Hey this guy is entertaining and clean.
Is that allowed? Can you do that on TV? Doesn’t this guy know what’s going on?
As Wayne Brady figures it, there’s a time and a place to go for the cheap gag in return for the cheap laugh. But there’s no time or place for it on his show.
“I like a dirty joke as much as anyone,” Brady told us last week by phone from California. “But I’ve got a lot of kid fans; the family audience is part of my fan base.”
Wait a second. Isn’t that the whole idea, these days, to shock and desensitize everyone?
Brady, 31, explains that aside from you and yours, there are two people from whom he never wants to beg their pardon: “My mother and my seven-month-old daughter.”
Imagine that: a new-age TV entertainer who holds an active sense of social responsibility to both his family and yours. And so we’re left to wonder whether Brady, a Daytime Emmy Award winner, is best described as old-fashioned or, perish the notion, new-fashioned.
“I watch some of the more shock-oriented stuff. Some of it, if it’s done well, I enjoy. But the kind of show I provide forces me to use my imagination. I try to replace cheap with creative. It’s more of a challenge. And when it works, it’s very satisfying.
“I don’t shove it anyone’s face. It’s not as if I open with, ‘Hey, folks, this is gonna be a squeaky clean show!’ But, if you’re waiting for the raunchy stuff, you’ll eventually realize that you’re in the wrong place.
“We’re gonna have fun and we’re going to be funny, but we’re going to try to keep it up here, not down there. I don’t need to scream, yell, curse and denigrate women to get a laugh.”
Here, Brady appears opposite a pile of the usual junk – “Maury,” “Divorce Court,” et. al.. Brady’s show is different in that you feel as if you’ve escaped both your troubles and TV altogether. Best of all, you don’t feel the need to shower afterwards.
With the business of TV having become a fight for the hearts, minds and crotches of the vulnerable, young and dim-witted adults, “The Wayne Brady Show,” aside from being welcomed alternative entertainment, might even make business sense.
“Maybe,” he said, “we’re giving the marketplace what the marketplace has been missing.”
BULLET
Forgive us for what we’re about to write, but there’s no way to fully capture the outrageous content within a national newscast than to accurately describe what was seen last week on CNN.
CNN reported on magician David Blaine’s attempt to live in a box for 44 days while dangling above London. The report included a close-up of a young woman who stood vigil below. The woman held a sign, shown at easy-to-read length to CNN’s audience. In large letters it read:
“Hey David, come on down. My box is better than yours.”
This vulgar presentation could not be blamed on live TV. The report appeared on tape. It was cleverly edited to include the provocative message on that woman’s sign.
That afternoon on CNN, within minutes of the Blaine report, Wolf Blitzer appeared. One of his topics was the content of entertainment-TV programming and whether, as a matter of taste and decency, it has gone too far in the wrong direction.