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MTV Canada’s Cribs will feature the home of Canadian Idol judge Jake Gold on its first episode.
ON A MY HOUSE: After Jackass, Cribs is my favourite MTV show, mostly because I just love how a shark tank and a Scarface poster can just cheer up a room.
MTV Canada is airing the first of its Canadianized episodes of Cribs tonight at 8:30 p.m., and while the debut is a bit low on the shark tanks, it has a few charms of its own.
Alanis Morissette’s condo is the first stop, with its selection of Chinese and Japanese antiques and view of the Ottawa River, the Parliament buildings glimpsed somewhere in the distance. During the obligatory tour of the fridge, Morissette shows off a two-four of beer she admits she can’t drink, even though she thinks people look cool drinking beer. Within a few minutes the show has already satisfied its CanCon regulations.
The big surprise with Kid In The Hall Kevin McDonald’s multi-level Spanish colonial house in L.A. isn’t the size, or the sprawling gardens, or even the pink bedroom, but his knockout blond bombshell girlfriend, Breanne. (At this point, my wife intoned that women will almost always go for men who make them laugh — one of those life lessons that it took years to make work for me.) Except for a tiny shelf of career knickknacks,
McDonald’s career remains almost invisible — that mythical Canadian modesty in action, one assumes.
The final stop is the Toronto home of Jake Gold, music impresario and Canadian Idol judge. Gold is a collector, apparently, and before we see one of his overstuffed closets full of suits, he takes us through rooms of pricey contemporary furniture, including several chairs that are not meant to be sat on. A single gold record — the first earned by Gold’s onetime clients, The Tragically Hip — is the only evidence that this isn’t the home of an investment banker with expensive taste.
It’s a nice start, but I’d like to see Cribs Canada take their cameras into the dingy shared houses and bachelor apartments most musicians live in — the places with the overflowing cat litter pans and scorched hot knives clustered around the only working stove element.
OUR READERS WRITE: Reader Darryl Humber responded to my general invitation to review the new fall season for me with this take on one of NBC’s most-hyped new shows. The last two sentences should be engraved in steel and set on a plinth in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
“Studio 60 is actually a pretty decent show. Matthew Perry is on painkillers in the pilot (quite the acting stretch!), Bradley Whitford plays his writing partner who tested positive for coke, so he can’t direct movies. Perry’s ex-girlfriend is a co-worker of his, where he explains that he broke up with her because of him missing her sing the Star Spangled Banner. We later learn that it’s much more than that. He actually broke up with her because she sung on Pat Robertson’s television show. The show seems more like the writers just want a vehicle to spin their opinions on media, religion etcetera to the world, and it’s a little juvenile, and narcissistic but so is TV. So I’ll keep watching.”
