Yes, “The Singing Bee.” And, yes, Joey Fatone.
Look, I’ll tell ya: Joey Fatone’s a hell of a nice guy. I ended up talking to him for a few minutes at NBC’s rooftop party a few nights ago, and he couldn’t have been any more gracious. But, honestly, his show is pretty damned stupid. Not that it’s Fatone’s fault. I mean, it’s a hosting gig, he’s giving it all the charisma he can muster, and he does a fine job at it, but that can’t compensate for a show that requires people to sing – often very, very badly – the lyrics from a random song. It might be doing well enough in the ratings to have been picked up for the fall season, but I just have to believe that it’s because it’s the whole car-wreck scenario, where you know you shouldn’t watch, yet you find you can’t look away.
Even more bizarre to me, though, is that it’s not even the only show of its type on the air; Fox has got one almost exactly like it! Executive Producer Phil Gurin swears, however, that he had his idea first. “We’ve had ours in development for quite awhile,” he assures us, and he’s not bitter than Fox is, even coincidentally, stealing a little bit of their thunder. Fatone, meanwhile, started making (fake) claims that he was bitter at the Fox show’s host, Wayne Brady.
“He’s a good friend of mine, and I can’t believe he did that to me,” said Fatone. “It pissed me off really badly.” Then, of course, he grinned and said, “Just kidding. I called him right before I was coming to shoot the show. He’s, like,, ‘Congratulations on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ I’m so proud of you.’ I said, ‘That’s cool. I heard you’re doing a similar show. We’re kind of like doing this kind of like singing thing.’ He’s, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I heard you’re doing it. Good luck and congratulations with that.’ He was actually really happy — he was genuinely happy. It doesn’t matter. We’re really friends. We actually went to the same high school together. He did the ‘Beetlejuice’ show as well in Orlando (at Universal Studios). The funny thing was, after it aired, I haven’t got back to him yet, (but) he called me. He was actually calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, congratulations. I’m really proud of you.’ That’s what it was. Hopefully he wasn’t trying to kick my butt. I mean, he’s a great guy. He’s a really good friend of mine. It’s actually a friendly competition kind of thing.”
I say good luck to both Fatone and Brady. But I’m not going to be watching either show. Still, I do have to make an admission: they did a version of the show at the aforementioned NBC rooftop party where they used a mixture of TCA members (no, not me) and actors from new NBC series as contestants, and it was a blast to watch live. (And if you’re wondering, Zachary Levi from “Chuck” was triumphant, soundly kicking the arses of all comers.)
