Sunday, 16 September 2012

TV Character = Horrible People number 3 The final dum dum dum!


Hello there, I would like to begin this blog with an apology to my loyal subjects. The recent topless photos of me taken at my friend’s house have brought shame upon my family. It was never my intention to expose my nether regions to the cameraman situated around half a mile away from my location with a telescopic lens. I realise that I was wrong to assume that it would be permissible to be in a state of undress on private property. As for those who published the photographs, I accept your reasoning behind printing them. Of course me being topless is just the same as all those other beautiful people who are topless on beaches across France and you are not in fact a cretinous dogs anus who should be put in stocks whilst Piers Morgan reads his autobiography titled ‘my life as the world’s most insufferable cunt’ aloud 400 times. I never considered that my privacy was nothing more than a joke and that every part of my life should be eagerly read about by the dregs of our society and for this I sincerely thank you.

That’s that sorted, now we can get on with the actual content of the blog and my number 1 TV show where the characters aren’t very nice people, excited? No? Well I have to finish it so just suck it up and pay attention.

I shall get straight into it then; I offer my obligatory apology for fussiness and yadi yadi yada etc. The show I have picked this week is the oldest of the three in my list and actually managed to launch the acting career of one of the world’s biggest stars. That’s right I am talking about Will Smith and his show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

                                          Look at him tickling imaginary balls awwww.

For those of you who don’t know the show, it’s about a young kid born and raised in West Philadelphia. Most of his days are spent out on the playground just chilling, max relaxing and playing basketball outside of the local school. However one day a couple of guys show up and start causing trouble in the neighbourhood and the young kid (Will Smith) gets into a fight, the consequence being that his mother sends him to live with his aunt and uncle in Bel Air. Will gets in a cab, and soon he is off to his new home.[1] The series itself focuses on Will’s[2] attempts to fit in with the different environment of Bel Air. Of course he was born and raised on the streets[3] and he is rather different to his cousins who have been raised in far more comfortable surroundings. Will dresses funny and uses lots of street slang which contrast entirely with his more well to do extended family.

Once again it would seem that I don’t have any particular problems with this show. You are half right, I do enjoy the show, it is funny and Will Smith is just so damn lovable that he gets away with a lot of shit. However being the middle aged man trapped in a 23 year olds body that I am, I was easily able to find subjects of annoyance in amongst all of the fun. There are a few bad people on the show but for now I’ll just stick to the Banks family.

I was going to write about the parents Aunt Vivian and Uncle Phil first, but to be honest they aren’t that bad. They are very bossy, but they are sitcom parents and they kind of have to be. They can both be very arrogant though and the money that they have certainly affects the type of people they are. Phil is often embarrassed by the way Will looks and speaks because it reflects badly on his image. However he does genuinely care for Will so I will let that slide, As for Aunt Viv, well she is kind of a non-character for me, when they changed the actress after the first season she suddenly became more peripheral in the show and I can’t remember her doing much to warrant my hellish wrath. Well done you two, have a cookie, not you Uncle Phil you have to have a fat free one because you are so very fat ha ha ha chortle chortle gosh clinical obesity sure is a hoot.[4]

Unfortunately that is where the niceties end; for you see the rest of the characters I want to highlight really are quite bothersome don’t you know. Let us start with Ashley (Tatyana Ali) the youngest of the children[5]. Ashley is the sweet unassuming one, she looks up to her older siblings and very rarely displays her nasty side. However when she attained brief fame as a pop singer all of that changed and suddenly she became a complete diva[6], she neglected her family, she acted like she was the Queen of the fucking universe and walked around using her brother as a man servant. It seems that a regular topic of the show is how the characters completely change when money and good fortune is involved, even sweet little Ashley is corrupted by money and to think Will was sent to Bel Air to have a better upbringing. Sure he has more money at his disposal, but to be honest I’d rather be poor and nice than rich and arrogant.

