Fame or Famine

I’m talking, of course, about the producers of “Grease: You’re the One.”

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: I liked the show. I’m going to watch it all the way through, not the least simply because I really like the music. I also have immense respect for the choreographer/director, and I find it fascinating that the judges are actually the writer, the producer, and the director. I’m interested in what they have to say.

That being said…I’m sort of looking at this from a meta-perspective, looking at how they tell the tale as much as the tale itself. Moreso, even, since the tale is pretty boring: two people will dance and sing until they go on to open on Broadway (did you notice, though, they didn’t say they would continue to perform after the opening? Hmmmm…).

And it started fast: the first contestant, Ashley, had great confidence, did a credible job. The judges were nice to her. It’s the set-up; let’s get people comfortable.

Then WHAM! A caricature of a performer comes on, someone who viewers knew from the start wouldn’t make it. She had no stage presence, no makeup…and honestly, if she was not a plant, not an improv actor put in there just to make people laugh, I will eat Danny Zuko’s sneakers. It was painful on many levels, but the sadists out there who love watching people bomb onstage were rubbing their hands with glee.

This made it evident that this was not going to be Bravo’s “The Fire Within”, where you got to see the hard work, great talent, and true heartbreak of a Cirque du Soleil show being born. No, this was the Coliseum, these were the gladiators, and they were spilling their dignity on the floorboards for our entertainment.

You had mini-climaxes, like when Billy Bush got Fawn a second chance at an audition (incidentally establishing his “I’m on your side, I’m a good guy” bona fides). You had the “long shots”–the cocktail waitress who had skipped work for this one chance, the pharma rep who stayed over from a conference just to audition, and so didn’t have the right clothes…

And that’s just the females. The men, you had some who looked the part but couldn’t act it, some that could act it and couldn’t sing, some that could sing but couldn’t dance. You had lots of age play–the 40 year old John Travolta lookalike and the 17 year old incarnation of Sandy (please, God, don’t let the two of them do ANY scenes together!). In short, they tried to give everybody somebody to root for. Me, I’m supposed to root for both the 40 and the 17 year old, since one is me and one is my daughter, right?

But that’s the subtle stuff. The thing that I know I’m going to hate, I’m going to despise, the thing that’s going to require me to be physically restrained by the end of this show lest I hurl my television out the window with a growling shriek of “You’re NOT the one!” is the Pregnant Pause.

It’s the stupidest thing–maybe would have been funny once, but over and over: “You’re…not Danny.” “You’re…the one we want to go to Grease Academy”. “You’re………………………….not Sandy.” It’s not that I don’t appreciate the need for suspense. I do. It’s just such an unbearably clumsy way to manufacture it! Let the story speak for itself!

Anyway, next week we’re on to Grease Academy, where apparently 17 year old steals a kiss (“Are they pimping out the 17 year old?” my friend DeadCat asked, aghast). There’s a hot tub in the future, apparently, and more relationship drama (my friend Deadcat also suggested that two of them would fall in love. I suggested that probably quite a few of them already had, in one sense or another, while they were waiting for their audition…).

I also have agree with both my wife and Olivia Newton-John: it would be very, very cool if Danny were a minority. Or Sandy. Or both. It is beyond time for that. The musical is ageless and eternal; the attitudes, on the other hand, should not be.

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