Word: smackdowns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what's a network to do? One is following the classic dating advice: Act like you're not interested. A few years ago, UPN focused almost entirely on such boy bait as WWE Smackdown! and Star Trek: Enterprise. But last year the Tyra Banks reality series America's Next Top Model became UPN's biggest hit--and, despite its scantily clad, size-0 catwalkers, its audience is as girly as a little black dress. UPN now says it will complement Model with young-female-friendly romantic comedies and dramas like Kevin Hill, starring the hunkalicious Taye Diggs...
...Remember a few years ago, when "Smackdown!" was the hottest show on UPN and it rounded out its slate with rude-boy shows like "Shasta McNasty"? A strange thing has happened since then: the testosterone network has gone all girly. The estrogenous "America's Next Top Model" is the biggest hit the network has ever had. (Little-known fact about TV: women actually want to watch scantily clad hot women knocking each other down on runways more than men do.) So today the network said it would stop fighting its feelings and free the woman trapped inside its hairy-chested...
...giving itself a demographic sex change, focusing on women under 35. (Don't worry guys: "Smackdown!" stays on Thursday, when every conscious female will be watching "Joey," "Survivor" or "The O.C." in its new time slot anyway.) Which means that next season we get not one but two editions of Tyra Banks' ingenious masterpiece of ambition and bitchiness. Bridging the months between them will be "The Missy Elliott Project," which UPN describes as a hip-hop version of "Top Model," in which a group of aspiring performers hits the road to get their freak on and compete to become...
...drama. Troy boasts plenty of good old Hellenic fist power. Paris vs. Menelaus, Hector vs. Ajax the Great, Achilles vs. Hector--it's a dream card at Madison Square Garden, and the movie choreographs each set-to with burly ingenuity. This is The Iliad as a WWE SmackDown: violent fights, snappy insults and a connoisseur's idolatry of beautiful brawn. (Who knew Greece had so many blonds?) When Paris cringes from Menelaus and hugs Hector's sturdy leg, it's as if he thinks he can turn a one-on-one brawl into a tag-team match...
...label, there’s not a lot Democratic politicians can do about the Right’s knuckle-headed policies. And if voters don’t get informed, our rude awakening is going to arrive, sooner or later, in the form of a national economic smackdown...