UPN has been assimilated

Incredible news today. Smallish TV networks UPN and The WB will merge to form one gigantic, mediocre network.

This is heartbreaking, because it means the end of UPN.

If there is a God of Unintentional Comedy, surely His gift to the world was UPN. I'm talking about back in the day, before it reached moderate levels of respectability with Veronica Mars and Everybody Hates Chris. I'm talking about the original, keepin'-it-real UPN, which debuted in January 1995.

This was about the time I first attached speakers to my computer in my freshman dorm room, and, as my old roomate Vikram could attest, the UPN network ident was my startup sound for nearly two years (until it was replaced by the CNN Headline News opening theme). The announcer guy earnestly announcing "This... is UPN!", as if you're about to watch something great, always cheered me up.

From the beginning, UPN was hilariously awful; the boring Star Trek: Voyager was a hit based on name recognition, but the other shows failed to attract an audience. First, they jumped on the "let's give every stand-up comedian in the world his own sitcom because Seinfeld is a hit" train, with Platypus Man starring Richard Jeni. I didn't watch this show, probably due to the title, which disappointingly has nothing to do with a man being bitten by a radioactive platypus; apparently, it's actually a reference to Jeni's sex life resembling that of a platypus, which was a joke taken from his stand-up act. I don't know about you, but I'm LOLing all over the place right now.

(NOTE: All UPN comedy promo photos required the actors to have that look on their face that says, "Whooooa, things are about to get GOOOOFY!")

On the show, Jeni's character hosts a low-rated cooking show for guys; marvel at this fan page written by someone who felt it necessary to document what dish was cooked by Jeni's character in each episode of Platypus Man.

(As an aside, that page is why I love the Internet; not only does it show off the author's fabulous HTML 1.0 skills circa 1995, but it's a great example of how people will spend their free time putting everything nobody needs to know on the Internet. Once all humans have been eradicated by monkeypox and only the computers are left, and aliens discover the remains of our civilization, this web page will the first thing they discover, and they'll realize they shouldn't have bothered looking. I guarantee this will happen.)

The other running joke in my Turman East dorm room was The Watcher, which had nothing to do with either Buffy, Keanu, or the Fantastic Four, and everything to do with... Sir Mix-A-Lot. Because, as the promos said, Sir Mix-A-Lot IS the Watcher.

Of course he is.

This was an anthology show in which the only constant was our hero, Sir Mix-A-Lot. He's a security man in a casino; he likes to watch and he cannot lie. Despite many industry accolades, the show failed to take off. (By "many industry accolades", I mean the show was nominated for an Emmy in, naturally, the Sound Mixing category. Then again, that may have just been a cruel industry in-joke.) Again, I didn't watch the actual show, but judging from this review on IMdB written by user "hoagiemike", it totally would have ROCKED MY FOOL FACE OFF.

This show didn't last long, but at least Cheap Trick was on it. Rick, Robin, Tom and Bun E. from the legendary rock band Cheap Trick star as "Pandemonium" in an episode where they play a down n' out rock band with a dim wit manager, who wants to book them as a novelty act. Robin Zander plays lead singer Jack Stone who says "families to feed? We should bangin' showgirls and tearing down the walls" This is great stuff,funny, and the band are actually decent actors. Plus they play the rare Cheap Trick song "born to raise hell" which totally Rocks! Check this out, it's hard to find, but many cheap trick collectors have this...

In contrast, UPN's other freshmen shows struggled to attract the Cheap Trick fanbase. They were Pigsty (a kind of Friends clone, complete with a songwriter character who sings quirky/goofy original songs), Marker (starring Richard Greico!), and Legend, which took the awesome idea of putting MacGyver and Star Trek's Q in the same show, but then botched it by sending them back in time and taking away their respective omnipotent powers.

Of UPN's first-season shows, only Voyager survived; the rest were sacked.

It got slightly better from there, but only slightly less unintentionally hilarious. UPN's ratings success among African-Americans in urban areas led it to develop more shows targeting that demographic; this is how the world was blessed with the controversial, had-to-be-seen-to-be-believed The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, and, even more importantly, the seminal sci-fi classic, Homeboys from Outer Space.

(See? "Whoooa, GOOOOOFY!" Can you imagine having to write the ad copy for that show? No, you can't? Well, thanks to the magic of furdell.com, now you CAN.)

Shasta McNasty, Love Boat: The Next Wave, and even the XFL; I'll miss all of them, but they will live forever in my heart.

OK... so I didn't really watch these shows. But just the fact that they existed brightened my day.

Anyway! There you go, aliens. Let it be known that our society was founded on the principles and guidance of UPN, and in the year 2006, we abandoned that guidance in the name of "ratings". This... shall be our epitaph.

(Come to think of it, I may have just regurgitated one of the plots from Star Trek: Voyager. I apologize to everyone.)