Speaking of rich and arrogant we have Carlton (Alfonso Riberio) who is easily one of the worst people not only on this list, but on the overall series of these blogs. This is a man completely obsessed with money, now some might say he is just ambitious, but that simply isn’t true. Carlton refuses to even acknowledge those with less money most of the time and when he does he is such a total and utter dick that you want to strangle him with his stupid sweater vest. The guy is so tear inducingly arrogant you wonder if the show’s writers actually like the character. That’s not even the worst thing however; Carlton is constantly worried about his inheritance, that’s right he is not so bothered if he father dies as long as he gets a sizeable chunk of his money. I suspect a lot of people would at least let this cross their mind, it’s only natural to think about what might get left to you but it’s not natural to bring it up again and again and to constantly fret that your actions might cause you to lose it. Never mind though we always have the funny Carlton dance to distract us from his master prickery.

If you thought Carlton was a prick however just wait until you meet his sister Hilary (Karyn Parsons). Hilary is your typical valley girl type; she speaks with that ridiculous upward inflection all the time and it appears that instead of a brain she simply had a balloon filled with the stupidest air available stuffed into her head. Like many of the other characters she is incredibly arrogant and obsessed with money with a tendency to spit on those beneath her. However unlike Carlton who despite his flaws is likeable most of the time, I really can’t remember any instance of this happening with Hilary. She is incredibly lazy and expects the Butler Geoffrey to do absolutely everything for her and when he is unable she complains like a child. She is the epitome of a spoiled brat, in fact in a flashback sequence showing her character as a child she was already on her way to being megabitch 5000, but she was a child so it’s forgivable. However when you reach your 20’s and 30’s it just isn’t. One of the main running jokes on the show centres around Hilary constantly asking her father for money to go shopping, yet she doesn’t contribute around the house financially whatsoever even when she becomes a television presenter which would likely earn her a sizable pay check. Seriously Hilary I think we need to have a talk because your behaviour has become unacceptable and this makes my sad little life a bit less tolerable.

I have saved the best for last it seems. Now this wasn’t meant to be in any particular order and to be honest I think Hilary and Carlton are worse than Will’s character, but because he is the focal point of the show I thought it was best for him to the final discussion topic. Unlike the others Will was raised in poverty and so he sees through the whole arrogance because of money schitck. Unfortunately his character is arrogant in a different way, his vanity centres around the ladies. Now in real life Will Smith is considered attractive and so on and that’s fine, however in the show there is nobody that fancies Will more than the man himself. He constantly brings up just how great looking he is, just how good he is with the ladies and so forth. However Will is kinda totally sexist, his chat up lines centre around how he is going to screw the particular woman and if you skip to about 1.02 in this YouTube clip below his method of seduction is a tad rapey[7]


Remember when I mentioned making fun of Uncle Phil’s obesity? Well Will is the king of that, he constantly calls his Uncle, the man who has taken into his home and put him through school fat and can be pretty darn cruel about it. Of course it is all done in good humour for the show, but just imagine something like that in real life, his lack of respect would not go down so well in other cases. Add to that the constant piss taking of his cousin Carlton for not being a very good black man which is actually quite racist when you come to think about it. As you see that Will can sometimes be a bit of a penis or as he would call it a big willy, shame on you, you dirty boy.

Well well well, there we have it, all done and dusted it’s about time for me to hit the old dusty trail. One does hope that these blogs weren’t overly ranty[8] and I don’t come across as a cynical dick muncher.[9] You must not forget that I like all these shows and the horrible things these characters do actually make me laugh and I don’t just sit there getting madder and madder at them, which I will save until I am at least 40 and the world has long since passed me by.
Bye kids!


[1] That concept would make a good theme song don’t you think?
[2] Will Smith is the actor and the characters name because come on its Will freaking Smith.
[3] See theme song.
[4] More on that hilarious topic later.
[5] Well technically Nicky is the youngest, but I won’t pick on him because he is like 4 years old and everyone knows children that age are purely evil anyway, let’s take that as read.
[6] That’s music industry speak for total and utter bitchface
[7] Sure Jordan from Scrubs looks as if she is enjoy it, but she could just be afraid that the man humping her leg might murder her if she tells him to go away.
[8] Though they totally were.
[9] Which I totally do.

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