Men are Stupid, But We Love Them Anyway: A Review of "The Marriage Ref"

Men are stupid.

You will be forgiven for believing this is true if all you watch is American television. American sitcoms routinely portray men as being dumb, selfish, boorish and insensitive, and NBC’s “The Marriage Ref” only perpetuates this, with both the men featured wanting what was portrayed as ridiculous, even creepy things.

Each episode of "The Marriage Ref" spotlights two couples, and three celebrity judges weigh in on their predicament. The host then beams the couples into the studio and delivers the verdict. The premiere episode, aired immediately after the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, concentrated on a man who wanted to keep his pet dog stuffed in their home and another man who wanted to install a stripper pole in their bedroom for his wife to use.

The stripper pole guy tried to play off his request as an exercise tool for his wife, and he was eager for his wife to show off for him. She was not thrilled, to put it mildly, and a large part of the humor was derived from the clips of the wives expressing their outrage at the ridiculousness of their husbands’ wishes.

This was underscored whenever Natalie Morales, the NBC "Today Show" anchor, would state statistics at the host’s disposal, like on the number of Americans who stuff their pets every year (1,000, surprisingly low). She would also tack on information about the couple and their particular issue not shown in the clip; the dog in question, for example, was known for being a menace, chewing up furniture, and even peeing on guests.

Of course, even though Morales was there to lend some credibility to the show and to put the situation in context, if not bolster a participant’s argument, her neutrality was quickly swept away by a raft of jokes from the panel and the host. Morales is largely superfluous, as her role can be absorbed by the host or even included elsewhere in the show. Host Tom Papa is not funny, repeating the same standard jokes, the kind of canned lines that anyone with a corny manner can pull off.

Despite all this, the show was quite funny. The premise is simple and easily modified, and it’s clear that the show is well made, that a lot of thought went into it. The opening is a shortened version of how the idea came to pass: A fight between creator Jerry Seinfeld and his wife in front of a friend led him to ask said friend to be the referee. The characters are cartoons, and a baseball theme quickly takes over. Cute. Then we open to the introductions. It appears to be an old-fashioned game show, as the celebrities smile on and joke.

A couple is then introduced, and a series of both partners explain their problem, sometimes in one-on-one sessions with the camera, sometimes in voiceover. There is always a confrontation, and this is the funny part. The clips are always well-edited, and the couples are chosen because they are funny. They have great faces, they have great lines, and in both these cases, it was absolutely obvious that the wives would win.

Each judge weighs in, usually with a joke, and they banter some more. The host joins in, then flips to Morales, then renders judgment. Preview of next couple, commercial, and the process repeats. But there’s still a few minutes left! Why not go to a recap? The sports metaphor reappears, as Marv Albert is announced, and then he appears next to fancy generic sports lettering where he says the typical line about the sponsor, followed by a joke. Then the winning highlights, one from each clip, are played back. But we’ve seen this before, more than once; they are milking the maximum funny potential. It works in this instance, as the expression and the line chosen are meant to be sealed into memory, and everyone laughs again. But it’s filler, nothing more, completely unnecessary. The commercial highlighting the season’s guest stars is much more appealing.

Although this is very much billed as “Jerry Seinfeld’s show”, he doesn’t appear in subsequent episodes, but the mix of NBC-approved stars does look quite fun, and the episode alone is often much funnier and much more amusing than a random episode of any of NBC’s comedies. The disagreements are silly; we don’t think for a minute that either of these unions are troubled, and both couples featured in this episode have been married for a number of years (they also appeared childless). The show actively promotes marriage, as the show opens and closes with a retort effectively saying that these relationships are worth fighting for and that people should stick them out (preferably with a marriage ref on hand).

The wholesomeness works, as does the celebrity panel. Both couples receive a prize at the end, but that’s not really the point; nor does it matter who the refs rule for, as these couples can do whatever they want. But it’s just fun to peek into someone’s else life, and the comments are quite funny. It’s very clear that the show was engineered well, with a broad base, and the issues mined are both current and evergreen. The men try to come across as being respectful to their wives and enlightened in these sorts of things, as even panelist Alec Baldwin jokes, but they are still every much the doofus next door.

