8TV's weird late night programming

Because I'm such a night owl, I can't bring myself to go to bed before midnight. So the watershed programming is pretty important; but being that this IS Malaysia and you can barely show bare armpits in deodorant commercials, not to mention adult language and material, that point was pretty much moot. (I just wanted an excuse to use the phrase "watershed programming").

But lately, 8TV (whose demographic is 18-35) has a few "interesting choices" of shows for their 11.45 p.m. slot: Kenny vs Spenny, Distraction and I Propose.

I've heard of Kenny vs Spenny (as in I've seen it listed on the Comedy Central site), but I never knew what it was until it was shown on 8TV. Not like I follow it religiously, but here's what I think the show is about: it's about two friends, Kenny and Spenny (Spencer) who compete in the most ridonkulous competitions like, Who Makes the Most Convincing Woman, and inane stuff like that. Whoever loses the competition of that episode has to do something utterly humiliating.

First of all, I can't believe that this show has had 4 seasons under its belt, and has spinoffs. It's got to be one of the more idiotic shows on TV E-V-E-R. The thing about this show here is that it's one of those SPB programmes, which takes the steam out of the show.

Speaking of Comedy Central programming, I LOVE Distraction. I used to watch it back in America, it's pretty funny. It's a half hour game show hosted by Brit comic Jimmy Carr, who is about as sarcastic as it can get. Each week there's 4 people and in the "getting to know the contestants" stage they have to answer questions about each other's weird jobs, habits, or tricks.

In the first 3 rounds, contestants are distracted by the weirdest things possible (to buzz in to answer, you get pie in the face or have the buzzers on another contestant's butt or have ping pong balls in your face, etc) while answering really dead easy questions about pop culture. You know it's gonna be a great show when they bring the nudists (which you know they won't show here lah). One by one, contestants get eliminated until the last person standing is left; in the last round, it's implied that they've won the prizes (never cash, I noticed), but in order to keep the prizes intact (because they'll get destroyed), they have to answer the questions correctly. Obviously at this stage the questions aren't as easy peasy as earlier in the show, so there usually would be SOME damage to the prizes. Great fun for the audience.

And then... there's I Propose. Initially I thought that this was a TLC show, but after some googling, I found out that it was actually a Style Network show (go figure). This one's about guys planning to pop the question to their love of their life in three days. Yes I said it - THREE DAYS: get the ring, plan the whole shebang, get permission all. Of course the girls don't know about this because they thought they're on a reality show about great relationships that work (*pbft*). My favourite was this one where the guy wanted to propose to his girlfriend of a few months, who is made to act like a princess. His family was shocked like no one's business and I'm pretty sure that the girl's parents are shocked too when he called for their permission. Couldn't help but think that the guy must be quite the player before this episode (ha ha).