The Marriage Ref Larry David/Madonna/Ricky Gervais

After the first episode of The Marriage Ref was eviscerated by almost every single critic, I decided I would never watch the show ... that is until I discovered both Larry David and Ricky Gervais would be panelists. David and Gervais are two of the best comic minds in the world and I was curious to see if they could turn The Marriage Ref into an entertaining hour of TV. A disclaimer I am not a fan of reality TV, however unlike most of the internet I didn't think the concept for The Marriage Ref was particularly bad idea for a reality show. I certainly found it more intriguing than a retread of a competition or dating show, so from the outset I figured it could be decent.

Overall I thought this weeks episode was a very funny hour of TV, but it was only funny because of Larry David's misanthropy and the postmodernity of David and Gervais recognizing how absurd this show is. Larry David's unfiltered stream of consciousness was hilarious and while I am sure he only went on the show as a favour to Seinfeld his laissez-faire attitude towards the show is what made him endearing and funny. Gervais tried a little harder to actually make jokes, but he is such a great comic talent it never really seemed like he was trying any harder than I would when making a joke while watching a bad movie with friends. I find meta-commentary in fiction is often smugly clever, however I loved Gervais and David''s meta-commentary because it came from a real place. This wasn't a carefully crafted deconstruction it was two guys shooting the shit as they slowly came to terms with how odd this show is.

The oddly pleasant surprise of the episode was Madonna who acted like a normal person all things considered. As a 21 year old I am more aware of Madonna the infamous crazy person who believes in Kaballah than Madonna one of the biggest pop stars of all time and I have created a false dichotomy where she can only be one or the other. It was disarming, but intriguing to see Madonna doing anything sincerely and while her feminist rants became a grating it would be something i'd expect out of a lot of female guests in this environment.

A major criticism of the first episode was that the conflicts were too surreal and they all had clear winners. I think this episode has surreal conflicts, but they were all based in reality of classic relationship arguments; controlling mothers, relationship's with exes, a sloppy spouse. That gave the disputes a universality, having said that (sorry LD) I don't think the show would be entertaining without an all-star cast like tonight, there is still some really sloppy editing* and Bob Papa has a typical annoying upbeat host attitude, that makes me think he would be better served fake laughing on an NFL pregame show.

*Madonna had at least two jokes that clearly bombed and the producers tried editing it so the home audience couldn't tell it bombed. Instead we got a couple really bad choppy edit jobs. This may also be why Madonna appeared relatively un-insane.

Stray Thoughts

- Outside of being gorgeous I am not sure what the point of having Maria Menounos act as the celebrity fact checker was.

-How hard would it be to synch up the satellite feeds with the couples after the fact, given that the show is pre-recorded.

- This really should not be an hour long.