Throwback Thursday From March of 2015 – “Reality! What A Concept.”

Throwback Thursday From March of 2015 –

“Reality! What A Concept.”

I heard something on TV last night that, at first, I thought was a gag, but after a minute or so, I realized was for real.

It seems that yet another over the hill, below A-List celebrity is jumping on the “Reality Show” bandwagon. We’ve had a multitude of Kardashians, Vanilla Ice, Hulk Hogan, William Shatner, and everybody else’s unemployed cousin in LA, popping up on basic cable. With the B-List nearing exhaustion it appears that the Lists farther down the alphabet are being tapped.

Coming soon to a TV near you, whether you want it or not, is a new “Celebrity Home Improvement Show” Starring (cue the Kazoo Fanfare performed by studio vice presidents with the word ‘creative’ in their job titles) – Mr. T.

Mr. T?

The Mr. T of “The A-Team” fame? Mr. T – the guy with the Mohawk haircut (which I have learned is actually a Mandinka Warrior hairstyle), and enough jewelry to set off metal detectors a mile away? Mr. T- the guy who was in one of the six thousand “Rocky” movies a decade or two back?

Yeah, that’s him.

Mr. T is going to be hosting a home improvement show on the DIY Network. I used to think that the DIY stood for “Do It Yourself,” but apparently it actually stands for “Dozens of Idiotic Yutzes.”

I have fond memories of Mr. T in “The A – Team.” It was a kinder, gentler action/adventure show – very “Sweet n’ Low.” They relied on lots of car crashes, explosions, and gunfire to flesh out the script, but no one was ever injured in all of that mayhem. A carload of bad guys could fly off of a cliff, smash into the ground and burst into flames, but the camera would linger long enough for a voice to call out from inside the wreck,

“You OK, Spike?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, Butch.”

Only in “A – TeamLand.”

And now, Mr. T carries on in another “Only on TV” scenario.

It is nothing personal. I’m sure that Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud; May 21, 1952), or as his closest friends call him, “Mr.” – is a sweetheart of a guy and perfectly capable of taking out a concrete wall with his bare hands. I certainly don’t begrudge him the work. I just can’t picture him going down to the Unemployment Office with all of his gold chains and the like and accepting day labor, hawking toner cartridges over the phone. I’m happy for him. Really.

According to Hollywood insiders, the title of Mr. T’s new show will be – brace yourself – “I Pity The Tool.”

I swear on Henny Youngman’s grave. That’s the truth.

I wish him luck in this new venture. It is a competitive reality jungle out there. If the reality show scene gets any more crowded we may be faced with Pee Wee Herman getting a show. And we already know that he is quite adept at “Do It Yourself.”

“I’m tired of all this jibba Jabba — we’re out here getting things done, working hard, demolishing the old and rebuilding the new,” the former “A-Team” star said in a statement.

That kinda sounds like what Mr. T is trying to do with his career as well.

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