Letterman hangs up his trusty ol’ mic

David Letterman threw his legions of decades-long-addicted viewers for a loop early this month when he announced that he had decided to hang up his trusty microphone and retire as a talk-show host. He wasn’t the first late-night TV icon to do that (Jay Leno beat him to it last year and has been replaced by Jimmy Fallon), but Letterman’s retirement was still breaking news, because his small-screen persona is idiosyncratically unique unto itself.

Counter-culture

Unlike Leno, who was more “mainstream” in his hosting style, a la format pioneer Johnny Carson, Letterman was rebellious, “underground” and counter-culture, like an aging “retro-representative” of the Flower Power era, a perennial Love Child who just happened to be going bald!

To his credit, Letterman may now look like an old, crotchety curmudgeon, but his rebellious streak and propensity for heckling the dour establishment never left him—even if his success and fame had made him a part of the establishment he professed to scorn so much!

It was also instructive to see that, toward the end of his career, Letterman found himself mired in charges of using his position as star-producer to get his way with a number of his female staffers. He had to apologize for all that, and perhaps it was a factor in his decision to leave while the leaving was still good…

It’s interesting that, when Letterman announced his retirement, the TV industry became focused on figuring out who should replace him as CBS’ talk-show prince. A host of “probable” replacements were cited, from Joan Rivers (too old) to Chelsea Handler (too smarmy?).

Which just goes to show how dodgy it can be to replace a brand name. (Stephen Colbert got the job.)

Striking gold
After all, the first time Leno quit, he was unsuccessfully replaced by Conan O’Brien, before NBC finally struck gold with Fallon. Letterman’s bosses at CBS can’t be faulted for wanting to get it right the first time around!

Final question: What will Letterman do after he retires? All of his evenings will suddenly be free, so will he go on the stand-up comedy circuit, like Jerry Seinfeld? Or, will he form a barbershop quartet with Leno and other oldies-but-still-goodies of the talk-show trade?

‘Total Blackout’

New shows abound on the TV screen, each determined to grab viewers’ attention with their unique formats. This month, our list of unusual TV productions is paced by “Total Blackout,” telecast Sundays on AXN.

The game show with a difference captures televiewers’ curiosity and fancy by playing its competitive challenges totally in the dark.

Four teams of two contestants each don’t know what the heck they’re being made to taste, feel or do—and that adds a lot to their insecurity and fear, as they imagine all sorts of yucky creatures assaulting their sensibilities.

Of course, the viewers aren’t quite as helpless since special cameras that “see” in the dark show them everything that’s taking place.

Another unique factor that makes the show an interesting viewing proposition is the fact that the teams of contestants are made up of couples, straight or otherwise, emotionally involved with each other.

On one hand, this makes them unusually supportive of one another—but, in other  instances, this summons up negative feelings and past insecurities and hurts that compromise their ability to work as a team.

Comedic plus

When we first viewed “Total Blackout,” the most negative team was a lesbian couple that bickered and blamed each other from beginning to end. They also imagined all sorts of scary and bizarre creatures and objects, even as viewers saw that the actual things they ingested or manipulated were hardly as horrible as what their perfervid fears and terrors conjured up!

This gave the game show an occasionally comedic plus point that was decidedly welcome, after all that negative bickering and blame-shifting!

The most psychologically potent test involved a challenge that had each team of players navigate a beam completely in pitch-black condition, without falling off it, in the fastest possible time. This was really scary, since the players lost all sense of height and depth and ended up imagining that the beam was placed quite high, so they could end up injuring themselves if they miscalculated their moves. Actually, they were never in any significant danger, but the test was psychologically terrifying, all the same.

Lessons learned

It was instructive to note that the bickering couple became very quiet and focused for this final challenge. Perhaps, they had come to realize that they really, desperately needed to work harmoniously together to win, so past fears and insecurities fell by the wayside, and true feelings of “couple-hood” emerged!

Even more instructively, this previously “weakest link” couple ended up winning the darn thing—and they learned valuable lessons about working together in the process, as did the show’s viewers, who witnessed the couple’s growth from beginning to end!