hear very bad Elvis impersonators singing “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Suspicious Minds.” After half a dozen embarrassments, we get a pretty good one who makes it through. The Top King, Donnie Edwards, seems to be about 5’6” but he’s also the first good looking man in the entire competition, which leads to semi-fake flirting from Lisa and Michelle, ensuring they are actually the most embarrassing performances all night.
The producers edit around what appears to be an impression of the Blues Brothers even worse than the one Dan Aykroyd is still doing. We zip through a montage of the ghastly to get to a guy doing a very good De Niro. Elon thinks he has the look but not the voice, Lisa thinks he has the voice but not the look. They’re both wrong, but it’s a death knell for Bobby.. A Howard Cosell is allowed to go on for seven minutes, which, thank to time lapse filming, we only see fifteen seconds of.
Four Tina Turners, one of whom is a dude, singing “Proud Mary” are edited into a montage. One, Cookie Watkins (seriously), makes it through. A Bette Midler seems to have a fight with Elon over whether or not she is actually doing an impression of Bette Midler. A guy who looks kind of like Schwarzenegger does an impression worse than your little brother’s. A piano-free Liberace decides to rap, with lyrics apparently written by fourth graders. Elon dismissed a “Sammy Davis Urkel” and a man does what appears to be an Alzheimer-riddled De Niro ordering breakfast. I’m not certain if I’m still recapping a TV show at this point or if I’m describing a fever dream.
A yodeling woman does what may well be a terrific Patsy Montana impression, which the judges like, but none of them have any idea who Patsy Montana is. I’ve just read the Wikipedia entry on her and I still don’t know who she is. A man dressed as John Wayne does what might best be described as a “nonpression,” followed by a montage of bad dancing ... not that ABC is trying to pad this show out to an hour or anything.
A fragile looking young woman (?) has dressed her (?) self up as Edward Scissorhands and gives a performance with rare double pathos – the scene she is recreating and the fact that she’s recreating it are both so achingly painful that you want to ask her to take out your eyes with her scissors. Luckily, she takes rejection well. Can we get a consensus that Edward Scissorhands fanatics are, like, ten times scarier than Star Trek fanatics? By the way, why haven’t I seen a fat guy doing a bad Captain Kirk impression in this entire series? You couldn’t even throw me a nerd in cheap Spock ears?
A Jack Nicholson wearing giant sunglasses looks like him but can’t do the impression that every man in America can do. We get a Rocky Balboa who looks and sounds okay, but also decides to rap. Didn’t we learn anything from late 80s Fruity Pebbles commercials?
We flop through a bad Johnny Carson, a half-assed Rick James, and a W.C. Fields who only seemed to get the “drunk” part right. A woman does a Fran Drescher, or maybe it’s “The Nanny” ... either way it’s annoying, but not in the right way.
It clearly time to throw us a decent performance and we get two from the same woman. Stacey Whitton-Summers does a terrific Marilyn Monroe and a pretty good Shania Twain. The judges offer her the chance to go through as either, and she picks Shania, which seems like an odd choice. While her Marilyn allowed her to sing and do breathy jokes, her Shania impression seems like it only involves singing, since who the hell cares how Shania Twain talks? (I don’t really care how she sings, either, I’m mostly drawn to her leather pants)
So six people make it through ... Shania Twain, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, and Jay Leno. They join ...
From LA ... Little Richard, Tim McGraw, Robin Williams, George W. Bush, Jack Nicholson, Lucille Ball, Celine Dion, Bono, Simon Cowell, Al Pacino, and a Ralph Kramden/Ed Norton pair.
From New York ... Rodney Dangerfield, Howard Stern, Gloria Estefan, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Roseanna Barr, and Paris Hilton.
From Orlando ... George W. Bush, Dolly Parton, Elvis, and Robin Williams.
Now we get a peek at the coming weeks. Sadly, it will not involve the two Robin Williamses in a steel cage death match or Roseanne Barr attempting to eat Celine Dion. Rather, it’ll be stuff like Ralph Kramden doing Rosie O’Donnell jokes and Paris Hilton doing magic.
In other words, this show is about to turn from a collection of people doing bad celebrity impressions to a show doing a bad impression of America’s Got Talent.
Can’t wait!
It’s week four of The Next Best Thing, ABC’s impersonation of a reality show. Host Michelle Merkin, the woman who answers the question, “If Paris Hilton were marginally lest detestable, would she be attractive?” (answer ... sorta), welcomes us to Las Vegas, which she describes as a city famous for impersonating other cities. I suppose that is nicer than saying it’s a city famous for mob ties, marital infidelity, and venereal disease.
