ROB’S REVIEW FOR LABOR OF LOVE ON FOX = BOTH A THUMBS UP AND A THUMBS DOWN
On last Friday morning’s show, we read a portion of a review written by a TV critic named Stuart Heritage. Amongst other highlights, Heritage wrote “I really can’t stress this enough, Labor of Love is stupid…You could take this show and bury it in the desert, and people would still be able to locate it from the stench of its utter, logic-defying stupidity. Watching Labor of Love is like pulling your brain out of your ear with a corkscrew and booting it into a lake.” I would like to now formally admonish Mr. Heritage for being too kind.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/21/labor-of-love-kristin-davis-fox
Hosted by dimwit Kristin Davis, this TV show is beyond a train wreck and an insult to more than just our collective intelligence. Never mind, for a moment, the asinine and disturbing premise of a 41-year-old woman looking for a man to make her pregnant, the sheer presentation of the show is wretched. It’s beyond scripted, staged, and stilted, even by terrible “reality” show standards. Most of Davis’ lines are dubbed in post-production and made to look as though she’s talking to the contestants in a way that I assume a high school intern was given the task in his “at home sound editing class.”
One caveat I will give from the jump, as compared to what we thought was the premise; from the very beginning of episode one they make it clear that this is, in fact, just another version of “The Bachelorette,” but with the promise of it also including an insta-family. The whole “journey” is about finding “love,” not just a sperm donor, despite the incredibly stupid first episode “challenge” of donating samples to determine which man is the most virile. The mom-to-be, Kristy, is awkward and, according to my wife, pretty damn creepy. And her “I’m eliminating you” tag line of “I just don’t see us starting a family together,” is a real zinger, delivered with an equal amount of drab.
HOWEVER, Given all of that, it doesn’t take a psychologist to know that only the absolute worst types of people would find their way to such a TV show. And I mean across all spectrums. We know that these shows attract a percentage of people who are just looking to get on TV and get their “big break.” Check. And they are the worst actors of all time. Keanu Reeves looks like Eastwood, Nicholson and Denzel compared to these meatballs. And then there are those who are genuinely looking to meet the love of their life, on TV, in a quest to start a family. Imagine, just for a moment, how wrecked as a human being you have to be to even consider, let alone go through with, such a thing, and you’ve got the 1 woman and 15 “men,” that make the cast of Labor of Love. And perhaps the only thing more creepy than them are the cutaways to their parents and other extended families which almost instantly make you say out loud “oooohhhhh that’s how they turned out this way.”
This is the type of show that 10 years ago morons would have sworn was “totally fake,” and that we were all being “trolled.” Today, no sane person would claim such a thing. This is your society, America, and it is doomed. BUT, that’s what makes it almost addictive. Watching these socially inept and morally bankrupt people try to interact is something akin to handing a Rubik’s Cube to a blind-deaf-mute and realizing an hour later you haven’t been able to stop watching, no matter how uncomfortable you are. Or, as Mr. Heritage wrote, “Labor of Love is so terrible that it doesn’t even feel like a television series. It feels like a document designed to be presented to God as an argument for the total eradication of the human race.” And that’s what makes it so “great.”
