This is from one episode of WHITNEY. Someone spliced together all the times she says, "Okay." Talk about a crutch! I know she has her own show on the air but excuse me, this just screams out "amateur".
And people can watch that show? I know I will never watch "Two Broke Girls" - and that clip just kept me away from Whitney forever. Yikes. It's similar to listen to a bunch of teenage girls.
What words or phrases do you find yourself having to remove from the second drafts of your scripts because you tend to use them too often in the first versions? It might vary from show to show, I realize.
Hey Ken, you should've watched to the credits - they stole the idea from Sesame Street - that particular episode was brought to you by the words "okay" and "yaknow".
Not to mention that there isn't anything about the show that feels like it's being written now. It honestly feels like the pilot was something that was passed on in the 90s.
(And my name is Whitney. My friends keep asking me jokingly why "my" show sucks.)
Placing a period outside of quotation marks as you did in the post above could also be considered "amateur"(by sticklers of American English). Be nice; let Whitney get a few shows under her belt.
I knew nothing about Whitney Cummings, other thinking she looked gorgeous in the promos. I mean - yowzer - if she could look that good and be funny, I might actually get hooked.
Then I watched the debut of her show... what a bomb. Literally, a laugh-free zone.
I can imagine the guys who added the laugh track really struggled. ("Gee, Bob, was that supposed to be funny?")
First off, never seen the show and obviously she's no seasoned veteteran, but amateur seems harsh. It's probably a quirk of her personality, and like most comics just getting started starring in their own sitcom, she's leaning on playing herself for now. Probably "green" is a better way to put it without the negative connotation that she can't also be funny. But then, I'm not even sure why you called it amatuerish; I'm just assuming you meant she lacks a breadth of ways to be funny and is not self-aware as far as being funny on camera.
You make a good point Selection7. But it just irks me when I think about all the truly funny talented people out there who have studied for years and can't get a break.
I was s watching NBC that night and I kid you not, there was a plug for "Whitney" in every commercial break. Different ones, not the same one over and over like they do for the news. Reviewers were falling all over themselves to say how screamingly funny it was (and the clip where she seductively interrupts the guy's online chat was funny, I'll give them that) so I left the TV on 4 and gave it a shot.
Excruciating. Horrible. New depths of not-funny usually only found at open mic night at Sizzler. I gave up before the first commercial and went to Food Channel to watch the last half of a "Chopped" I had already seen.
I remember a wise statement from advertising guru David Ogilvy: The greatest ad campaign will only get a person to buy a product once. If they buy it and don't like it, they will never buy it again no matter how good the advertising is.
"Whitney" brought that back to my mind for some reason...
If Whitney does indeed come from a standup comic background, and is still at the beginning of the process of adapting her stage personality for TV, then I'm reminded of what I heard Jerry Seinfeld once say, very forthrightly, when accepting some award or other with his castmates: "I am a bad actor." (He immediately went on to say that his supporting cast were the ones who made him look good in front of the cameras. This seems inarguably true, but nonetheless I give him credit for saying so on TV.)
So how much of the trouble with the Whitney series is due to her being (undoubtedly) a bad actor, and how much to the writing?
I have never heard of the person or the show, but was it really that noticeable in it's entirety? You isolate bits of any show and it might seem lame, but otherwise you'd never notice.
ON a side note, when I read the title, I thought it was about Whitney Houston.
I understand why Ken would call it amateurish, because it is one of the things a writer notices hen attending castings: actors adding the same starterword to every sentence and thereby ruining every chance for a rythm. It may be somthing that can be made to work, but it would probably involve the writer giving up most of the control...
You must have really pissed off Roseanne Barr. Today she posted a new blog entry and this time more specifically aimed at Laurie Gelman, saying that she hired hackers to track down Laurie who I guess found a new letter from Laurie about her and says that unless Laurie issues a public apology then Roseanne is going to sue her for libel because supposedly Laurie's been stalking her for over 20 years....WOW! I think the nut farm in Hawaii has an escapee. lol
I'm a little bothered that the man who did this also excerpted the scene from AMERICAN PSYCHO where the protagonist brutally murders someone while a Huey Lewis and the News song plays--the cinematic embodiment of Bret Easton Ellis' downtown hipster disdain for 80's mainstream pop. In the book the main character goes on for several page of slobbering adoration of HLN, along with Whitney Houston and Genesis...of course all meant to be ironic.
