Everything wrong with America in one photo!

Above: a poster for the "Morning Show with Mike and Juliet"

We could sit here and spend hours picking apart the people in these photos. The bright neon tie chosen by focus group, the desperately careful pose meant to suggest comraderie and ease between the two hosts, the smiles meant to convey nothing more than the reflection of a tv studio's vapid topicality.

We could do all this and more, but we won't. Why? Because it's the process of creating shows that brought these two people to this point, not vice versa.

I urge you to check out the website for this show however. It opens with a little Flash movie of Mike and Juliet sharing their high school yearbook calibre thought bubbles with us.

Ok now that your eyes are bleeding, let's move on.

Trying to discover the appeal of this show...I delved yet further into the wikipedia entry reserved for it. Yes, it has a wikipedia entry. Whoa whoa, don't get yourself in a tizzy about this. What's wrong with a blip-on-the-screen receiving its own wiki space? Every spirituallly bankrupt morning show surely deserves its own chapter in the hallowed store of mankind's common knowledge, which is increasingly wikipedia and none of the more reliable, less wiki-oriented "pedias." And why not?



Hell, even Matthew Lesko has an entry.

A further look at the bottom of the Morning Show's wiki page reveals this completely candid and unbiased assessment of the show's strengths that was absolutely not written by someone who works for the same show.

Social Critiques of Hosts
Television critics have noted that the program is unique in having two single hosts, who openly play up their marital status, seemingly abandoning traditional dictates that television morning hours be limited to "family values and sanctimony".[5] Thus, the hosts' on-screen personas ("a man who, because he loves the ladies too much or not enough, shuns long-term relationships, and an attractive over-30 woman who has pursued her career rather than marrying and regrets it") are designed to appeal to single viewers who have previously been uncatered to in the morning.

WAIT! Your eyes have stopped bleeding you say? Well, let's get that flow a-goin' again. Go to this page and watch the two hosts dance for their network paychecks, literally through hoops, in a photo-by-photo flash animation.

Did you watch? Haha, yes, they're just such free spirits aren't they? Look, it's so funny! They were both playing around with hoola hoops and then... woooooopsypoopsydoodlydoos! They got all tangled up in them! What a couple of morning themed cards, they are! I wonder what utterly meaningless, terrifyingly safe hijinx they'll get into next. LOL and HAR HAR and :), and a few more ! ! ! ! !'s.

I don't know what television critics have been noting the uniqueness of this morning genocide on brain cells, but it's not those "critics" referenced below (two of which are just links to the show's own related sites), none of whom even discuss the show's content. Note: I was not able to access Miss Heffernan's review from my desk computer at work, so in some likelihood, the referenced critique could be in her column. But one critic hardly qualifies the statement that "Television critics have noted that the program is unique..." One critic MAY have noted that. Many more however are probably just now cleaning off the dried blood from their recently self-excavated eye sockets.


CRITIC REFERENCES
^ Offical Website :: About the Show
^ Official Website : Where To Watch?
^ TVWeek.com : Twentieth Clears "Mike and Juliet" in 70% of Country
^ Official Website : Where To Watch?
^ Virginia Heffernan, "We're Not Dating" : A Morning Show With Sex on the Brain, New York Times, February 8, 2007

Blah blah blah...Anway, there's a lot to dislike here. But nothing new, especially from the Fox News family. If you live in NYC, you will have seen the posters on just about every subway platform. They're about as convincing a sell as Con Ed's relatively hilarious and now infamous ON IT ad campaign.



One can only pray that The Morning Show is as "On It" as Con Ed is. If we're really lucky, it'll be about as likely to endure as Texas House Appropriations Committee chairman Warren Chisum in a game of HOW OLD IS THE EARTH AND DOES IT REVOLVE AROUND THE SUN?

If that's the case, this particular turd won't be floating around in our zeitbowl for too much longer before getting a good, healthy Erroten.

Auf Wiedersehen THE MORNING SHOW...I hope.