Too hot to handle

By James Casey
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 22, 1998

Arizona Daily Wildcat

If I was a mutant, hermaphrodite, sex-obsessed lesbian, perhaps you could find me on a certain talk show one day this week. Everybody who stays up late watching TV is doubtless familiar with Jerry Springer and the almost-guaranteed slugfests on his Jerry Springer Show (apparently more popular in its late night spot than during the day).

Many of you have probably seen the ads for Springer's "Too Hot For TV!" video, an uncensored 45 minutes of the hilarity that is middle America. It starts out with a face-off between a formerly loving couple and proceeds to amaze the viewer with its tacky and shameless promotion of warped values and inbred beliefs.

The apparent appeal of "Too Hot" is the fact that all the swear words aren't censored out with those incessant, annoying bleeps. The F-word is muttered, screamed, shouted and moaned 33 times throughout the three quarters of an hour-long tape - an interval of only 1.03 minutes between each cuss. Throw in multitudes of "shit," "bastard" and "bitch" and you almost have an NWA album in the making.

Show topics ranged from "I Have Many Lovers" to "Feuding Families," in which redneck kin splatter each other with cream pies, turkey, wine and mashed potatoes. The lasting impression one gets is of disgust - witnessing "Teenage Call Girls" beat each other around the head and Harley, the 300 pound transvestite, slapping his younger sister silly can quite possibly leave you feeling guilty and ill.

For the truly sick at heart, there is a behemoth-sized lady with sloppy 60ZZ boobs who insists that someone eat whipped cream, chocolate and a cherry off of them. Cellulite-ridden strippers perform solo acts of depravity such as making audience members squeegee chocolate off of their bare bodies, spraying luminous paint on themselves in a blacklight-affected room and showing their breasts on national television because they "always dreamed of posing nude on TV."

The big question is whether this video and its contents really are too hot for TV. Most of the stuff has been shown before, minus the bad language, making it not that "hot" at all. The most painful thing you'll see is when a militant lesbian secures a death grip on her former lover's hair, then pulls out a huge clump. Many of the fight scenes aren't quite so nasty and one might ask why no one ever gets hurt. It looks like the whole thing is set up, as many of the guests laugh off their embarrassing behavior.

All in all, "Too Hot For TV!" is pretty damn funny, but after showing it to all of your friends for the 49th time, it gets a little campy. You're really better off just watching the "Jerry Springer Show" itself and saving your money for something slightly less tacky. You'll get a good enough dose of the madness that is Springer to carry you until the next time. And if you want to see breasts, go get a porno instead, you dog.