Somewhere, in a dark room at Channel Seven, there was panic and confusion. When Restaurant Revolution failed to grab ratings, it was decided the network’s revenge would be served up to its disloyal viewers by way of a TV show so spiritually devastating, we would beg for the return of what may as well have been called Shark Tank Block Chef Rules.
No doubt developed in some ivy-covered, gothic laboratory nestled on a foggy heath in the UK where TV shows are grown on the backs of weeping mice, Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud was precisely the sort of extinction-event television Seven was looking for. Unfortunately, their plan backfired when ratings soared, proving that once our buttocks hit the sofa, we become about as discerning as a starving hog dropped into a dumpster.
Or at least, I hope either revenge or punishment were Seven’s intent; there’s comfort in that. They can’t have actually wanted to fob us off with recycled internet content, can they? And why did we reward them for it? We’re not going to get out of the TV equivalent of a zip mask and ball gag if we keep moaning for more.
There’s only one good thing I can say about CMYLOL’s commitment to lazily harvesting YouTube videos: without having to buy one, for a brief moment I felt like I had a Smart TV (albeit a faulty one that was showing me someone else’s wearisome browsing history).
Complaining about shows like this will almost certainly be met with the usual responses of “Well, what did you expect?” I’ll admit, the show has been titled with such cunning literality as to somehow make it my fault for not liking it should I choose to watch. They could only have signposted the show’s contents more obviously had they named it You’re Going to Watch Cat Videos For the Next 45 Minutes.
If the show committed to its own banality, I could almost respect it, but it fails even this simple remit by plopping in running commentary and hiding its shame behind experts such as a pet behaviourist. Nice try. It’s like hiring a male stripper for someone’s birthday and then trying to make it highbrow by reading aloud The History of the Penis as he derobes.
Aside from the experts, there’s a “cat video junkie” who helpfully tells us “there are very few things we actually know about cats”, as if the fluffy things we’ve kept as pets for centuries still remain a four-legged Bermuda Triangle. The only genuinely mysterious element here is why the average viewer chose to embrace a show that suggests Seven isn’t just lazy, but is importing the work of even lazier people in the UK: a sort of slothful inversion of an overseas sweatshop.
But watch it we did, and so we can blame ourselves for the fact we’ve got Dogs Make You Laugh Out Loud to look forward to on Tuesday night, presumably followed by a budgerigar special next week.
As long as we keep watching, Seven will continue to punish our loyalty by tossing an entire Noah’s Ark of calamitous animal footage in our general direction. And when the funny fauna run out, I guess we’ll move on to other popular YouTube phenomena. Coming in 2016: Exploding Cysts Will Make You Watch Seven. Bloody hell. I get it now. We should have all watched Restaurant Revolution as a preventative measure.
• Dogs Make You Laugh Out Loud airs on Seven on Tuesday at 7.30pm AEST. It’s also available online by typing “funny dog” anywhere on the internet
