As part of network television's pact to appease great-aunts and Satan, Fox will stage a new variety special, this one starring Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. The program, currently titled Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show, will run for 30 minutes without formal commercial breaks, instead opting to integrate "marketing messages throughout the program for Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system." Spooky! Variety programming has a highly dubious past, but it's rife with pointers for vaudevillian fledgling MacFarlane. Movieline investigates five cataclysmic variety specials and their lessons for MacFarlane after the jump.
Rosie Live
Lesson #1: Don't wheel out a shaky legend. The whizzbang of a network variety special is too precious and demanding, and ultimately the legend (in this case, Liza Minnelli) comes off as strained, or as Butch Patrick in a pantsuit. Stick to age-old variety successes and stage all musical numbers with beaming, blushing, secretly tortured stars like Karen Carpenter and Kristy McNichol.
The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour
Lesson #2: Incessant slapstick is always depressing, even (or especially) in a variety format. Despite her stiletto heel pivots or sleepy beer bottle smashes, Jessica Simpson never approaches the finesse of her thespian mentor Moe Howard. Also, if your act starts lagging, don't rip off your shirt. The Chippendales patronage doesn't watch variety shows. As I understand it, they're at Chippendales, wetnapping their foreheads and begging for Chadwick, who hasn't actually worked there for some time.
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.
ยท Seth MacFarlane set for variety special [Variety]