"The Marriage Ref" could use a few tweaks, like nixing Morales and possibly the recap at the end, but it will always remain lighthearted, wholesome, and thoroughly middle-American. Congratulations, NBC, looks like you’ve found yourself your next hit.

Review: High School Confidential

High school—that rich trove of hormones and anxiety—has always had a kinship with television. It’s the microcosm of life, it seems, since everything is compared to it, and television eagerly exploits and glorifies this idea. Truthfully, however, most high-school themed shows are nothing like real life—even the ones considered more in vein with reality are dramaticized, with intense highs and crackling lows.

WE tonight aired the first episode of an eight-week documentary series that followed twelve girls for all of their high school years. Now I know when these girls were selected nobody knew the storylines, but how accurate can they reflect real concerns of teenagers when one quarter of them become pregnant? One girl even gets married. Come on. The teen pregnancy rate isn't that high! Where are the worries about grades, the cliques simultaneously forming and falling apart, the wondering why the girl who sits across from you hates you so much? What about the competition for the lead in the school play, the band politics, the vindictive teacher? SATs, college essays, the motivating coach? From what I’ve read about the show, it seems that the series is just one big pile of issues these girls face. Neither I nor anyone I know in high school dealt with an abortion, and all the sex talk seems like an executive’s idea of what the storyline should focus on.

At first I wondered if the fact that the kids lived in Kansas had anything to do with it; after all, the culture in a given place dictates attitudes and behavior. I assume that growing up in Southern California is quite different from suburban Colorado from rural Massachusetts, but hey, maybe that’s just my TV telling lies. Seriously, though, once people go to college or move to an area outside of one they grew up in, they realize that attitudes, tastes, and just life varies tremendously based upon the culture of the geographical region they are inhabiting. Obviously the differences vary to a degree, and a good portion of that is grounded in the individual’s own personality and interests.

I mentioned a few of my reservations to this show regarding its authenticity to real teen girls to some young female coworkers, and they retorted I’m too far removed from high school to know (and I'm the youngest). I took umbrage at this—apparently it’s way harder now to get into college, so I image all the bickering about grades and worries over extracurriculars to be magnified, not lessened. Social networking hadn't happened when I was in high school, so I'm not even including the MySpace and texting that is the virus that afflicts teenagers now. I’m also not discounting suicide, depression, or the usual mopey-teen afflictions, but a constant focus on these big stories misses the whole experience, and makes it less about a group of normal high schoolers than just a pastiche of teen problems.

Truthfully, American High did this story better back in 2000, and that series had boys. The PBS doc (the executive producer later went on to 30 Days) covered a cross-section of kids from different backgrounds and different grade levels in one high school for one year. It was absorbing, and showed the kids in action, but also their hopes and fears, their troubles, and how even though they were in the same school their lives were very different. I don’t remember anything particularly “dramatic” happening to those kids, only that I was very attached to many of them by the series’ end, and wished they weren’t so many years older than me.

High School Confidential is edited as a series of interviews of each girl over time, intercut with some footage of them trying out for a dance team or pictures of them at different ages. We rarely see any actual action. We are just told what’s happening, and the only other people to speak are the girls’ parents and boyfriends. No siblings or friends, which makes the narrative incomplete. The storylines feel far removed from actual teenage life, and that’s only highlighted by the editing choices made.

What feels most real is how young the girls look, especially comparing their ninth-grade selves with their slick hair and bangs three years later. The styles look the same, but some things don’t: Cappie goes on length about the distinction between the haves and the have-nots in terms of cars, but nowadays many young teenagers cannot or will not drive. I’m unfamiliar with Kansas, and I know the car conundrum is as old as high school itself, but the show did not bother to present any other argument, any sort of conflict regarding this decision, and this is huge for a teenager.

It's that same problem that runs throughout the episode: We don't see the struggles, the choices not made, the agonizing decisions that truly affect them. Things happen, they report. Their lives are not news. Maybe that's why things like pregnancy surface--because that's always news, that's always a shocker, even when it shouldn't be. These girls’ stories are allegedly true, but they do not ring true. If you want real drama, stick with the fictional kind.