Have I ever mentioned my license plate is HLN FAN?
WV" mattliz...looks like the computer has picked out your next daughter-in-law, Ken.
I watched, and I, too, found it unfunny, but I was not under the impression this Whitney girl just came out of nowhere as some of the commenters seem to assume. Netflix has been trying to get me to watch her standup specials for some time, and she created this show and co-created another new show (as mentioned above). I recall that she wrote for Chelsea Handler (who I also find unfunny, so that fits).
I watched the show *after* seeing the "OK" mash-up and I *still* didn't particularly notice how often she said it. It seems to me an organic part of the way she and her character talk and react.
And this may not be a great show, but there's a lot worse new shows this year.
Tod Hunter: Your quote from David Ogilvy reminds me of an interview with James Coburn. Back in the 1980s, Coburn appeared in a series of commercials for Schlitz's light beer. The commercials ran for about a year, and during that time were omnipresent. In the interview, Coburn was asked why the commercials had stopped. He said that the campaign had been very successful--at first. Sales of the beer shot up--and then plummetted down. The problem was that the stuff was awful. People were persuaded to try it, but they didn't buy it a second time. So, Schlitz changed the formula, and began running new commercials emphasizing that fact (the commercials with Coburn had mainly used his indisputable coolness as the selling point).
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She's got two shows on the air -- she's the co-creator of Two Broke Girls.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to splice together a reel of characters on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" saying,"You know what?"
ReplyDeleteAnd people can watch that show? I know I will never watch "Two Broke Girls" - and that clip just kept me away from Whitney forever. Yikes. It's similar to listen to a bunch of teenage girls.
ReplyDeleteOK, OK, Ken, maybe for a Friday:
ReplyDeleteWhat words or phrases do you find yourself having to remove from the second drafts of your scripts because you tend to use them too often in the first versions? It might vary from show to show, I realize.
Hey Ken, you should've watched to the credits - they stole the idea from Sesame Street - that particular episode was brought to you by the words "okay" and "yaknow".
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that there isn't anything about the show that feels like it's being written now. It honestly feels like the pilot was something that was passed on in the 90s.
ReplyDelete(And my name is Whitney. My friends keep asking me jokingly why "my" show sucks.)
Placing a period outside of quotation marks as you did in the post above could also be considered "amateur"(by sticklers of American English). Be nice; let Whitney get a few shows under her belt.
ReplyDeleteAs Charles Osgood wrote,
ReplyDeleteI'm ok, you're ok.
OK is what we two are.
But just between the two of us,
I'm more ok than you are.
I also am reminded of Edwin Newman, that language enforcer, who once heard a ballplayer say, "You know, how do you know, you know?"
I knew nothing about Whitney Cummings, other thinking she looked gorgeous in the promos. I mean - yowzer - if she could look that good and be funny, I might actually get hooked.
ReplyDeleteThen I watched the debut of her show... what a bomb. Literally, a laugh-free zone.
I can imagine the guys who added the laugh track really struggled. ("Gee, Bob, was that supposed to be funny?")
First off, never seen the show and obviously she's no seasoned veteteran, but amateur seems harsh. It's probably a quirk of her personality, and like most comics just getting started starring in their own sitcom, she's leaning on playing herself for now. Probably "green" is a better way to put it without the negative connotation that she can't also be funny. But then, I'm not even sure why you called it amatuerish; I'm just assuming you meant she lacks a breadth of ways to be funny and is not self-aware as far as being funny on camera.
ReplyDeleteIt's as though somebody decided a fresh take on DHARMA & GREG was suddenly necessary only this time, let's make it unfunny and add annoying!
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point Selection7. But it just irks me when I think about all the truly funny talented people out there who have studied for years and can't get a break.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI was s watching NBC that night and I kid you not, there was a plug for "Whitney" in every commercial break. Different ones, not the same one over and over like they do for the news. Reviewers were falling all over themselves to say how screamingly funny it was (and the clip where she seductively interrupts the guy's online chat was funny, I'll give them that) so I left the TV on 4 and gave it a shot.
ReplyDeleteExcruciating. Horrible. New depths of not-funny usually only found at open mic night at Sizzler. I gave up before the first commercial and went to Food Channel to watch the last half of a "Chopped" I had already seen.
I remember a wise statement from advertising guru David Ogilvy: The greatest ad campaign will only get a person to buy a product once. If they buy it and don't like it, they will never buy it again no matter how good the advertising is.
