Fall TV Review: The CW's 'Online Nation'

The CW's 'Online Nation' boasts the strangest, wildest, most extreme, and funniest videos that the U.S. viewing public has to offer. But, even with all of that, is this concept exactly original?

The show started off with the introductions of the show's hosts, four twenty-somethings named Link, Joy, Stevie, and Rhett, who supposedly have spent countless hours scouring their own upload site for what they consider to be the biggest and best of the week, and then airing them (*while not in their entirety) on the TV waves for all to see. You might see a clip such as one of the ones that I have deemed the stupidest one of the evening, entitled 'Human Skateboard', where a skater was skating on another person and doing such tricks as grinds, ollies, and whatever, and it seems that they were making an attempt at making it look humorous. (Now, please note that I used the words ' making an attempt'). Then, while in the middle of said video, another pops up simply entitled 'Eggs', where a carton of eggs with distinct personalities are watching as a woman grabs one of their egg-shapped buddies, cracks them open, and begins to fry them up in a frying pan. Of course, one of the eggs goes completely insane with fright, and therefore decided to commit suicide by rolling out of the carton, and then onto the floor where it was cleaned up by the female fry chef in question. Then, we see the skater again. These are but a few snippets that were offered on the show, and it left me wondering what the producer of the show exactly had in mind.

For those of us that are Internet junkies and know where to look, most videos of this style can be found on such sites as YouTube and even MySpace. The only purpose of a show such as this is for someone to make a fool of themselves just that they can see their video be aired and say 'Hey, my video just got on TV!' But, again, what is the point of a show of videos that anyone can find on the Internet simply by typing in what they are looking for? Is it because the CW thought that it would be a hip, fresh, and new idea, or is it because people are just simply becoming lazier because they have nothing better to do with their time?

From giant rubber band tricks to Batman being hit by an oncoming car in order to save a victim from being robbed by a mugger, these are the kinds of stunts that (for some odd reason) that have managed to obtain our attention. If this was the best the quartet of young adults could come up with, I fear for the youth of our nation! It's bad enough that we rank the lowest in education!

When I had completed the show, I found myself scratching my head as I felt as if my mind was being bombarded by stupidity as I watched video upon video for a half an hour, wondering if I was going to see anything original. Though the videos may seem original to the naked eye, the truth is that videos are so common place that just because another network had another hit with a concept, it doesn't mean that another show just like it will have the same success. (Does anyone remember 'America's Funniest Home Videos', which is still in circulation today?)

To sum it all up, the CW is grasping at straws as they are having very few hits on their network that are left (such as 'Smallville', 'Supernatural', 'America's Next Top Model', and 'Beauty and the Geek', just to name a few) and is now looking to the American public in order to get their laughs. After tonight, they are proving that they have a long way to go in order to compete with other networks, such as CBS and NBC (who are already trying to claim primetime television with what they are already presenting for the new season). If CW hopes to survive, they had better hope that their new shows, such as 'Gossip Girl', 'Reaper', 'Life is Wild', and 'Aliens in America' will gain enough viewers to keep them on the air. (They weren't always CW, you know, for those of us that can remember the WB, which had landslide hits before the takeover.)

Now that the CW has been in full swing with new shows and line-ups, with only being in progress for a few years, they still have a lot to prove. If they cannot come up with anything better so far than 'Online Nation' and 'Gossip Girl', we might as well watch Ty Pennington put up another house for some deserving family, and then take a few Bayer when he's finished.