Well, Wednesday last week I watched a new show called Anchorwoman. The next day it was canceled by Fox.

I thought the show itself was ok to good. The reason I watched was I remembered seeing a Fox promo and thought it was worth a look and there is virtually nothing on TV this week.

That said, I came into the show with no knowledge or expectations about the show. I think the premise of the show (in the mode of Legally Blonde) was good but I think the turn off is the “reality/comedy hybrid” of it. As a reality show, it is so obviously semi-scripted and edited in order to make an entertaining story and characters that it is overly manipulative.

I think if you take the idea as an actual scripted comedy series then there is much more potential there. Keep the reality aspect to it — ala The Office or Arrested Development or even a Christopher Guest mockumentary — but pushed further and there are a variety of topics to mine. There are the obvious ones: fish out water, “bimbo makes good/screws up”, office politics that are fairly common. Then you there are a bunch of other topics that could be funny and provide some satire or insight: the nature of local news, hypocrisy in the news room (and TV in general), show business behind the scenes, nature of reality TV itself.

A satire of network TV on Fox; who am I kidding?

Categories: TV
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