"Whitney" brought that back to my mind for some reason...
--t
Okay! She's ready to go a round with the previous Okay-Okay World Champeen: Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) from the Lethal Weapons.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy5TJ0s2HJs
If Whitney does indeed come from a standup comic background, and is still at the beginning of the process of adapting her stage personality for TV, then I'm reminded of what I heard Jerry Seinfeld once say, very forthrightly, when accepting some award or other with his castmates: "I am a bad actor." (He immediately went on to say that his supporting cast were the ones who made him look good in front of the cameras. This seems inarguably true, but nonetheless I give him credit for saying so on TV.)
ReplyDeleteSo how much of the trouble with the Whitney series is due to her being (undoubtedly) a bad actor, and how much to the writing?
I have never heard of the person or the show, but was it really that noticeable in it's entirety? You isolate bits of any show and it might seem lame, but otherwise you'd never notice.
ReplyDeleteON a side note, when I read the title, I thought it was about Whitney Houston.
I understand why Ken would call it amateurish, because it is one of the things a writer notices hen attending castings: actors adding the same starterword to every sentence and thereby ruining every chance for a rythm. It may be somthing that can be made to work, but it would probably involve the writer giving up most of the control...
ReplyDeleteSure some of those okays weren't improvised rather than scripted?
ReplyDeleteYou must have really pissed off Roseanne Barr. Today she posted a new blog entry and this time more specifically aimed at Laurie Gelman, saying that she hired hackers to track down Laurie who I guess found a new letter from Laurie about her and says that unless Laurie issues a public apology then Roseanne is going to sue her for libel because supposedly Laurie's been stalking her for over 20 years....WOW! I think the nut farm in Hawaii has an escapee. lol
ReplyDeleteI'm a little bothered that the man who did this also excerpted the scene from AMERICAN PSYCHO where the protagonist brutally murders someone while a Huey Lewis and the News song plays--the cinematic embodiment of Bret Easton Ellis' downtown hipster disdain for 80's mainstream pop. In the book the main character goes on for several page of slobbering adoration of HLN, along with Whitney Houston and Genesis...of course all meant to be ironic.
ReplyDeleteHave I ever mentioned my license plate is HLN FAN?
WV" mattliz...looks like the computer has picked out your next daughter-in-law, Ken.
I watched, and I, too, found it unfunny, but I was not under the impression this Whitney girl just came out of nowhere as some of the commenters seem to assume. Netflix has been trying to get me to watch her standup specials for some time, and she created this show and co-created another new show (as mentioned above). I recall that she wrote for Chelsea Handler (who I also find unfunny, so that fits).
ReplyDeleteI watched the show *after* seeing the "OK" mash-up and I *still* didn't particularly notice how often she said it. It seems to me an organic part of the way she and her character talk and react.
ReplyDeleteAnd this may not be a great show, but there's a lot worse new shows this year.
wg
Because she is a babe, I thought I'd give the show a look. I switched it off after five minutes.
ReplyDeleteThe DHARMA & GREG comment is spot on. This may be the most annoying show in years.
ReplyDelete"gottacook said...
ReplyDeleteSo how much of the trouble with the Whitney series is due to her being (undoubtedly) a bad actor, and how much to the writing?"
Irrelevant question. She writes her show.
"Ger Apeldoorn said...
It may be somthing that can be made to work, but it would probably involve the writer giving up most of the control..."
Again, she is the writer.
Tod Hunter: Your quote from David Ogilvy reminds me of an interview with James Coburn. Back in the 1980s, Coburn appeared in a series of commercials for Schlitz's light beer. The commercials ran for about a year, and during that time were omnipresent. In the interview, Coburn was asked why the commercials had stopped. He said that the campaign had been very successful--at first. Sales of the beer shot up--and then plummetted down. The problem was that the stuff was awful. People were persuaded to try it, but they didn't buy it a second time. So, Schlitz changed the formula, and began running new commercials emphasizing that fact (the commercials with Coburn had mainly used his indisputable coolness as the selling point).
ReplyDeleteThis show sucks. I'd rather watch that weird Toyota commercial over and over again. Or the better choice, turn of the computer and go to bed.
ReplyDeleteAt least "Two Broke Girls" has a real actress... Kat Dennings!
ReplyDeleteI don't get it - what's wrong with saying "okay"?
ReplyDeleteIf they cancel Community in favor of Whitney, I'm going to be really mad.
ReplyDelete