Michael Flatline

Michael Flatline is what I now call Michael Flatley. Michael Flatley is the primadonna Irish dancer who was in Riverdance and then needed to wear more leather and expose his torso even more than he already was doing and "created" Lord of the Dance which was a VERY unmanly mess and who now "hosts" some odd new dance show that pits "international" dance styles and "international" individuals and "international" couples against other "internationals." As an MC Michael Flatline is almost comatose. I guess he just exhausted himself doing the Irish jig for so long and now is operating on electricity from a wall plug via an electric cord. Like a toaster. On his new "show" someone will dance their ass off and then Flatline will go, "Well. Ok. That was foine. Let's go to the jootges now." There could have just been a dervish-level dance on stage at steer-stampede intensity that ended with the exploding of the dancers' heads into sprays of blood and bone and the detonation of a neutron bomb and Flatline would have said, "Well. That was foine. Let's go to the jootges." So then he goes to the jootges. We know NOTHING about these jootges. They are almost as non existant as Flatline. They go "Ba" and hold up a number. Another one will go "Ga" and hold up a number. One of the jootges is some withered demented crone who thinks she is apparently Neferetiti and declares her scores and then glares at the audience and usually makes some half-heard remark to them as though everyone disagreeing with her needs to be quietly executed by her guards. Flatline, bless his dead and unbeating heart never launches into any kind of inquiry of any of these bizarre entities jootging these performances, like, for instance, "Why did you voot that way, if you doon't moind moi ahskin." No: back and forth banter is not a Flatline specialty, and I am SURE what is going through his head is "I am standing in front of the cameras. That should be enough for Planet Earth." Then there is the bizarre scoreboard that combines this with that and incorporates that with this and interweaves this over here with that over there.....like anyone gives a shit. Then there's the lighting: as if Flatline and his lying-in-state personal energy wasn't enough to have everyone coughing up blood; the lighting for the dances themselves consists mostly of a whorehouse red glow, occasionally interrupted with bright spotlights aimed directly at the camera lens. And then of course there are the "stage objects" which are there for God Only Knows What Purpose that the cameramen usually place between the cameras and the performers so that much of the time you are watching inanimate stage decorations with some gyrating people over there on the other side. Flatline probably micromanages every aspect of this flapping, flopping boarded-fish which would explain the relentless nightmare hellish incomprehensibleness of it all. And APPARENTLY you are not supposed to criticize the show because reviews of it have been eerily non existent even though it is a golden bough full of golden apples of critiqueable material. I mean, you could critique this show on a weekly basis, adding insult onto insult with a depth and complexity of a ten-dimensional fractal and never repeat yourself or run out of ideas for more mischievous rascally fun at the show's expense. If you don't believe me try it yourself: watch the show and see if you don't become filled to the soul with the energy and desire to commit serious ridicule to it.