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"\n\nFacebookPinterestOBRIEN_RUBRIC.gif\n\nI have noticed for the last couple of weeks that everybody is ganging up on Jerry Seinfeld over his new show, The Marriage Ref. The New York Post took time out from beating up Obama and the Democrats to run two full pages on the show and prattling on about how NBC took it more or less sight unseen and now it's a big bomb. I didn't see the premiere, because somehow I decided to forego the closing ceremony of the Olympics. (Foregoing ceremonies is a sort of fallen away Catholic thing.) And all I heard was that the show wasn't good. That it was, perhaps, a big flop.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nWell I did manage to catch The Marriage Ref's second installment and \"IT'S THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION!\" Okay, maybe the best non-fiction show on television. I still like House, M.D.. But this is a great show. For my money Seinfeld has done it again. Genius. This is one of the only examples of an intelligent, wit-based game show since the likes of What's My Line? (1950-1967) and I've Got a Secret (1952-1967). It is also a show, like Seinfeld, that is rooted in good old-fashioned common sense, and in dealing with the institution of marriage it goes to the very heart of our culture.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nJust in case you have been in Tibet or Central Africa for the last month, the show features average American married couples who have their differences. In each case, the husband and the wife presents his and her case to a panel of celebrity judges. The show I saw had a panel of Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld (who's in the middle seat every week), and Eva Longoria-Parker. The panel then discusses the contended issue or issues, each member concluding with whether they back the husband or wife, and then the show's host, Tom Papa, himself a very funny man, renders his judgment (a la Judge Judy, etc.)\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThe second show featured three couples. A), a husband who complained that he was not allowed to use the formal dining room, which has a fully set table and is used only on Thanksgiving, and a wife who insisted that this room was entirely her domain, and furthermore her husband was not man enough to assemble a do-it-yourself, screened-in porch kit she had bought. B), a retired cop who described himself as a metrosexual and whose principal interests include massage, manicure, pedicure, depilation, brow grooming, hair-styling, and tanning, and who complained of a lack of sex in the marriage, and whose wife retorted that his preoccupation with his appearance prevented him from attending his children's sports events. C), a husband who complained that his wife had no personal boundaries and was particularly appalled by her habit of flossing her teeth in bed. I was particularly amused by the first couple because I was raised in a home where there was a formal living room and a formal dining room which occupied perhaps the better part of the common areas of the house and which were off-limits, existing primarily for show. To me this couple's problem cuts to the heart of a dynamic that exists in many American families.\n\nThere are many cultural conflicts between husband and wife that are shared throughout the culture, stemming from the fact that men and women are raised differently, and in fact, are quite different. This is extraordinarily fertile ground, but it is rarely explored overtly and consciously. The Marriage Ref promises (or is it threatens?) to examine the very nature of what Miss California once called \"opposite marriage.\"\n\nI found the repartee involving the host, appropriately named Papa, and panelists Fey, Seinfeld, and Longoria-Parker to be so precise and hilarious that I wondered how much was spontaneous and how much was supplied by a team of writers.\n\nBut NPR called it \"painfully bad.\" New York Magazine: \"kinda terrible.\" The Newark Star Ledger: \"an ugly, unfunny, patronizing mess.\" The Baltimore Sun: \"Who knew Seinfeld could be this unfunny.\"\n\nThe New York Post went so far as to track down Mike Costanza, namesake of George, a college friend of Seinfeld who offered an analysis of his former friends' motives in creating the show: \"People need to know they can do it again. They had one unbelievable success and they need to feel that they can do it again. That it wasn't just luck.\" And they dug up various ecutives who gave it a thumb's down, including the genius who invented Eyewitness News, who concludes \"I don't think this is fixable.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThe problem is, this is a really funny show. For everyone except the experts. It's called condescending and snarky, but many of the funniest lines are spoken by the married couples themselves. And having celebrity panelists like Alec Baldwin, Madonna, and Larry David, whose marital problems have been tremendous media fodder, doesn't create an atmosphere of celebrities knowing better. It seems obvious to me that many in the media just want Jerry Seinfeld to fail.\n\nSeinfeld, the show, was not an instant hit. It was offered to Fox and turned down. Eventually NBC picked it up, fiddled with it, switched its time slots around, and the show didn't hit the Nielsen ratings top 30 until it was in season four. Is it possible that Jerry Seinfeld knows more than the average critic and ecutive?\n\nNegative reviews of The Marriage Ref harp on \"The Seinfeld Curse,\" which is the dumb notion that no one involved in the show can ever have a hit again because Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards all flopped in their next network efforts. Proponents of the curse seems to ignore the fantastic success of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's Emmy for The New Adventures of Old Christine. The fact is that there's an enormous body of haters out there who want anyone successful to fail. I keep forgetting this, and then I read the comments on this blog and I remember.\n\nThe New York Times, however, was perceptive enough to notice the significance of The Marriage Ref, writing: \"In a way the show is a throwback to the early days of television, when game shows like What's My Line? gave celebrities like Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf an excuse to riff and banter.\" The shows referenced were made live in New York City, featured panels from among the sharpest wits in caf\u00E9 society, and sparkled with spontaneous repart\u00E9e and bon mots.\n\nI worry less and less about America's newspapers going out of business when I see how consistently stupid they are. Who cares about Jay Leno vs. Conan O'Brien? Jay is pretty funny, as well as an admirable sort of fellow. Conan O'Brien may be one of the luckiest men alive, to have been paid millions to end his unfunny show. You're no Craig Ferguson, laddie. The best late-night show on television is undoubtedly Jimmy Kimmel. Something I might have never noticed had it not been for the wonderful short films that run on the little screens in the taxis. Have you seen Jimmy the Pig?\n\nDid you catch his \"Handsome Men's Club\" bit after the Oscars? This guy is a genius!\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nBut wait until he gets bigger. The critics will hate him, too. And now everybody's a critic. That's why Avatar didn't get best picture. Because a bunch of morons blogging about how it's Pocahontas in space influenced the intellectual giants of the Motion Picture Academy. As a lifelong observer of the Academy Awards I can state unequivocally that if you make the biggest box office picture of all time, that is the fucking best picture, period. The Academy is the establishment, and shame on them for not owning up to it and pretending to be art critics.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nYou can't really compare The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Was one of them best picture? I think I preferred A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers, Whatever Works by Woody Allen, and Sherlock Holmes by Guy Ritchie, which weren't even nominated. (Robert Downey Jr. was the best-dressed man at the Oscars and, oddly, was not initiated into the Handsome Men's Club.)\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nI could say comparing The Hurt Locker and Avatar is apples and oranges, but really its peas and watermelons. When a phenomenon arises, an event that announces a sea change, it should be recognized as such. The Hurt Locker is a great film, Avatar is a great advance in entertainment.\n\nAnd The Marriage Ref is the best show on TV.\n\nThe Marriage Ref _airs Thursday at 10, 9 CST on NBC. Jimmy Kimmel airs\n\n weeknights at 12:05, 11:05 CST._"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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