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Short hits close to home with "Primetime Glick'

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 17, 2001

Any journalist who has covered an entertainment beat for longer than two weeks knows someone like Jiminy Glick.

He's the guy who asks Ben Affleck how it feels to make his film debut in Pearl Harbor. He's the guy clad in ill-fitting Bermuda shorts who insists on the ultimate journalistic faux pas: a chummy, fan-style grip-and-grin picture with the star.

Part hack and part eccentric, Glick's laughable approach horrifies reporters who fear guilt by association. For press-hating celebrities (a good percentage of them, these days), he's confirmation that most so-called journalists on the entertainment beat are even dumber than actors.

Which is an amazing feat, considering that Glick doesn't really exist.

He's the brainchild of comedic actor Martin Short -- a character inspired by "the worst elements of 20 years of press junkets" that Short steps into via a fat suit and 90 minutes of makeup time.

Originally created for Short's ill-fated, syndicated daytime variety program The Martin Short Show, Glick has now failed upward into his own series, Primetime Glick, debuting at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday on Comedy Central.

A 300-pound nudge who lived with his parents until age 30 and spent five years as personal assistant to Charles (Death Wish) Bronson, Glick is a clueless, over-the-top show biz also-ran who should be making up show biz columns for the Weekly World News, but somehow got his own nighttime talk show.

"What strikes me funny in comedy is all of the lunatics out there in the world," said Short, who makes Glick's interview segments with celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin the series' centerpiece. "Some of them are your dentist ... some of them have TV shows. And broad as you think a character is, you go out in real life, and there's somebody a bit broader."

Of course, watching Short-as-Glick yuk it up in improvised "interview" segments with Seinfeld and Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher -- he compliments Seinfeld for his work on the sitcom Benson and mispronounces Maher's name as "Mayor" -- a sensitive journalist can't help wondering.

Is this how Hollywood sees all reporters?

It's that same twinge I got from NBC's quickly departed drama Deadline, featuring a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who took no notes and jumped into police interrogations like he owned them.

That twinge returned while watching The Beast, an ABC drama that debuted Wednesday, showing a 24-hour cable news channel where the owner gets the right to televise an execution just by making a telephone call (something real journalists have fought court battles over for years) and a leather-jacketed anchor taunts a killer by ripping up his "manifesto" on air.

I was about to bemoan the stereotypes when I remembered a few things: racist, suspect-beating cop Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue; a district attorney who pushed police into executing a hit man on The Practice; nice-guy emergency room doctor Mark Greene, who was shown letting a killer patient die on ER's season finale.

The upshot? TV stereotypes everybody. Get used to it.

Short diplomatically insists Primetime Glick isn't a swipe at entertainment journalists, but satire of nighttime talk shows in general (tell me another one, Marty).

Still, as it veers from curiously amusing to oddly over the top -- Michael McKean is particularly effective as the show's overly made-up, harp-playing bandleader -- Primetime Glick emerges as an intriguing playground for Short's rubber-faced antics and big-name show biz pals.

"You look around television, and it's startling to see the people that America has said, "We anoint you as a success on television,"' said the actor. "The biggest satire is to think that somebody would have given a guy (like Glick) a show in the first place."

Old folks be warned (and in TV land, that's anyone over 35): Summertime TV is going to the kiddies.

What else to conclude after watching two shows headed for network TV this week?

Indeed, NBC's Go Fish, debuting at 8 p.m. Tuesday with two half-hour episodes on WFLA-Ch. 8 and ABC's You Don't Know Jack, debuting at 8 p.m. Wednesday on WFTS-Ch. 28, are two different, desperate grabs for young eyeballs destined for two very different levels of success.

Go Fish, a mediocre comedy focused on the adventures of freshman Andy "Fish" Troutner's first days in high school, is the problem child -- a cynical, Malcolm in the Middle-inspired absurdity that NBC is burning off amid reruns of Frasier and Ed.

Fish (Kieran Culkin of The Cider House Rules) struggles with geeky parents (including Freaks and Geeks' Joe Flaherty), a way-cool brother who now teaches at his school and a beautiful girl who somehow finds Fish's constant bumbling endearing.

Though well-produced and filled with appealing actors, Go Fish is Malcolm lite, a screwball family comedy produced by a network too gutless to make the characters as silly, weird or mercilessly self-centered as we've come to expect. And enjoy.

You Don't Know Jack takes a different tack, bringing a delightfully energetic and oddball version of the kinetic computer CD-ROM trivia game to television -- an inspired summertime experiment that echoes the days when ABC debuted Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in August.

Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Reubens plays host Troy Stevens, a droll, mop-haired cynic who wears brightly colored leisure suits and comes off like Regis Philbin channeled by Dr. Seuss through pop star Beck. His favorite line: "The only thing phony and insincere on this show (wait as camera moves in for extreme close-up) ... is me!"

Indeed, underneath all the brightly flashing craziness is a real game show with real contestants, ABC insists. They rack up thousands of dollars navigating a sea of brain-teasing trivia questions in formats fans of the computer game would recognize -- including "Dis or Dat" (figure out which fact applies to one of two things) and the "Jack Attack" word association playoff.

The show moves at a breakneck pace: One moment, former Olympian Carl Lewis is running onstage to light a torch; the next minute a mariachi band is playing full tilt -- distractions concocted to confuse contestants and amuse an audience weary of traditional quiz show settings.

It's a marriage of flashy visuals, cheeky questions and bizarre-o sight gags guaranteed to draw young eyeballs raised on retro, '70s-style Beck videos, Jerry Springer and Charlie's Angels updates.

And as one of the few summer series worth a second look, it's bound to draw a few of us old coots as well. After all, there's only so many Diagnosis Murder reruns a thirtysomething can take.

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