I’VE got big dreams, I tell ya. My life of filth, squalor and obscurity is destined to end, pronto.
How, you ask? You clearly aren’t aware that Oprah Claus is coming to town. She’s just launched the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in Canada and all I can see for myself is sunshine and butterflies from here on in.
As the flyer that wrapped around Tuesday’s Vancouver Sun revealed, Oprah’s trotting out all her old favourites to pad this thing. On Ask Oprah’s All Stars, for example, we’ll be able to pose our “burning questions” to psychobabbler Dr. Phil, money maven Suze Orman and wellness wiener Dr. Oz. On the series Enough Already! “acclaimed organization and clutter expert” Peter Walsh will show us how to throw things out and squirrel things away – a full-time job, in Oprah’s world.
Meanwhile, on Miracle Detectives, a couple of so-called investigators will “travel the globe to uncover answers to mysterious incidents that transcend logic.” Things like, say, how Oprah Winfrey can feature one series on her new network that’s about the final season of her show on her old network – Season 25, Oprah Behind the Scenes. And how an OWN show called Oprah Presents Master Class can bill itself as “an unprecedented first-person insight into the brilliant minds of the famous people we love and respect,” and include Oprah herself among them. Presumably on that show, Oprah will interview Oprah. Can you say “hubris?”
Well, I can! I can readily demonstrate that I know what it means, too, with my pitch for two new shows to run on OWN.
I’m assuming that this new network caters to a predominantly female viewership of “aspirational” consumers who only discovered Charles Dickens when he got the endorsement of Oprah’s Book Club. These are people with a l-o-o-o-o-t of time on their hands.
And good golly, I can relate to them just as well as Oprah can. After all, I’m female (in most ways that count), I wouldn’t mind movin’ on up, and I’m perennially under-employed.
Okay, so here’s the first pitch: There’s only so much time people are going to have for OWN’s promised series, What Now? with Shania Twain, in which the former Tiny Terror of Timmins attempts to resume her position at the pinnacle of country music. As a counter to that feel-good scenario, I give you my show: WTF? With Kate Zimmerman.
WTF? will consist of my character disapproving of practically everyone and everything I encounter. In the first episode, I’ll give the thumbs-down to hopeless alcoholics; in the second, hopeful vegans; in the third, homeless conservatives; in the fourth, hapless people who keep pictures of their cats in their wallet.
Look forward to a lot of defensive posturing from those whose egos I pound into carpaccio. Bonus: I can’t be bothered to dress up or brush my hair for TV, so to play my role, I’m hiring the gorgeous Angelina Jolie. Her grimacing technique is unequalled since she’s all lips.
Really, though, WTF? With Kate Zimmerman is my side project. The crème de la crème of my OWN offerings is a guaranteed winner, entitled (wait for it!) – The Real Housewives of Lynn Valley. The premise is simple: Vicki Gunvalson, of The Real Housewives of Orange County, has split up with her husband, Whatzit. Broke and destitute (by her standards), she is forced to relocate to North Vancouver's peaceful and semi-affordable Lynn Valley.
There, depressed by the rain, she tries to interest the women she meets randomly at Canadian Tire and Winners in the concerns of her pals in Orange County: Botox, collagen, facelifts, tanning, cocktails, shopping for low-cut tops, and pawing other people’s husbands at otherwise stilted soirees.
The locals are curiously resistant to her invitations to come over for “asparagus spears, a Brazilian wax and a dozen mojitos.” But they politely reciprocate with invitations to go snowshoeing and “man the money box at the Scouts’ manure sale” -- something she misinterprets, hilariously, as a double entendre.
This show models it all -- family values and healthy lifestyles – and, as a bonus, sales of fleece jackets, Gore-Tex pants and snowshoes are sure to go through the roof. And if, unbelievably, The Real Housewives of Lynn Valley fails, I can always make its stars my regular co-scoffers on WTF? With Kate Zimmerman.
Genius? Moi? Surely you jest. But do watch for me on Oprah Presents Master Class.
