Miss Universe 2010 – A primo promo competition

I watch televised beauty pageants and I’m not afraid to admit it. I grew up watching them with my mom and it’s a hard habit to break. Who can resist the spectacle of fifty or more stunningly beautiful women parading around a stage in the highest of fashion – sometimes – and bikinis and heels? So it was with great anticipation that I tuned in to the Miss Universe 2010 pageant this week.

Eighty-three women from around the world put themselves on display to be judged as … well, I’m not quite sure what they are actually being judged on besides physical beauty because they usually don’t get to speak until the very end and then for only thirty seconds (unless you have an interpreter and then you get to speak for as long as you want). But that’s beside the point. We watch to judge them and what they say has very little affect on the outcome (unless you say something like, such as really stupid or offensive). Being live television, we also hope for some kind of train wreck to liven things up.

I noticed with this year’s broadcast on NBC that the pageant itself seems to have taken a backseat to NBC promoting its fall schedule. During the first break, NBC ran the same three commercials for The Event, Chase and Undercovers at least three, maybe four, times in a row (and they threw in a Parenthood for good measure). Just an endless circle of the same three promos without any explanation. The last time I saw something like that happen was when Marie Osmond fainted on Dancing With the Stars. Did something happen at Mandalay Bay, did a contestant have a meltdown, did Bret Michaels pass out? We’ll never know but it was very strange.

The rest of the night was devoted to NBC programming with the pageant a seeming afterthought. And those Farouk styling products infomercials were completely a waste of time. No woman could ever accomplish any of those “tips” on her own. I also have to question the wisdom of Donald Trump hiring Bret Michaels to co-host the event. Is this one of the duties of The Celebrity Apprentice now? Joan Rivers got to pick on the girls’ wardrobe at the Miss USA pageant, and now Michaels gets to host. Really? The Rock of Love guy hosting a beauty pageant? It was more than a little uncomfortable watching Michaels desperately trying not to drool all over himself and it must have been excruciating for Natalie Morales to have to keep him on track, occasionally tugging on his elbow to get him to face the camera and say his lines (awkwardly). From the miserable look on his face, I seriously kept expecting The Donald to jump on stage and fire Michaels on the spot.

After the awkward hosting, the leering, the infomercials for NBC and Farouk, the two-hour broadcast that boiled down the actual competition to about forty minutes, we were presented with our new Miss Universe (the fierce Miss Ireland was totally robbed), Jimena Navarrete from Mexico and all was right with the world. I still long for the days when the pageant was about the pageant and not the sponsors (or the owner), when the runway extended half the length of the auditorium (make that winner walk!), when the contestants didn’t look like they were in dire need of a sandwich and when a host actually knew what he was doing. But it’s live TV and if you’re not tuning in for the spectacle, you’re watching for a possible train wreck. This year, we got a little of both.

Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Aug 28, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT