Does “The Gong Show” belong in 2017?
ABC, which has a lazy habit of exhuming old game shows, brings “The Gong Show” back essentially unaltered – it’s a dank and shticky amateur talent show with the admittedly clever stunt-casting of actor Mike Myers as host Tommy Maitland, a past-his-prime British comedian who speaks only in double en-tawdries. Celebrity judges (in the premiere episode, they are Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong and the show’s executive producer, Will Arnett) are tasked with striking a giant gong whenever one of the acts becomes too unbearable.
A problem immediately presents itself: In this age of so many fawning competition shows, constant celebrity worship and acquiescence to an amateur presidency borne of reality television, who will actually bang the gong? A woman stuffs a live tarantula in her mouth. A dancing couple spits wet, chewed-up lumps of banana back and forth. Where is the moral courage to stand tall and end it?
The celebs sit in rapt admiration, doling out inflated scores, and you realize once more how far we’ve fallen, numbed to mediocrity in all its forms, cowed by the tyranny of the dilettante, resisting in thought but not deed, forever wo -
(Sound of gong banging)
