TV is the New Reading

ABC’s “The List”

is just unwatchable

Demonstrating pretty clearly that it has run entirely out of ideas, ABC last week threw up its hands and presented “The List.”

“The List,” airs at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays (for now) with Aussie host Rove McManus – no, you’ve never heard of him – before what sounds like a live studio audience but is never shown or acknowledged in any way, and with a completely convincing and not-at-all blue-screen window behind him looking out on Times Square.

Well, none of this sounds promising, so on to the main thrust of the show: Lists. Because people love lists, right? Listing things, assigning ranks and numbers to entirely arbitrary stuff someone in a room somewhere decided was interesting.

Well, let’s look at the memoirs that came out this season. Valerie Bertinelli wrote her husband thought she had a big butt. TV’s Marsha Brady Maureen McCormick shocked Al Roker talking about her sex-for-cocaine scandal – at least, it was a scandal when it was first revealed months ago. Now it’s just “Oh yeah – I remember hearing about that somewhere.” And let ABC’s “The List” be the last outlet in 2008 to “out” N’SYNC artist Lance Bass.

So, onto more timely things like Santa’s “naughty” and “nice” list. Santa wasn’t available, so Rove – seriously, that’s a name – asked society blogger Perez Hilton what he thought of five celebrities. And Perez told him he thought Shia LeBouef was naughty and Britney Spears was nice and ...

... yes. For the purposes of being able to comment on this show, I watched a segment of Perez Hilton talking about celebrities. There’s not enough soap and hot water in Minot for the shower that is needed after that.

Then we had celebrity baby names and how Jennifer Aniston was photographed naked. We also had a lovely stroll down memory loss lane about what stars turned down roles and movies that turned out to be blockbusters, and people who were cast as American Indians who weren’t actually American Indians.

If all of this sounds dumb, we finally got some real substance halfway through when we discovered that according to “InStyle” magazine, 2009 was going to be the year for big hoop earrings, sexy platform shoes and hot pink lipsticks.

This sort of thing went on for an hour. It was as awful as you can imagine it was. It’s not a guilty pleasure. It’s not something to have on as background noise. It is not the sort of thing we should, as a viewing public, in any way encourage. It was stupid, brainless twaddle unworthy of the public trust implicit in the broadcast licensing codes governing network television and I very much want to know who to talk to about getting that hour of my life back.

It left me wanting to hurt someone, and it cannot leave the airwaves quickly enough.

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