This is the final round of auditions before the semi finals. Exactly what those will entail is hard to guess. Perhaps the bald guy who looks and sounds only a little like Jack Nicholson will have to beat the guy who looks and sounds only a little like George W. Bush at Hungry Hungry Hippos.
We’re joined again by our panel, Lisa Ann Walter, Elon Gold and Jeffrey Ross -- three fairly funny comedians who apparently did something bad in a previous life.
Our first auditioner is a guy named Marcel Forresteri who seems to have put a lot of work into his Jay Leno impression. And it’s actually pretty good. Just like Leno, he was probably a lot funnier in 1985. Elon likes him, but then proceeds to lecture him on how to do a Jay Leno impression by doing his own Leno impression, which is much, much worse than Marcel’s. Basically Elon is doing a B+ imitation of Dana Carvey’s B+ imitation of Jay Leno from fifteen years ago, while Marcel is actually sounding like Leno. But Elon, being a magnanimous egotist, allows him through to the next round even if he doesn’t approach his work in a 100% Elon-approved manner.
An Ozzie Osbourne impersonator follows who looks good, but sounds like a community theatre actor in an Agatha Christie play. He sings that classic Black Sabbath tune “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. This continues the trend of performers attempting to imitate singers by singing songs those singers never sang (got that?). I assume this is because ABC didn’t want to pay royalties for more than a dozen non-public domain songs, hence all the Elvises singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amazingly, the combination of a woman who died too young and a man who probably should have died fifteen years ago doesn’t make it through.
There is no more luck for a Garth Books impersonator who has friends in low places, but none at the judges’ table, an Oprah who won’t find a pass to the next round under her seat, or a guy doing something vaguely resembling a John Travolta impression. He has some complex skit planned where he tries to interest the judges in a “business proposal” ... this may be based on Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction, except that Vincent Vega didn’t really handle that side of things and mostly concentrated on shooting people. To complicate matters further, Jeffrey makes a joke that alludes to Reservoir Dogs, which, of course, Travolta wasn’t in.
A more successful wannabe is Sharon Owens’ pretty good Barbra Streisand, to whom she bears a surgery-free resemblance (“Would you get your nose made to look like this?” she asks). The judges ooh and aah over her and Jeffrey makes a Funny Girl reference, for which I hope he is raked over the coals at ever Friar’s Club roast until the end of time.
We get a peek at a Billy Idol impression even worse than that guy who played Billy Idol in The Wedding Singer (wait ... what do you mean that was the real Billy Idol?). An Austin Powers impersonator follows, who looks quite a bit like the character, but does an impression even worse than everyone you knew who was doing Austin Powers impressions from 1997-2002. Bizarrely, Elon kinda likes him, but Lisa and Jeffrey shout him down and Austin is tossed into the tank of sea bass with lasers on their heads.
This raises a question. Is it fair to mimic a character rather than a real person? Is there anyone on Earth who can’t do a pretty decent, say, Hans and Franz imitation? But if you’re just doing a silly accent invented by a comedian who specializes in silly accents, why are you eligible for this show and not for, say, a lethal injection?
A strong Frank Sinatra impression by Sebastian Anzaldo makes it through, despite Jeffrey’s a capella trumpet sounds interjected between lines of “The Best is Yet to Come.” Then a woman suggests that her Dolly Parton impression starts from the inside out ... which somehow explains why her performance is a duet of “The Gambler” sung with a Kenny Rogers hand puppet that was probably the free toy in a kiddie meal at that roast chicken franchise. An Alice Cooper impressionist looks terrified to be there, which is probably not the best way to summon up “Satanic Shock Rocker.”
A Pee Wee Herman follows. He pleasures himself, but not the judges. He demonstrates he can also do a pretty good Pacino, a passable Seinfeld, and a great Scooby and Shaggy. This leads to a montage of people dressed as one celebrity, doing impressions of other celebrities including an Elvis and a Johnny Mathis as Sammy Davis Jr., that same Elvis as Johnny Cash, and John Wayne as Katharine Hepburn. At this point, pop culture may have officially turned into one of those snakes that eats its own tail.
Elon likes the next guy’s frenetic, breathless James Brown, but Lisa and Jeffrey agree that spasms don’t actually count as performing. Somehow we’ve gone the whole episode without a Cher. When one does arrive, Jeffrey accurately says she looks like “a hooker from Battlestar Galactica.”
