5 Urgent, History-Referencing Rules for Seth MacFarlane's Variety Show

The Osbournes Reloaded

Lesson #3. Interrupting the flair of live action with skits ensconced in "the real world" is a downer, particularly if the format was mastered by an actual comedian like David Letterman in the mid '90s. Also: Don't put Jack Osbourne in a comic role. See! You knew that one already! This is going to be great.

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour

Lesson #4. Don't bastardize your past career highs with bawdiness. Even though The Brady Bunch Variety Hour survived an entire season, the show took the original series's bland, humiliating pleasures and added sequins, a patronizingly pink collar for Robert Reed, and a joyless Eve Plumb doppelganger named Geri Reischl. If Seth Green earns a musical medley on The Almost Live Comedy Hour, all of us, plus plate tectonics, will flinch, killing thousands.

The Wayne Brady Show

Lesson #5. Don't become enamored of your special's glitz and decide it needs to be expanded as a sit-down talk show. That's the kind of sentence that should be written in all caps, but it's fine. When Wayne Brady turned his 2001 variety special The Wayne Brady Show into a Rosie-emulating chatfest the following year, Brady's hammy showmanship warped into pure contrivance. I'd rather watch a 60-minute special called Colin Mochrie Contemplates Getting Out of Bed.

· Seth MacFarlane set for variety special [Variety]

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