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May 17, 2005
We nitpick because we care.
Sometimes we're a little nitpicky... but Bill Simmons, who obviously loves his reputation as a pop-culture-guru, really has his head firmly planted in 1994 and he's not willing to look much further back than that for his references. In his recent Cowbell column (ESPN.com: Page 2 : More cowbell: Quick hits) he demonstrated an amazing lack of histoircal vision (my comments are in bold):
"Glad we got that settled. Now, here are three reasons why "Survivor" is the greatest reality game show of all-time:
1. It created the "Voting one person off every week" gimmick (Ummm... Star Search had that). Everyone forgets this now because at least 20,000 shows have ripped it off (and the vast majority of them were terrible). But you could make a decent case that this was one of the six most influential TV gimmicks of the last 25 years, right up there with the single-camera/no laugh track sitcom ("Larry Sanders")(uhh... remember "Doogie Howser MD" or "The Wonder Years"? Neither does Bill); MTV cops ("Miami Vice")(which was really only "80s Pop" cops as opposed to "The Mod Squad" which was "70s Funk" cops, so as far as "inventing" anything goes...); the real-time drama ("24," which actually ripped off the idea from the Nic Cage flick "Snake Eyes," (which was actually ripped off from Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope", but whatever) but whatever); and men who could turn into animals to solve crimes ("Manimal" … OK, that one didn't work) (so he gets one example right, and it's his punchline)."
Posted by sferrell at May 17, 2005 5:11 PM
