TV

by Craig D. Lindsey

Just like softcore Cinemax porn, Three’s Company reruns and Last Call With Carson Daly, the best bad TV surfaces late at night. And one show I often find myself watching when I’m going through another bout of insomnia and self-loathing is Fox News’ Red Eye. It’s perhaps the only show on the channel that’s preposterous, inaccurate, unreliable and completely useless on purpose.

A nightly roundtable roundup of the day’s weirdest and trashiest news events, Red Eye plays like the BET Uncut of news shows, which explains why it’s on so damn late. The show’s moderated with pervy pomposity by blogger Greg Gutfeld, who looks and acts like an even creepier version of Lost baddie Michael Emerson. (Imagine Ben Linus as a hyper sports agent.)

When he’s not trading homoerotic putdowns with regular panelist Bill Schulz (both men are former cheesecake-mag editors), he makes the various female Fox News correspondents and guest panelists uncomfortable with his elaborately douchebaggy introductions (“If beauty were string, I’d tie her around my package!”) and overall obnoxious behavior. Along the way “ombudsman” Andrew Levy breaks in to give reports that mostly require him to smirk like the Church Lady.

All this after-hours nonsense Gutfeld and co. engage in would be entertaining, admirable even, if it actually seemed like they were breaking the rules they claim they are. Two episodes in a row began with Gutfeld, who regularly opens the show with an insipid, rambling rant he calls “The Greg-alogue,” bashing Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize—making him yet another Fox News personality to bitterly piss on the former VP’s parade.

Even when Red Eye pretends to be irreverent and unruly, it still dispenses a conservative agenda. It just goes to show, no matter how much they try to amuse and distract you with endless dick jokes and hot blond “correspondents,” it’s still the same ol’ Fox News. And if that doesn’t bore you to sleep, then get some Ambien.