Wonder Boy
I was not cool in high school. There are no pretentions or lies about it; I was a grade-A, scrawny, geeky, nerdy, loser of the highest caliber. If being uncool was a steak, I suspect I’d have been Porterhouse amongst T-bones. But despite being uncool, I can only think of select shenanigans that we (my friends and I) did at school that had little to do with classroom politics. I can tell you an instance where my friend Darby established his own political party because during the 2004 elections, our high school would not allow Ralph Nader (registered as an Independent) to be accepted as a choice in the mock elections. I can also tell you of how I had fingers pointed at me as the Ghostbusters tagger who graffitied the Senior Wall as a prank, when it was another kid upon whom I made a suggestion that Ghostbusters would be much cooler.
These memories flooded back as I sat watching previews for MTV’s return to original programming (but not, unsurprisingly, music videos) with the scripted series “The Hard Times of RJ Berger”. One notable fact to mention right off the bat is that the series is scripted and produced by Katzsmith Productions, the partnership that exists between Dave (son of Jeffrey, as in Paramount) Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith. For all the pop culture afficionados and those of unlikely mashups, Grahame-Smith’s name is not unknown thanks to his works “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and the recent “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. According to press releases, both Katzenberg and Grahame-Smith based the series around their own high school experiences, with the intent being to bring back some of that raunhcy, edge-of-your-seat flavor that drove MTV’s classic scripted shows in the Nineties, as well as bringing to the fore some of the taste and flavor of a Judd Apatow comedy. Which brings us back to RJ Berger.
“Nature made me scrawny and weird looking, awkward and pale” intones RJ in the opening introduction (played by Paul Iacano), “But I’m not about to roll over and be nature’s bitch I’m going to beat it.” And literally: RJ is rolled over to one side and is wanking off to an image of a random fantasy warrior woman astride a dragon, before he is interrupted by his mother (portrayed by Beth Littleford). But don’t worry, RJ does get to finish, but not in the way you might think.
On the surface, RJ’s life seems very average: he has a loud-mouthed, sex obsessed best pal Miles (Jared Dauplaise, brilliantly fulfilling the Jonah Hill role here) with an agenda all his own; another best pal, Lilly (played by “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”‘s Kara Taitz) would like to have sex with RJ, her key line to RJ being “Any time, any where, any orifice”. RJ is a towel boy for his high school’s basketball team, and, like your typically average high school student has his crush, namely on the uber-perfect Jenny Swanson (“The Price is Right”‘s Amber Lancaster). But like any average high school student, his crush is with someone that is a jerk, and Jenny’s jocky boyfriend is Max (played by Jayson Blair). But things take a turn on their own when it is revealed that RJ has an unusually large penis one day at the end of a basketball game.
Much like Jonah Hill would do to Michael Cera, Miles sees this as their “Golden Ticket” (another notable laugh out loud line: Miles is so enamored with RJ’s girth that he wants to kiss it…in a non-gay way), whereas RJ sees his enlarged member as a curse, relating a story that ends with a recurring Godzilla inside-joke, as well as a unique way of displaying flashbacks through animation. The rest of the episode ends with a typical high school party that the boys attend, where RJ manages to get revenge on Max and begins to follow through with the idea of “I’m not nature’s bitch”.
Kids of the Black Hole
With that said, there’s not a whole lot that seperates “The Hard Times of RJ Berger” from the movies that inspired it: both “Porky’s” and “Revenge of the Nerds” were all about geeks, nerds, and losers regaining their lost manhood, and, through shenanigans and hijinks, get one over on their tormentors. Even in clips for future episodes, it seems that the central theme of RJ’s penis has been relegated to a reoccuring inside joke. Which does give the series more opportunity for character development; both RJ and Miles, and even Jenny appear to be fully developed right off the bat, and are filled with personality, but characters such as Lilly and Max tend to come across as stereotypes that, while Judd Apatow did explore such in his TV series, the late “Freaks and Geeks” and sorely missed “Undeclared”, had a special charm that gives the stereotypes a layer of depth that rarely needed improvement.
Interestingly enough, the show does show a lot of heart even if it’s verging on cliched territory here. But it neds a lot of work for it to rise above it’s current status as just another show for teen boys and men who think-with-their-you-know-whats. “The Hard Times of RJ Berger” premiered Sunday, June 6 at 11 p.m. following the MTV Movie Awards. It will slide into a Monday nights at 10 timeslot starting on June 14.
Check out this trailer from MTV!
The Android's Dungeon 