So, unless you live
under a rock, you know that Jeremy Clarkson, one of the hosts of Top Gear was
fired today. What you may not know is
that this is one of my favorite shows. I
have watched all of them.
I don't really like
Jeremy Clarkson, but I love watching him act like an idiot. I love watching someone who thinks they are
always right, and is in fact almost always wrong. Jeremy Clarkson is a little like Sheldon
Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. He has the same problem with separating his own
opinion from the truth.
I will not defend
Jeremy Clarkson. If the personality he
displays on the show is any indication, then he is an enormous ass. He yelled at one of his producers. Well, that surprises me not at all. I have a feeling that he yells at a lot of
people. But, he crossed a line when he
escalated it to physical violence. That
is unacceptable in a way that even the racial slurs…or at least supposed racial
slurs are not. He was justly fired and I
applaud the BBC for firing the star of the biggest show in the world. He deserved it, and you did the right thing.
But what now?
Over on Jalopnik there are about a dozen
articles about Clarkson and Top Gear, and it all got me thinking.
First, a Bold
Statement.
The more that the
BBC or Jeremy Clarkson attempt to recreate Top Gear as it was, the more likely
they are to fail.
Jeremy Clarkson
carried Top Gear. He wasn't the sole
reason for its success, but he was vital to that success. I cannot imagine that anyone can fill his
shoes. Now, I should be clear. I mean that I do not think anyone can come in
to Top Gear and play the role of Jeremy Clarkson. If the host changes, the show changes. If the BBC tries to plug in someone else and
keep the show as it is, it will fail.
On the other hand, I
do not think that Top Gear is going to work anywhere else. Even if someone hires all three hosts, I
think that there will need to be changes.
If they try to hire all three and try to do the same things, it will
fail.
One of the things
that brings me to that decision is that I think that Top Gear was getting
old. The three hosts have been more like
caricatures of themselves for the last three or four series, with Jeremy really
leading the pack. The moment that Jeremy
drove into the camp with a cow strapped to the top of his Camaro, I felt that
Top Gear crossed a line, and it has kept pushing out from there.
So, while this was
an unfortunate way for Top Gear to change, I do not think that Top Gear would
have gone on unchanged for long.
So, I have droned on
long enough for now, but I leave you with two questions, which I shall try to
answer in the near future.
What shall become of
Top Gear?
What shall become of
Jeremy Clarkson?
