Entertainment Industry 101

Some extremley wealthy people in the not too distant past came up with a very profitable idea that would be repeated over and over to become a very popular move in the entertainment industry. The idea is as follows: take an already rich and well-known personality and attach their name to anything remotely sellable; wringing all the possible profits out of them good and fast before said personality fucks up and spends the rest of their lives as headline fodder in Who Weekly (eg Paris Hilton). The advantage here is that the person is already famous and so all the promotional foundations have already been made and all that is left to do is to attach all the routine "talents" to the celebrity and watch as they generate money for an entire industry whilst slowly self-destructing. This is how it usually goes:

1. 
   
   Star of their own kids TV show (in which they sing the theme song)


2. 
   
   Merchandise for the TV show is released


3. 
   
   They release an album off the back of the talent they displayed for singing their own theme song


4. 
   
   They star in a movie


5. 
   
   They launch their own clothing lable/makeup lable/perfume lable


6. 
   
   They get photographed being drunk, pregnant, homosexual, bitchy or all of the above


7. 
   
   Their pure image tainted, the celebrity is replaced by a brand new, untainted celebrity


8. 
   
   The cycle repeats

One of the latest pre-teen, career launching TV shows is Zoey 101, starring Jamie Lynn Spears (famous for no other reason than being the younger sister of Britney Spears). Needless to say the show opens with a musical number by the up-and-coming star herself. I watched an episode of Zoey 101 on Rollercoaster the other day and I must say that it is the worst TV show in recent memory. Described generously by Wikipedia as "an American live-action situation comedy" the show follows in the tradition of shows like Lizzie McGuire except that in Zoey 101 everything is painfully worse. It features all the usual suspects; the male best friend with a hidden crush, the female best friend who is just a brunette version of the main character, the nerdy friend who is exploited for her knowledge, the self-obsessed bonehead, the younger brother; the list goes on and on.

Deciding to break no boundries at all, all themes in the show are based loosely around "teenage issues" but also try to maintain the purity of all the characters and actors. As an example of this, in the episode I watched the younger brother became involved with a juvenile delinquent character. To really drive her naughtiness home Zoey says that "she kisses boys on the mouth" and that she "wears too much makeup." Holy Shit! Mouth kissing? What a little slut. Why not also say she can't act and further amp up the hypocracy. The guy friend is also the most pussy whipped guy friend ever. He does ALL the dirty work for Zoey and gets fuck all in return. At one point he resists weakly for a second; Zoey says "pleeeeeaaaaase" and the poor, sexless sap caves like a Beaconsfield mine. The plot is slow moving and laboriously explained at every slight twist. The characters flop back and forth; in and out of fake relationships and in the end nobody ends up with anyone else and the status quo is returned - a clean slate ready for next week. Subtlety and realsim shit themselves and die right at the end when 2 of the characters clothes become invisible by an "anti-skunk-smell" spray. Seriously, this show is aweful and virtually unwatchable. Oh and incase you weren't aware, Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant shortly before the show ended; thus tainting her pure image a little earlier than usual and making way for the next "American live-action situation comedy" to shamelessly cash in on.