[yasr_overall_rating]
The self-proclaimed history nerds hit the road on a father-son journey they’ve waited years to take.
I have a confession to make. For all my waxing poetic about how the entertainment industry needs to elevate our collective consciousness instead of pandering to audiences’ tastes, for all my extended monologues about how even escapist entertainment should be original and intellectually stimulating, I myself am a sucker for reality TV. I don’t necessarily find the characters compelling, nor do I revel in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I watch those shows for their technical accomplishments, particularly the sly editing (it’s like the makers of VH1’s “I Love New York” were in on the joke, cutting away at just the perfect time for comedic effect). I watch them for the borderline-theatrical, superficial drama (my favorite bits of CW’s “America’s Next Top Model” involved catty fights and buckets of tears)… And you can’t deny the entertainment factor. Switch off your brain, lie back, and immerse yourself into the utterly brain-numbing world of “Survivor.” That said, I do have to use an extensive amount of mouthwash (and read a passage of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”) to rinse out the foul odor of trash heaped upon me in 42-odd minutes.
Unless I’m mistaken (and feel free to lock me in a cubicle of snakes for 10 minutes if I am), the first such show was the Dutch “Big Brother,” back in the mid-1990s. One could argue “The Osbournes,” which premiered on MTV back in 2002 (about five-or-so years after that channel turned to crap, with a capital shit), set the standard for all the consequent reality TV shows that followed celebrities’ daily lives: “The Simple Life,” “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” etc. The inherent appeal of watching a well-known public figure – in this case, a nearly-comatose rock legend Ozzy Osbourne – reveal their intimate details, (heavily-edited) warts and all, proved a major success, spawning dozens of imitators. A critic such as myself has to put his prejudices and morals aside when reviewing a show like “Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour,” HISTORY’s latest attempt to reinvent the formula by sending the even-more-comatose father and his son on a nationwide historical adventure. Like in Sky1’s “An Idiot Abroad,” but without Gervais’s genius (or infectious laugh), we are left to gape and laugh at the two hapless protagonists and guiltily reward ourselves with a Godard film afterwards.
I had the privilege of screening the first two episodes, and what can I say – they blew my mind. I’ll never be the same person again. Thank you, HISTORY, for making me reconsider my place in the universe and ponder existential questions. Sarcasm aside, what you see is pretty much what you get: a somewhat-entertaining slice of “reality,” with the self-professed “history nerd,” the Prince of Darkness, and his (very hairy) son traveling to random U.S. locales: the museum of military tanks (Ozzy rides a tank!), a gun range (Ozzy fires a powder rifle!), a Williamsburg wig store (Ozzy wears an 18th-Century wig!), the NASA headquarters (Ozzy goes to Space Camp!) and the Alamo (on which Ozzy allegedly peed in the 1980s)… and so on and so forth.
Standouts, if you can call anything a “standout” in what essentially amounts to total dreck, include: Jack and Ozzy in a Chick-fil-A, listening to one of Ozzy’s hits on the radio while munching on those pickle-marinated slices of heaven; Ozzy’s obsession with cannibalism; Ozzy perking up at the mention of opium (“I wish I had a time machine,” he says, then stating plainly: “I want opium”); and all the stuff involving NASA (but I’m a space buff – a screenshot of a nebula would mesmerize me for hours). I never thought I’d say this, but Sharon and Kelly are sorely missing from this show, which could use some of the former’s wisecracks and the latter’s eccentricity. It gets pretty tedious, watching father and son touching historical rocks and encountering apathetic experts of their respective fields. There are pieces of historical wisdom, mind you: “The civil war kinda started around here… and ended around here”; “This town has been restored… complete with poop”; “Your bones have feelings”; “I got more piss than spit”; “I’ve always wondered if they have sex in space” – and my favorite, a prolonged scene of Jack trying to explain to his father what a kilobyte is.
Peter Weir’s brilliant “The Truman Show” predicted the reality TV trend right before it gained traction, its stratospheric rise led by “The Osbournes.” The film nailed everything that’s wrong with the genre. Morally and ethically, one can’t do worse than subjecting themselves to crap like “Ozzy and Jack’s World Tour.” It teaches us nothing about history, it makes us smirk at its protagonist, it underestimates our intelligence, it’s a cash-in and just another excuse to gawk at C-list celebrities… do stuff. Who’s the target audience here? Metalheads-slash-history-buffs-slash-reality-show-fans? The fact that Ozzy doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s happening 80% of the time is cringe-worthy and doesn’t help matters. Please note on record: I DO NOT recommend this show. Yet, secretly, when no one – except maybe your lovely and understanding spouse – are watching, you may want to curl up in front of the TV – and it becomes a drug. Whether you can handle the withdrawal is up to you.
Premieres July 24th at 10/9c on HISTORY
