Do You (a Smart Bear Blog Reader) Have The Ability to See Through Blurred Lines?
Wally George hosted a local talk show, Hot Seat, in 1980s LA, back when local stations would actually air locally produced shows. Shit was wild.
Like, image if you had a Stephen Colbert type, except half of their schtick was ironic - and the other wasn't ironic at all. You'd see stuff played for laughs, yeah, but then there was sort of a weird pro wrestling cheering/booing aspect to it. Wally would shit on degeneracy or whatever. The audience would boo. Were they always real boos? No. Like, you could tell when it was unserious topic, like Madonna hoeing it up, that these were playing along boos - the same kind you see for Dominik Mysterio in WWE or Don Callis in AEW. Then OFC, you'd have the unironic "yeeeah, let's bomb em" cheers for pro war stuff. Though, I don't doubt that all of the crowd, especially the more irony poisoned crowd members, could really give a fuck about 'murica or it's military pissing contests. Those ironybro faux-edgy types were just sorta mixed in there with the 100% serious blue collar guys. Idk if you were at a Wally taping, you just did what you were supposed to do at Wally taping. Still, it's really hard to get past the reactions. You don't see modern crowds get that loud.
Unsurprisingly, it's hard to pin down Wally's actual stance most of the time. And that's the blur. You don't know what's a work or a shoot. Jerry Springer and shows that ripped part of Wally's style are too corporate, and much too unserious, to be as interesting as Hot Seat. They just wanted to put on a freak show to make money. Wally was a freak who brought on other freaks. He played up how much of a freak he was, but there was some realness to it. The closest modern equivalent would probably be Sam Hyde.
Oh yeah, here's Gwar making an appearance.
(I'm not endorsing anything political here btw. I Just wanted to share a weird talk show from an LA that doesn't exist anymore. Look, I didn't bring up Patton Oswalt.)