Subject: Another "On the Air" review (REPOST from rec.arts.tv)
From: jgp@zodmate.Rational.COM (Jim Pellmann)
Date: 1992-06-17, 11:35
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

From: APUCORLE@IDBSU.IDBSU.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Another "On the Air" Review
Message-ID: <9206162056.AA15216@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 Jun 92 21:47:29 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 44

This is from the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly:

ABC is dumping this new creation from Twin Peaks boys
David Lynch and Mark Frost - about the early days of
live TV - into a summertime spot that will probably
attract few viewers, which lets you know what the
network thinks of On The Air.

But what do TV networks know?  Sure, On The Air is
unfunny, but not in a stupid Who's The Boss? way -
rather, in a bizarre, so-corny-it's-surreal way.
The premise?  Each week we're shown a new episode
of The Lester Guy show, a 1957 New York variety
show hosted by Guy (Ian Buchanan, the oily Richard
Tremayne in Twin Peaks).  The Guy show is always
a disaster, full of props that fall apart, backdrops
that tip over, performers who enter on the wrong
cue.  This is due, in part, to the fact that Guy's
director, played by David L. Lander (Squiggy in
Laverne & Shirley), speaks in an unplaceable,
impenetrable accent - no one know what the devil
he's saying.

But it's also because Guy and the rest of the cast
and crew are boobs, incompetents, and fools who are
forever misunderstanding and fighting with each
other.  We are also shown the reactions of '50's
families watching Guy in their homes:  Everyone
is a happy, grinning moron.

On The Air is a one-joke sitcom that makes explicit
the message that always lurked behind Twin Peaks'
towering pine trees - that TV is stupid, and people
will watch anything.  Its undisguised contempt is
pretty enthralling.  B+

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