I'm kind of mad at you guys right now, because we stumbled on a show over the weekend, and honestly, I CANNOT BELIEVE that this show exists, that you know full well how much I love absurd funny stuff, and that not one of you told me about this. Shame on you! If you happen upon something like this, I am the one you tell, ok?
That said, I would like to go on record as saying that Untold Stories of the ER might be the most fantastic show ever, in the history of ever.
Here's a clip, to start us off. Given the fact that this particular piece of cinematic excellence is called "Pipe in the Head," I'm sure you can imagine that it is quite gory, in a "stage makeup" kind of way. So, brace yourself, but not too hard. It doesn't look that real.
Here's what makes it so awesome:
--It has very low production value. Apparently the real doctors are actually acting as the actors in the reenactment, and they are NOT good. At all. Once they switch from "documentary" to "representation," it is clear that they are not trained actors. I wondered about this so much that I looked inthe IMDB listing for the show, and sure enough, most of the "actor" actors only worked on the show until 2006, which means that somewhere along the way, a doctor said "Hey, I can just say the lines," and the studio executives loved this because it saved them on union fees for the actors, and a whole new magical genre was born.
--The writing is not supposed to be funny, and therefore it really is. Case in point: segments titled "Pipe in Head," "Rottweiler in the ER" and "Maggots in My Baby," and reenactment writing that is so stilted, you almost feel badly for the real doctors who are saying the lines.
I said almost, because the end result is just so, SO FUNNY, I don't want to criticize it too much, because I'm afraid it might go off the air, even though it costs two cents to make and gets good enough ratings to have been on for seven years. It's like they know it's bad, and they go with it, and what results is a beautifully absurd slapstick, with wooden dialog, people falling through the ceilings, and special effects that look like they were done by castoffs from the Barnum & Bailey school of stage makeup, where you are just "suggesting" the injuries. If you watch a couple of these clips, you will get exactly what I mean.
While I'm on the subject of this show, did you know that "Discovery Fit & Health," which is the network where this show runs, should really be called the "People Making Bad Choices" network now? In one weekend, we saw this show as well as shows called "DUI" and "Women's Lockup," in which every person in each show was of course completely innocent, which is why they would let themselves be filmed getting a DUI and then screaming about it, right? RIGHT?
The bottom line, friends, is that you must watch this show, because it is so fake and funny, it is even better than Reno 911, because the people who are making it do not intend it to be satirical. They are serious, and this is magical.