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MUST-APE TV
By Daria Morgendorffer, Pop Culture Icon
Whenever there's a new hit television series, a boatload of copycat programming inevitably follows. Suddenly there's a glut of cookie-cutter sitcoms full of urban singles bantering endlessly in suspiciously large apartments. Or a gaggle of teen soap operas taking place in towns where zits are apparently illegal. Or a slew of blue-set, big-ass game shows with spotlights that swivel, ooh!
The latest inspiration for rubber stamp TV is the voyeuristic love/hate fest "The Real World." (Personal disclosure: the series often airs on my parent network, MTV--and when I say often, I mean for days on end. Unlike, say, "Daria," which is shown without fail every Shrove Tuesday.) The concept: toss a bunch of diverse strangers into a high-stress situation and hope for eye-gouging. It's proven so popular that we now have a veritable smorgasbord of derivative "programming:" people stranded on a desert island and forced to compete for coconuts; wannabe crooners molded into a vacuum-packed teenybopper band before our very eyes; a creepy experiment in 24-hour audio-visual peeping that proudly calls itself "Big Brother." What, was "Animal Farm" taken?
Such copycatism revulses me, especially since no one's thought to knock off my show. Sure, I'm not popular as that castrated little rat Pikachu, but don't I deserve some attention from talentless development execs who every night in their prayers thank their dark lord that you can't copyright a "concept?" You bet your anemic Nielsen overnights I do.
Wake up, television execs, you're drooling on the pillow again! Sardonic teenage girls with glasses could be the next big thing. Here are a few suggestions to get you started on your fully Daria-derived schedule:
1. "WHO WANTS TO EMBARRASS THEMSELVES ON NATIONAL TV?:" Contestants fail to win any money from an unenthusiastic teen emcee because the questions are way over their heads.
2. MOPEMON: A world-weary young woman trains 163 different ultra-cute creatures to ignore each other.
3. UP TOO LATE: Celebrities discuss their projects, pets and kids, in that order of importance while the resentful hostess fails to show up, claiming open-heart surgery.
4. THIS COLD HOUSE: Workmen and architects are chased away from a job site by a surly adolescent with a twelve-gauge.
5. SNIDE KINGDOM: An alienated high schooler scampers through the forest seeking a nice quiet burrow. Now that I think about it, scrap the scampering part. And don't even think about woodland mating rituals.
6. JUDGE DARIA: The network buys me an electric chair so that I may act on my impulses.
What do you think, TV professionals (assuming the words "think" and "TV professionals" can ever be used in the same sentence)? Come on, give the all-Daria schedule a shot. All you need is some vision, some guts, and some friends in the business so you'll be able to find a new job when the smoke clears.
Packing my own golden parachute,
Daria
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