Today my wife and I are laying around in bed watching Sunday TV. First, President Obama does me the biggest PR favor of the week by bringing up Al Capone and Prohibition in the context of drug war violence in Mexico. Then Senator McCain gets a laugh trying to answer the “do you support Palin 2012?” questions. Good Russ TV.
After politics, she flips the TV over to the “We” (Women’s Entertainment) channel. After an episode of America’s Next Top Stick Figurine, we get something called “Surprise Wedding”.
This wedding special takes place on stage at the Aladdin [now Planet Hollywood] Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Five men who are in long-term relationships and just haven’t committed to marriage are given a big surprise when their girlfriends propose to them on national television. Given a chance to marry their fiances immediately on television, the potential grooms discuss their choice with friends and family. The program ends with the wedding ceremonies of the couples who have chosen to marry.
The women tell their sob stories of the guy who won’t commit. The guys, suckered into thinking they’re coming on to a makeover show, are brought out onto the casino theater stage to see their girlfriend in a wedding dress. Surprise! She wants you to marry her right now on stage on camera in front of a Las Vegas audience!
Next the dudes are given “a lifeline”, which means they make a phone call to one person and they have 30 seconds to ask about the wisdom of answering a matrimonial ultimatum on national TV in front of a packed theater of spectators. The big clock ticks down from 30 as the guys call their moms or best friends, who stutter and stammer.
The brides then get one last video plea to their beaus to please hurriedly make the most important decision of both their lives right after the next commercial break.
Each guy is then suited up in a tux, one by one led to their waiting bride, who issues another plea, most of them on their knees, to please marry them right now in this casino theater recently sanctified by the Mel B / Kelly Monaco performance of “Peepshow”. One by one, each guy says something that leads you to think he might be saying “no”, but ends with him saying “yes”, most of them on their knees.
One at a time, each couple is led to the altar that will soon be the altar for “Tony and Tina’s Wedding”. There waits the chaplain, anointed man of God, to officiate these hallowed proceedings where one man and one woman will be bound in holy matrimony. Sure, he lacks the marquee value of “Tony and Tina’s” special celebrity guest, Kato Kaelin, but we have to have a real preacher; this is real marriage we’re talking about, not some audience-participation stage play.
Ah, sanctity! I think this must be why gay people can’t get married; we must protect the sanctity of casino weddings, Elvis weddings, Britney’s Vegas wedding, drive-thru weddings, and televised weddings.
On the other hand, I think the show would have been far more dramatic and interesting with gay and lesbian couples.
