The Program

Gather round, all ye non-believers and outlanders, ye Wildlings of the Winter, ye Stone Men of the Northlands, ye Staunch Truehearts of the Free Kingdoms, ye wide-eyed Mummers of the Riverlands, and ye.. ye...

Screw it. OK, all of the aforementioned can just take off. Everyone. Just get up and leave. No not you: you Generation-Y direlings. You stay. Sit. Gather 'round the fire while I open up the ancient scrolls, those that the elders of our village sealed for antiquity, only to be opened in times of the foulest of circumstances.

What? No, this is worse than the League and that Sue Dibney/Dr. Light bit.

Much worse.

Are you ready? Here goes: In 1982, all of humanity stood united as one in the face of the gravest of threats. The Bildebergers, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Trilateral Commission, the Children of Eris, and all of the other factions from the Illuminati board game organized an Army of Man, banded together with purpose and determination not matched since the collective human loathing of Galactica 1980.

We killed the Variety Show.

Destroyed it.

You have no idea... no concept... of the severity of this blight that threatened all of humanity. I won't even begin to describe the pain, the suffering, the brutal destructive forces unleashed by the Variety Show. It made the triple whammy of Vietnam, Watergate, and Up The Academy seem like an episode of Zoom. But this time, there was no Ubbi-Dubbi language to save us. Instead, we stood enslaved before our Satanic Overlords, subject to their capricious whims and sadistic pleasures. Don't believe me? Let's take a gander at their ranks:

• Shields and Yarnell
• Captain and Tenneille (thousands were instantly obliterated at the sight of "The Bionic Watermelon")
• Donny and Marie
• The Starland Vocal Band
• Sonny and Cher
• The Mandrell Sisters
• Donny and freakin' Marie
• Pink Lady and Jeff
• Tony Orlando and Dawn
• The Carpenters
• Howard Cosell
• Leif Garrett
• Do you get it yet? DONNY AND MARIE!!!

Still not convinced? Are you one of those Variety Show revisionists who deny the horror, the destruction, the cultural genocide perpetrated by Variety Shows?

I give you my final piece of evidence: The Star Wars Holiday Special. QED.

So on a chill autumn evening in 1982, we (and by we, I mean every Carbon-based lifeform in the Universe) assembled at the shores of Lake Minnetonka, and, after the ritual sacrifice of Tim Conway (it didn't take), we buried the Variety Show. For all of eternity, and then some. And for good measure, we had Prince convince Appollonia to shed her clothes and jump in again.

But alas. Like Pandora playing with her box, two over-hyped, moderately-talented, and under-whelming pop stars resurrected the Variety Show to stroke their already inflated sense of self-importance. Yes, I'm talking about the seemingly inescapable Nick & Jessica, the two lovestruck darlings whose MTV reality show (of which I haven't seen a single frame) has apparently captured the hearts and minds of mouth-breathers everywhere. Apparently, the young couple's staged antics have proved to be something of a hit, as they have become something of a pop-cultural inevitability. The result? The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour, a 44-minute program filled with "zany" comedy sketches and oodles of "rousing" musical song-and-dance numbers. There are guest-stars aplenty: Johnny Bench, Mr. T, The Muppets, Kenny Rogers, and Jewel all make appearances. There's a sense of farce and satire to the entire affair, and clearly nobody's taking a single moment of this event seriously. And I must admit, the sight of a scantily clad Ms. Simpson singing, bouncing, and gyrating to Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money" makes a rather potent argument against agnosticism. But this... what was the reason for this? Why? And in what way? An utter exercise in ego-appeasement and pre-teen girlish wish-fulfillment, The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour has little to offer, save for those waiting for a sure sign of the imminent return of Satan.

The DVD

This disc contains 24-minutes of videotaped footage, featuring the 1982 ritual sacrifice of Tim Conway.

Oh geeze, I'm just kidding. There are no extras on this disc.

Final Thoughts

We thought we had seen the last of this particular brand of insipidness, but The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour has guaranteed the appeasement of the Dark Prince of the Underworld. So while you are preparing to hole up in your bunker complex 300 feet below the Nevada desert, you might want to stock up on a few DVDs, and be sure to leave this one behind. Nothing to see here. Sure, the transfer looks very pleasant, and the audio is nothing to sneeze at. But, with barely 45-minutes of content and absolutely no supplemental material, your entire enjoyment of this package rests squarely upon whether or not you simply can't get enough of these two insanely attractive and thoroughly over-exposed celebrities. If this is the case, expect a phone call from the Seven Scattered Sons of Weishaupt. Run screaming!