The Gong Show with Dave Attell

I expected this show to be hilarious. Dave Attell cracks me up and I loved Insomniac, but this show is as unnecessary as it is boring. About one person per episode is actually talented, and they usually don't get the credit they deserve. The two guys that won the episode I watched slapped themselves to make noise. The guy who had a musical performance on crystal glasses filled with water was amazing and didn't get the credit he deserved. At no part did I find this show entertaining. There really wasn't even a set of credentials for how to rank the contestants. The guest judges (who are washed up and not funny) just assigned an arbitrary number from 1-500 to the contestants. Extremely disappointed with Dave Attell, I vowed to never watch this show again.

Out of morbid curiosity, I watched this, and it was as painful as I thought it was going to be. I liked Dave Atell's Insomniac Theater in small doses, and I hoped this would be at least as good as that, but it wasn't.

It's depressing, boring, tedious, and deeply embarrassing. Atell himself seems deeply distressed and embarrassed (similar to Louie Anderson and his horrible stint on Family Feud) to be hosting such a mediocre show. The celebrity judges seem to feel the same way as well. You actually feel sorry for them trying (in vain) to make this show worth watching. While it has better production values than the original Gong Show, it's actually worse than the original, because the original Gong Show had terrible production values and was cheesy as anything on TV before or since, but Chuck Barris (the original host) knew that. That was part of the fun, watching a televised freak show. That quality is what has endeared it to many. The remake doesn't have that quality.

I doubt this will last more than one season.