Sometimes the people writing descriptions for TV shows go just a littttle bit off the rails.
I’m visiting my parents in Cleveland, Ohio, right now. They, like many parents, do not consume media the same way I do. I watch TV through some combination of TiVo, Netflix, Hulu and Russian streaming video sites that Fox hasn’t shut down yet. They watch TV by turning on the TV when the show they want is on.
As we sat there yesterday afternoon watching the USA Network (whose slogan is apparently “Where every day is Law and Order: SVU Marathon Day!”) I started finding myself reading the program summaries provided by the on-screen guide. Which reminded me of some pictures I’d started collecting online several months back of really weird TV program descriptions.
So, as Benson and Stabler (and to a lesser extend Richard Belzer and Ice-T) busted one celebrity guest rapist after another, I filled in the gaps and dug up the 11 most ridiculous on-screen TV guide synopses.
Note: Many of these seem to come from Comcast and, specifically, FearNET programming on Comcast… so they must have a pissed-off aspiring screenwriter doing their synopses. I expanded my search outside of the Comcast realm, but you can see a tribute exclusively devoted to their strange program descriptions at WTFComcast.
1 | Screaming Torture Murder Time
A hilarious way of describing a Hostel movie. Sure, when I plugged “Sexy Disco Party Time” into Google Translate’s Slovak-to-English machine it spat back “disco sexy party time”… but, you know, that’s not really the joke.
2 | The Lindsay Lohan Experience
It’s kinda like the opposite of how Tara Reid was cast as a girl who was serious about keeping her virginity in American Pie.
3 | The Ellen Show Part Two?
Well, with this season’s contestants, they’ve got a point.
4 | It’s like they’ve never seen Doughboy cap a fool
No one would’ve had the balls to say this until Are We There Yet? finally de-gangstaed Ice Cube.
5 | My ex, the whore
He was so eager to anonymously blast his whore of an ex that he forgot the “im” before “partial.”
6 | My filth, the ho
The joys of premature truncation! Just like when my listings chop out the last few letters on Gene Simmons Family Jewels or when I’m playing Bonestorm and try to enter my name as “Thrillhouse.”
7 | Maaaaaaaatlock!
For what it’s worth, this would be just about the only thing that could seduce me into watching Matlock.
8 | I think the obvious answer is “blame.”
Also, it is kinda funny they can boil Real World down to the four words “young strangers live together”… compared to how high concept reality shows have gotten (“It’s billionaire versus bear! Each of you thought you were in a race to plant the Taco Bell flag at the North Pole. What you didn’t know was the race was a chase, spiced up by the presence of ‘The Betrayer.'”)
9 | The carne asada is made of people! People!
I do have to disagree with this synopsis though: There is absolutely NO context in the past, present or future when “staycation” isn’t an absolutely cringeworthy word.
10 | Horror movies and “oh, that’s gratuitous” go hand-in-hand
You just expect it to be blood or gore or nudity… never like this.
11 | If You’re Into It
If you want me to, I can watch films with you.
If I only knew,
That’s what you’re into.
You and him, him and you.
If that’s what you’re into.
Him watching films, around you,
You watching films, yeah you’re there too.
And if you want me to, we can have phone sex too.
Like a 1-900 dude,
If that’s what you’re into.
How ’bout him, calling you?
If that’s what you’re into.
Calling you while in the nude,
Is that what you’d wanna do?
If it’s cool with you, I’ll wear a clown mask too.
It’d be a bad dream come true,
Providing that’s what you are into.
Is that what you’re into?
A freaky clown mask wearing dude?
That’s what he’s prepared to do,
Is that the kind of thing that you think you might be into?
And then maybe later, I’ll stalk you like an attentive waiter,
At the home, office, store and dancing,
You think that might be what you fancy?
Trying not to be rude,
Stalking you eating food.
Snapping pics when you’re nude,
We heard that’s what you are into.
Then it gets absurder, as we work up to murder.
Not sure that you’d be a good victim,
So we’ll do a drifter, you can pick him.
How ’bout you pick a dude?
For him to murder in front of you?
Clown mask, phone sex talking lewd,
The stalking is important too.
All the things I do, the things I’d do for you.
If I only knew,
That’s what you’re into.
