Have you ever watched a comedy like Two and a Half Men and thought to yourself, "This is not remotely funny." Or maybe you realized that the tears you felt streaming down your cheeks during an episode of Intervention did not spring from your eyes because of the incredible compassion you feel for the characters onscreen, but because you just heard the most hilarious-sounding cry escape an elderly man ever. Well, Movieline understands and just so happens to be here for you with a complete list of nine series running wild in the wrong genres.
Alleged Genre: Reality
Actual Genre: Anthropological Study
MTV can try to pass off their mutant Guido cast as impeccably poofed and penne-fed talent, but Movieline knows the secret: The network has isolated a different species entirely and is making money hand over fist-pump because of the public's fascination with their odd lineage. Like taking a trip to the zoo without leaving your couch, viewers tune in to watch these primates cavort around the boardwalk, beating their chests, punching anything that gets in the way of a meal or a free drink, clubbing females over the head and then dragging them back to the community smush room. Jersey Shore castmates fall somewhere between Genus Pan (chimpanzee) and Genus Homo (homo sapiens) in the Tribe Hominini with Ronnie obviously being the least evolved. If you were to replace the pumping techno background beats with tribal sounds, the Jersey Shore would seem completely organic airing on Nat Geo.
Alleged Genre: Reality
Actual Genre: Comedy
Listen, I get sad seeing families living in four feet of filth, but A&E pushes the reality envelope by making each living situation explored so comically-over-the-top that maggots in the coffee pot seem like a non-issue. This is especially the case after you've watched a middle-aged woman tearfully sort through her plastic horse collection or a crotchety feline-lover discover over a dozen flattened cat corpses beneath her living room rubble. Trust me, a laugh track would seem more natural in this show (for example, after a morbidly obese hoarder interrupts his intervention to ask for a pickle) than Mike & Molly. Take it from Movieline's Fat Joke Tracker expert.
Alleged Genre: Comedy
Actual Genre: Drama
After winning the Emmy this year for Best Leading Actress in a Comedy, Edie Falco declared, "This is the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened in the history of this awards show. I'm not funny!" It would have been more fitting if she had announced, "My show is not funny." Sure, there are moments of grim humor, but technically, if your series has featured at least two serious overdoses by main characters, copious adultery (and not the black/white kind but the tortured stuff that is just as complex for viewers as the characters subjected and subjecting it), anxiety disorders among children and bizarre sexual tics that do not result in hilarity each episode, you should be disqualified from the comedy category.
Alleged Genre: Reality
Actual Genre: (Scripted) Soap...for ESL students looking to learn English at a very slow pace...with subtitles
Just like it's similarly staged predecessor The Hills, The City mixes outrageously scripted storylines, carefully staged scenes and after school drama. Combine those three formulas with faux fashion jobs and high pressure photo shoots and voila!, you have The City. If there is one reality element in The City, it is brought by Kelly Cutrone.
Alleged Genre: Police procedural
Actual Genre: Comedy
If there was an Emmy category for Best Comedic Actor in a Drama, NCIS lead Michael Weatherly would win back-to-back. What elevates this procedural above other fill-in-the-crime formula series is Weatherly's comedic timing which somehow makes sexual harassment seminars which include the phrase "elevator eyes," workplace masturbation jokes and gags about female body hair humorous.
Alleged Genre: Reality
Actual Genre: Supernatural
Screw The CW's demons and paranormal. If you want to see supernatural, as in "exists outside of natural law," turn on Bravo on Thursday nights. There, you will find the kinds of toned bodies, taut faces and surgically upturned eyes that the supernaturally wealthy can afford as well as the kinds of names and phony transatlantic accents that only accompany the heroines of paperback fantasy novels and '70s daytime soaps. Right, Pandora VanderPump?
Alleged Genre: Comedy
Actual Genre: Apocalyptic Fiction
Back when televisions were introduced to the homes of Americans in the 1940s, do you think that anyone imagined a day when the general public would embrace a sitcom about two morbidly obese blue collar workers who break tables, joke about calorie counting and trade unfunny one-liners about pubic hair hygiene with their family members? Probably not, and for that -- not to mention Mike & Molly's impressive lack of humor, Movieline award this CBS sitcom a new home in the apocalyptic fiction genre. Enjoy!
Alleged Genre: Talk show
Actual Genre: Japanese game show
You never know what you're getting when you turn on The View, aside from four to six women talking over each other for five minute intervals in between commercial breaks. (In fact, maybe you can deduce that you are watching a Japanese game show when you are relieved to finally see that Metamucil ad.) Barbara Walter's morning variety hour includes a mix of original stunts (Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walking out in the middle of a segment with Bill O'Reilly), drunken midgets, Holocaust arguments, verbal knife play (the Hasselbeck-O'Donnell split screen segment of '07), accidental comedy and quizzes galore. America, your own daytime Japanese game show.
Alleged Genre: Comedy
Actual Genre: Whatever the opposite of comedy is.
Sh*t My Dad Says, the Twitter feed: Funny. $#*! My Dad Says, the CBS series starring William Shatner which was recently renewed for a second season: Not at all funny. Here's looking towards early second season cancellation, folks.