 I Love the 80s & Nothing wrong with that; it's probably healthy to stay plugged in to what seems to be going on in the "real world." This is what makes magazines like Entertainment Weekly or shows like Entertainment Tonight useful … they provide common touchstones for people to connect around, a sort of objective middle ground that prevents people from becoming isolated by their own hipness or cluelessness. That said, there is a deadening effect to embracing this middle ground too strictly, or rather not venturing beyond its bounds. It's as vacuum-inhabiting as rejecting contemporary culture entirely. To me, the balanced approach is to acknowledge what's going on, but to hold one's own viewpoints about it. What bothers me about I Love the 80s is its heavy reliance on the shared-nostalgia approach that made The Wedding Singer so funny for some, but so maddeningly irritating for me. Holding up a relic from one's childhood and poking fun at it is obvious, unsubtle, and easy. So we all remember My Pretty Pony. Ha, ha. Most 80s nostalgia falls in that camp; it's the Gen-X equivalent of Leno. The humor is "big," as Seth from The OC so astutely defines. The proper use of 80s nostalgia, in my mind, is more along the lines of Donnie Darko … quiet, spot-on, honest, and more purposeful. I Love the 80s devotes individual episodes to a given year of the 80s, which allows it to get deeper into the nostalgia of each year than something like That 80s Show ever attempted to. Instead of the basic Michael Jackson Zipper Jacket™ references mish-moshed alongside Rick Astley or other disparate phenomena, the focus is tightened so that the major shared experiences of each year are spotlighted in proper chronology. This is important because otherwise, all we have is a vague and general "hilarious" agreement that "the 80s were so embarrassing!" Sure, everyone's childhood era was embarrassing. I'd rather see a show about people peeing their pants in second grade, or being humilated by their parents, or feeling like a fatso, or having impossibly unfashionable hair, but I guess each generation needs to focus on its cultural totems instead of their own pain to revise the notion of why the era actually was embarrassing. ILT80s employs mostly comedians who cut their teeth on 90s MTV comedy shows and who have gone onto success mostly connected with MTV or VH1 (e.g. Michael Ian Black, Donal Logue, Beth Littleford). They provide alternately hilarious and "hilarious" ribbing of each year's trends, alongside stars from that era who are willing to make fun of themselves (e.g. Adrian Zmed), and current hipsters who grew up in the 80s (e.g. The Donnas, Juliette Lewis). The show is strongest when someone simply admits that they actually liked a particular thing instead of trying to make a mountain of mockery out of a misfired molehill. I like to hear someone tap into their childhood glee instead of their adult cynicism, because it's the glee that actually fuels nostalgia, not the later refutation of that innocence. Still, the cynical remarks can be quite funny, as the editing is sharp and the people genuinely witty. Logue and Black consistently stand out, as they are willing to push things further than they should go, usually into a sexual area. But the whole attitude tires quickly, since it's just an incessant stream of "Look at THIS thing from 1983! Isn't it funny!" It's a cut above my coworkers trying to have the same conversation, but it's not much different. Also, many of the things they focus on are not particularly funny beyond the simple "Remember THAT?" eureka. Like, Fernando Valenzuela has some comedic value as a punchline, but I'd love to see someone put their finger on what it is. Is it that he was a fat Mexican who became very famous? Or is it simply that he became famous in 1981, and things from 1981 are inherently funny? How about this: I love Fernando Valenzuela because he was famous in 1981, and in 1981 finding his card in a pack of Topps® baseball cards provided me with a genuine thrill, and a feeling of connectedness to the world. No, that's not funny at all, but does everything have to be? And at any rate, Fernando Valenzuela is not, for any definable reason, funny. If you can tune out the sheer "Everything old is FUNNY" vibe, the footage of the show is a lot of fun to watch. They dig up extremely forgotten moments, like Saturday-morning PSAs featuring teen stars of the day talking about "important issues," or toy commercials you never believed you'd see again. It's a refreshing change of pace from every other 80s nostalgia show trotting out the same tired footage of, like, Gary Coleman saying "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" I eagerly await the day when my generation's belief that they are all capable of turning everything into "hilarity" runs aground, and we move into a phase where everyone speaks truly about what they do and did love about this life. I got tired of making fun of the 80s while still in the 80s. Let's move on.
Review by La Fée © 2004 |