IDIOT BOX SAVANT Wardrobe courtesy of the Dumpster behind the Gucci outlet store.

Thursday, May 22, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Idiot Box Savant: Ooh! I'm scared!

By Andrew Kiraly

A drunk, unshaven, abuse-hurling Pat Sajak haunts my dreams of late. Brown-bagged bottle of Boone's Farm in hand, he staggers into the studio set of my mind and snorts and guffaws at my futile attempts to buy a vowel. What does it mean? I don't know, but the intensive, self-administered P'zone therapy is clearly not working. Oh yeah, that reminds me: Break out the wineskins and dancing hairy Greeks, for the P'zone is back! You know, Pizza Hut's genetic meld of pizza and a sleeping bag. Man, I'd grown so desperate over the past year, I resorted to making my own by heating up a Tombstone, folding it in half and then driving my van over it. A lot of trouble, yes, but on the upside, it was how I invented Flavor TracksĒ. So, anyway, a desperate Savant, ever a fan of alternative medicine, watched a few episodes of "Scare Tactics" (Fridays, 10 and 10:30 p.m., Sci Fi network, cable channel 45), in hopes that shrill stoner-harpy hostess Shannen Doherty would deign to sink a stiletto heel or two into my REM sleep instead.

In case you're not a big Sci Fi channel fan--that is, if you're not fond of dressing like a Romulan at your friend's wedding and don't define menage-a-trois as jacking off with two hands--"Scare Tactics" is like an extreme "Candid Camera." Remember that show? Ah, that halcyon era when a man was truly nonplussed when he walked into a dental office to discover--zoiks!--a nude receptionist. Now, in order to truly shock us, she has to be a naked flesh-consuming recepti-bot from Planet Please Don't Change the Channel the Nicoderm Ad Is About to Come on Again. "Lo, what a jaded age we live in," I opine wearily as my flame-engulfed race car crashes through a wall of rotting sheep carcasses.

The problem with "Scare Tactics" is there's little buildup; the mark finds the fake dead body, or gets cornered by day-laborer Todd Bridges in a monster suit, etc., and then--just when it looks like the victim is about to gelatinize into a quivering mound of distilled anxiety--the pranksters suddenly yell, "Dude! You're on 'Scare Tactics'!"

Invariably, a look of relief floods the victim's face as he thinks, "Oh...um, what is 'Scare Tactics'?" See, the pranks are so extreme, threatening victims with severe injury and death, that the Scare Tacticians can't wait too long before exposing the joke, lest the victim starts vomiting streams of pure fear from his eye sockets. Right when the shit starts to get good, they pull the plug. What's up with that? I was more scared by those Centrum vitamin commercials in between, which regularly try to intimidate you with a new, crucial, totally made-up nutrient you suddenly can't live without. Listen, dark vitamin overlords, if we really needed something called "lycopene," wouldn't it occur naturally in crunchy, nacho cheese-flavored form? Thought so!

So skip the lametardedness that is "Scare Tactics." Besides, the ante-upping nature of gotcha-TV is such that pretty soon we'll see an even more extreme show, one where they'll just, say, duct-tape bananas to some guy and then loose on him a herd of famished silverback gorillas dressed as 18th century British noblemen. Though there was this one prank that was pretty funny, where they tried to fool this guy into thinking an ax murderer had killed Shannen Doherty on the set of a faux reality-TV show gone awry. The funny part was the dude ran upstairs and quivered in the corner with the producer. Ha! The sloth-gods of prank TV frown on you, Ms. Doherty! Pat Sajak, drink deep and unleash your primal fury!