I am – Hercules!!

“You’re scaring the white people!”

Every time I see the promo with Whoopi admonishing the fat Iranian? Nearly break my wrist snatching up the remote!

Who would be the person we’d least like to see starring in a new sitcom? Carrot Top? Magic Johnson? Joe Piscopo? Michael Richards?

NBC, apparently desperate to fill the terrible void left by the cancellation of “Bette,” has decided that what America needs now is a sitcom starring the longtime center square of a syndicated game show. Oh, do we dare hope she’ll be as funny as she was on the most unwatchable Oscarcasts ever? Or as she was ad-libbing alongside Robin and Billy on “Comic Relief”?

Starting this autumn, “Whoopi” airs 8 p.m. Tuesdays, opposite “Gilmore Girls,” “American Juniors,” “Eight Simple Rules,” "One on One" and “Navy NCIS.” It’s about a one-hit wonder turned hotel manager who opens a lounge in the hotel so she can sing. It's from writer-producers Bonnie & Terry Turner (“3rd Rock From the Sun,” “That ‘70s Show,” “Days Like These,” “Normal, Ohio,” “That ‘80s Show”).

Here’s “Missy” with all the gory details:

Herc,

I know that this isn’t really that interesting, I mean it’s not like I saw Jake 2.0 or Tru Calling or any other show with some sort of vague Buffy/Mutant Enemy connection. I just wanted to warn you about the WORST show that will be on television this decade.

See, I was wrangled into a focus group screening of Whoopi, the new NBC sitcom starring Whoopi Goldberg. I’ll start off by staying I’m not a huge fan of her work. I liked her stand-up in the 1980’s and thought she did well in Ghost and The Color Purple. I also think that her later work (Rat Race, Eddie, that lame assed movie when she was a cop with a T-Rex) should have gotten her Oscar taken away from her. Well now she has this “multicultural” sitcom for NBC.

This is the type of show that people of all colors, creeds, and classes can hate together.

Whoopi plays a former singer with a few hits many years ago (this of course gives the actress the excuse to break into song randomly) who now runs a Fawlty Towers class of hotel in NYC. She is a cranky, opinionated, likes to smoke and refuses to be politically correct. In other words she is playing the same character that her ex-boyfriend Ted Danson has been inflicting on the world in CBS’ Becker.

In this hotel she lives with a group of WACKY friends and family members. They include her brother Courtney, a preppy former Enron lawyer who is now unemployed (played with way too much talent by Wren T. Brown), his white girlfriend Rita (who seems to have stumbled into each scene from some bad SNL sketch), and Nasim, the Iranian handyman/concierge who gets offended when people think he is Muslim. Of course I got offended when every other joke out of his mouth involved him building nuclear weapons before coming to America.

The plot of this pilot episode was fairly non-existent. Enrico Colantoni from Just Shoot Me! sells Whoopi a television that is much bigger than the one she needs. Her brother lectures her on how she shouldn’t have spent that much money. She and the Iranian guy come up with a wacky plan to return the television. Wackiness ensues. And in the end everyone learns a valuable lesson. Sha-na-na-na.

What this short description can not convey is just how terrible the jokes and characters are. We get a joke about Bush being an idiot, we get the Iranian guy spitting at people, and we have the wigger girlfriend wearing too much jewelry and going, “a’ight”. And then we get these things repeated again and again. Every character seems to have been given one trait which they must repeat over and over again.

By the end of the half hour I was already tired of these people. I can’t imagine watching them and their adventures week after week. It seems that NBC is aware of the dud they have on their hands. After the show we were asked questions about what we thought about the show. One of the questions asked if we felt Whoopi could be improved or if it was “beyond all repair.”

As much of a nightmare as the show is, it isn’t hopeless. The actor playing Whoopi’s brother does some solid work and actually has an interesting back-story. Seeing this guy ready to give up his dream of being a lawyer to just find any job at all is actually kind of touching and is something I think a lot of people can relate to. And his scenes with Whoopi are rich with what I can only call sibling chemistry. They really capture that feeling of both loving and hating someone at the same time. They also have some of the show’s only laughs. Whoopi’s sassiness works much better when it is able to be bounced off a straight man character like Courtney. Unfortunately the show seems to think it is funnier to see Whoopi making fun of Rita or getting into trouble with Nasim.

I really can’t recommend this show to anyone. The test screening had no laughs and even a few people got up and left. But I suppose if your TiVo’s aren’t busy you should really try and see at least one episode because it is like watching a train wreck with midgets.

If it lasts more than 3 episodes I’ll be shocked and pretty depressed.

Thanks and keep up the good work,

Missy