David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. La "Bell" Epoque
No better way to commemorate today’s story about Fox’s new show “The Wedding Bells” than with a story about a wedding Your Mayor attended underscoring the show’s premise that the best weddings are hilarious disasters.
And, this time, I promise, this story is absolutely true – no compression of events or characters – as opposed to a recent entry that was utterly fabricated but taken seriously.
En route to a friend’s wedding, I had to change a flat tire on my car – but I still got there before the bride, who was delayed, no doubt interminably to the groom’s mind. (I don’t remember the particulars of her excuse, but it had something to do with a wardrobe malfunction long before Justin Timberlake introduced the phrase into everyday speech.)
But that wasn’t even really part of the bigger story arc. No, that belonged to the groom’s elderly uncle, who, upon entering the cozy chapel in which the ceremony was to take place, leaned into a wooden pew and let rip with a massive f@rt that resonated throughout the area that left my friends and me in paroxysms of stifled laughter that endured throughout the entirety of the service. Any moment where our laughs might have finally subsided, someone began chortling anew, leaving the rest of us helplessly striving to conceal our amusement. To this day, I remember nothing of the service save those poorly muted guffaws.
But said uncle’s antics scarcely ended at the ceremony. When the wedding party arrived at the reception site, he promptly walked up to his own image at a mirrored wall and asked it where the men’s room was. He also approached a friend’s girlfriend and molested her breasts and, for his coup de grace, ventured onto the dance floor with a young relative. Mind you, this was a huge, barrel-chested fellow outfitted in a rental tuxedo. So, when his tux pants collapsed around his ankles, revealing spindly legs that no one would’ve guessed could’ve supported his massive frame, all were blissfully bemused. And, when he didn’t notice and kept dancing, all were ecstatic, stunned, wishing cell-phone cameras had been invented at that point.
Based on this experience – and virtually everyone has attended a wedding this crazy, if not crazier – it would be hard to call any plotline this show could cook up far-fetched.
Another episode was made available too late to include in the review of the show, the latecomer entitled “Wedding from Hell.” I fear they’ve used that title far too early in the series’ existence.
In it, a father and a minister don’t want to participate in a marriage because the groom seems transparently gay. Meanwhile, Jane’s (Teri Polo) marriage appears to be on the rocks, while Ernesto, the chef who’s been hitting on her, tells her she must have an affair, with someone, anyone.
Meanwhile, Sammy (Sarah Jones) demonstrates her prowess with a pellet gun on a man’s private parts, and Annie (KaDee Strickland) continues her simmering feud/passive-aggressive flirtation with the wedding photographer David. Ultimately, however, the result is far too sweet to even venture into the neighborhood that might be mistaken "from Hell."
Weddings are traditionally such unwieldy, emotional events that a show such as this should conceivably be able to mine – hilariously and movingly – stories for many years to come. But Fox has consigned it to the relatively low-rated ghetto of Friday nights; so: Will audiences agree?
Comments
If I'm home on Friday night, and that's hardly a given, what with an apartment in Acapulco to attend to, I'll watch this.
Weddings are a hotbed of inappropriate behavior and dashed expectations.
I once hosted a wedding (my sister's second) at my boss's lovely mansion-esque home (I do NOT recommend this) at which the guests threw birdseed into the pool. As if that weren't bad enough, my "friend" (who was supposed to be acting as the photographer) got completely drunk and broke the toilet tank in the bathroom my boss's wife specifically requested that NO ONE use, leaving me drenched and bloodied on the pieces while I attempted to sop up the mess with her designer towels. Good times.
Posted by: Suzy Q | March 7, 2007 5:04 PM