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The biggest show of the season stars a group of older men, some of them bearded, who moan a lot about the economy. I think it's called "Dirty Sexy Money: D.C."
The premise is that you have a group of overpaid smart guys who traded bad loans around like hot potatoes and then, when they realized they'd fumbled too badly to recover, they decided to dump all the steaming spuds into the laps of the taxpayers.
It started out slowly this past summer, really, with a few specials called Behr Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Behr got help, but Lehman could have been shown on the Discovery Channel during Shark Week. Now, though, it's escalated into a prime-time show, kind of like "Big Brother" in reverse.
On the original "Big Brother" TV show, a group of people are locked in a house with cameras running 24 hours, and that footage is edited down into one hour show of the good, the bad and the shameful.
On "Big Brother: D.C." everything happens in secret behind closed doors, and then suddenly someone pops out and runs screaming at the cameras that we're all going to die if we don't act now, right now, and give them all our money and borrow from our grandchildren to give them even more money than we've got.
In addition, this spokesman is going to take the money behind the closed doors and split it up in ways he thinks is wise, but we don't get to see that, either. Thus far, it's not getting good reviews.
There's been a trend of reviving shows from the '70s and '80s, shows like "Bionic Woman," and "Knight Rider," but now they're reviving the old "Savings and Loan Variety Hour," also called the "Recovery Trust Corporation."
The RTC plot was this: The taxpayers bailed out a whole bunch of dumb and sometimes corrupt players, losing $124 billion in the process. This year's version could be called "RTC: The Sarah Conner Chronicles." In this version, there's no superpowered android coming in to save Sarah and her Wall Street cronies. Instead, it's waitresses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, nurses, old people and babies, all giving up $3,600 each to pay for the excesses of games players on Wall Street. I'm not sure it's a guaranteed hit, but it will certainly have impact.
In reality, the whole thing could be seen as a complicated version of "World Poker Tour," except when these guys play badly they expect to be able to walk away with the pot, and all the money in the casino with taxpayers picking up the tab.
I'd rather see them try "Survivor: Wall Street," which would force these guys to act like capitalists -- or cannibals. Either one might be good for America.
Apparently, Congress, the co-producers of these shows, was inundated with bad reviews and poor ratings numbers for some of these pilots, and they're trying to change the fall line-up now. They're talking about giving less, and putting in some protections for us. It's a good idea, because we're not just the taxpayers, we're also the voters, and on Nov. 4 we have a chance to cancel all these bad shows.
Call that one "Pushing Up Daisies: D.C."
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Janet Jacobs is a Daily Sun staff writer. She may be reached via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com
To see more of the Corsicana Daily Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.corsicanadailysun.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, Corsicana Daily Sun, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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