Time to pull the plug

As somebody who had doubts about this show from the beginning but stuck
with it through the occasional flashes of brilliance and really wanted to like
it and have it succeed, I can barely express how much I hated everything
about the March 7 Bollywood episode and the direction the show has taken.

The low point was Larry Bird's comments to Dick Butkus about being the
4th favorite, which apparently was played for some inexplicable laugh, but
instead came across as abusive and mean-spirited and pretty close to sadistic.
When your only reaction at the end of a bit is to feel bad for a little kid who
just got treated like garbage by his dad, something misfired with the comedy.
Unfortunately, that was just the start of the problems.

They returned to the gimmick of breaking away from the normal script to
reference the show's overall status in television land, but unlike when they did
it at the end of season 1 for a clever laugh, this time it was strangely heavy-
handed and forced. They might as well have gone all in and had Larry Bird
say "this isn't season 1, LENNY!", then have him storm off as Lenny shouts back
at him "you know you can't say that in the middle of the show, SIMON!"

As for the Bollywood Musical production, maybe somebody who enjoys that kind
of thing can explain how clever it was, because I found it tedious, although that
has more to do with having a musical episode at all than any problem with the
genre. It felt like they went to all the trouble of doing it (and it was admittedly
quite a spectacle) just to prove they could and as filler to pay off the
mistaken-meaning final punch line.

Why the show included a never-before used format of oddly chosen outtakes to
subject us to even more of it is beyond me. I have to assume the show has given
up on attracting new viewers, because I can't imagine what somebody would think
if they tuned in tonight for the first time.

I don't have the capability of playing back the episode, but near the very end of
the outtakes, when Jamie Gertz falls out of sync with the choreography, she's
heard to say something along the lines of "wait, what are we doing here?"
If only somebody had stopped to ask that question far earlier in the creation of
this mess of an episode.

After tonight, there's no reason to feel bad when the inevitable cancellation
of this show is announced.

"This isn't season 1 Marty!". I wish it was.