Black People's Guilty Pleasures Vol I: The Maury Show Thursday, August 28, 2008

The older I have gotten, the more I have realized that most of my friends are of the highly educated variety. Yet and still, as much as we can all agree that The Maury Show sets back black people one generation per half hour segment, we can't seem to get enough of it. Which is strange, because we all have jobs but seem to make time to find a clip or two of the show here and there.

The funny thing about The Maury Show is that it has survived from the period from mid to late 1990s when television solely consisted of shows of the Maury variety; i.e. Jerry Springer (which is still around too, but is way too over the top to be believable anymore), Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, and even Tempsett Bledsoe ('Vanessa' from the Cosby Show) got in on the action. Some of those shows looked like they actually were shot on the same set (why buy more than one garbage can for one bag of garbage right?), but for some reason Maury is still around (remember when The Maury Show was called The Maury Povich Show?).

The thing that makes that show so gully is that we all watch it for the same reason; the paternity tests. And TiVo/DVR has made The Maury Show that much more off the chain; nothing like being able to rewind and pinpoint the precise moment when one and/or both of the Maury's guests show the first sign of saltiness (it kind of becomes like that JFK movie; 'back and to the left... back and to the left'). And it usually never fails that guys at home watching are hoping the baby does not turn out to be the man's, and women are at home rooting for the baby mama's vindication.

Now see if Maury was the true marketing genius that I am, then he would find even more ways to capitalize off the popularity of those paternity test shows. Personally I would turn 'skank ass baby mama running off the stage after she finds out the baby does not belong to who she claims' into an Olympic event. Instead of 'on your mark... get set... go...', Maury could kick off the race with 'you... are... NOT...' (because usually by the time he gets to the word 'not', those broads be all the way by the emergency exit backstage).

What makes Maury even more of a guilty pleasure than it needs to be, is that somewhere deep inside all of us, we all hope to see someone we know but aren't that cool with on the show. One of these days though, black people are going to band together and get Maury taken off the air for the platform he provides people to play themselves on national television; or at least convince him to move to BET.