Arts & Entertainment
 

Defective 'Plan' forgets the laughs

By Ian MacDonald
The Daily Cougar

Not many television fans can truthfully testify that they haven't at least peeked at the popular Bravo hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy during an unscheduled routine of channel surfing. Last fall, American television introduced its loyal voyeurs to the show, where five homosexual men (aka the "Fab Five") are allowed to infiltrate and "make fabulous" a straight man's lifestyle.

Once Queer Eye gained enough momentum, it was only a matter of time until an appropriate spoof came along to attempt to share the lightning ride. Most couch potatoes saw it coming, and apparently so did Comedy Central.

The parody is named, appropriately enough, Straight Plan for the Gay Man, and the foundation of the show is understandably similar to Bravo's original aside from the obvious premise reversal. Rather than five gay guys trying to influence a straight man, four self-proclaimed heterosexuals give lessons to a homosexual on how to live a stereotypical straight male lifestyle.

Billy, Curtis, Kyle and Rob put their heads together to come up with a plan to disguise their target with pound after pound of macho male clichés. 

Unlike its predecessor, Straight Plan lacks truth and realism. Anyone who has ever watched a sitcom will realize that Straight Plan is just as scripted as an episode of Seinfeld. Even acknowledging that the show is a parody, Straight Plan just isn't entertaining.

The debut episode was mildly amusing at best, but the brunt of the show was boring. The unfaltering barrage of hackneyed straight-man cliches was enough to make the show wholly ridiculous. Even under total awareness that Comedy Central is distributing the program, and that it is intended to be over-exaggerated, viewers are more likely to laugh at the show than with it. According to the show's principles, a man is not fully straight unless he shops at the Salvation Army, handles mounds of raw animal parts and decorates his home with literal garbage.

In addition to the tedious antics between the "Flab Four" and their "man mission," Jonathan, the show is the largest and most obvious ad placement campaign ever crammed into an hour of TV.

At the beginning of the first episode, the Flab Four are seen driving the streets of downtown New York in a shiny new Dodge Ram 3500 truck (the "straightmobile"). The rapid-fire close-ups and angle shots of the truck in action get the point across, but the placement becomes really annoying when one of the four plugs the truck: "These lanes are too small for the Dodge Ram 3500 series. I need open spaces."

Fans of Comedy Central deserve more credit than the network is giving them. However, even more of an eyesore were the frequent and deliberate ad placements for the Canadian beer Labatt Blue. Several more blatant advertisements dominate the majority of the show in a way that would ordinarily cheapen a television program if it hadn't already dug its own grave with the abysmal quality of its content.

Straight Plan for the Gay Man

Comedy Central

The verdict: Comedic disaster. If you like cheap laughs and ad placements, tune in to The Man Show and watch the commercials.

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