And, of course, since this is Vegas, we get a boatload of Elvises. The good news is the producers sprang for the rights to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Suspicious Minds” so we didn’t have to hear Elvis singing “Home on the Range” or “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” or something. The bad news is we had to hear very bad Elvis impersonators singing “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Suspicious Minds.” After half a dozen embarrassments, we get a pretty good one who makes it through. The Top King, Donnie Edwards, seems to be about 5’6” but he’s also the first good looking man in the entire competition, which leads to semi-fake flirting from Lisa and Michelle, ensuring they are actually the most embarrassing performances all night.
The producers edit around what appears to be an impression of the Blues Brothers even worse than the one Dan Aykroyd is still doing. We zip through a montage of the ghastly to get to a guy doing a very good De Niro. Elon thinks he has the look but not the voice, Lisa thinks he has the voice but not the look. They’re both wrong, but it’s a death knell for Bobby.. A Howard Cosell is allowed to go on for seven minutes, which, thank to time lapse filming, we only see fifteen seconds of.
Four Tina Turners, one of whom is a dude, singing “Proud Mary” are edited into a montage. One, Cookie Watkins (seriously), makes it through. A Bette Midler seems to have a fight with Elon over whether or not she is actually doing an impression of Bette Midler. A guy who looks kind of like Schwarzenegger does an impression worse than your little brother’s. A piano-free Liberace decides to rap, with lyrics apparently written by fourth graders. Elon dismissed a “Sammy Davis Urkel” and a man does what appears to be an Alzheimer-riddled De Niro ordering breakfast. I’m not certain if I’m still recapping a TV show at this point or if I’m describing a fever dream.
A yodeling woman does what may well be a terrific Patsy Montana impression, which the judges like, but none of them have any idea who Patsy Montana is. I’ve just read the Wikipedia entry on her and I still don’t know who she is. A man dressed as John Wayne does what might best be described as a “nonpression,” followed by a montage of bad dancing ... not that ABC is trying to pad this show out to an hour or anything.
A fragile looking young woman (?) has dressed her (?) self up as Edward Scissorhands and gives a performance with rare double pathos – the scene she is recreating and the fact that she’s recreating it are both so achingly painful that you want to ask her to take out your eyes with her scissors. Luckily, she takes rejection well. Can we get a consensus that Edward Scissorhands fanatics are, like, ten times scarier than Star Trek fanatics? By the way, why haven’t I seen a fat guy doing a bad Captain Kirk impression in this entire series? You couldn’t even throw me a nerd in cheap Spock ears?
A Jack Nicholson wearing giant sunglasses looks like him but can’t do the impression that every man in America can do. We get a Rocky Balboa who looks and sounds okay, but also decides to rap. Didn’t we learn anything from late 80s Fruity Pebbles commercials?
We flop through a bad Johnny Carson, a half-assed Rick James, and a W.C. Fields who only seemed to get the “drunk” part right. A woman does a Fran Drescher, or maybe it’s “The Nanny” ... either way it’s annoying, but not in the right way.
It clearly time to throw us a decent performance and we get two from the same woman. Stacey Whitton-Summers does a terrific Marilyn Monroe and a pretty good Shania Twain. The judges offer her the chance to go through as either, and she picks Shania, which seems like an odd choice. While her Marilyn allowed her to sing and do breathy jokes, her Shania impression seems like it only involves singing, since who the hell cares how Shania Twain talks? (I don’t really care how she sings, either, I’m mostly drawn to her leather pants)
So six people make it through ... Shania Twain, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, and Jay Leno. They join ...
From LA ... Little Richard, Tim McGraw, Robin Williams, George W. Bush, Jack Nicholson, Lucille Ball, Celine Dion, Bono, Simon Cowell, Al Pacino, and a Ralph Kramden/Ed Norton pair.
From New York ... Rodney Dangerfield, Howard Stern, Gloria Estefan, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Roseanna Barr, and Paris Hilton.
From Orlando ... George W. Bush, Dolly Parton, Elvis, and Robin Williams.
Now we get a peek at the coming weeks. Sadly, it will not involve the two Robin Williamses in a steel cage death match or Roseanne Barr attempting to eat Celine Dion. Rather, it’ll be stuff like Ralph Kramden doing Rosie O’Donnell jokes and Paris Hilton doing magic.
In other words, this show is about to turn from a collection of people doing bad celebrity impressions to a show doing a bad impression of America’s Got Talent.
Can’t wait!