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Crash diet for
audience of 'Fat Actress'
Alley oops! Show loses
two thirds of its viewers.
By Abigail Azote
When “Fat Actress” debuted
last month, Showtime made sure everyone noticed, creating a huge
promotional rackets. But now, as the season comes to a close, there
is hardly a whimper.
“Fat Actress” has seen a steep decline in buzz and
viewership over the six weeks that it has been on air. Tonight, when
the season finale airs on Showtime at 10 p.m., expect even less
interest as the show quietly ends its first, and quite likely last,
season.
After debuting to an audience of more than 900,000
viewers, the Kirstie Alley show may not crack 300,000 during its 10
p.m. farewell.
The idea for a comedy show featuring an out-of-work and
overweight Hollywood has-been was extremely promising. After all,
“Fat” star and co-creator Kirstie Alley was still tabloid fodder
10 years after “Cheers,” her only big hit, had gone off the air.
Showtime did a great job promoting the show with ads in
Vanity Fair and Rolling Stones, billboards in major cities, plus a
special tie-in with Yahoo TV to carry streaming video of the show’s
premiere.
And in its March 7 premiere, “Fat” averaged 942,000
viewers, delivering a 4.16 household rating, the network’s
highest-rated series premiere since “Queer As Folk” in 2000.
But “Fat” flamed out, with viewership dropping 70
percent to a disastrous 285,000 by week two. Evidently those fat
jokes got old, and gross, very quickly. In the second episode, Alley
was accused of being pregnant with Kid Rock’s baby and then
suffered from diarrhea after overdosing on laxatives, proving that
there’s such a thing as too much information about celebrities.
Built on Alley’s let-me-at-‘em attitude, her
tongue-in-cheek comedic style and of course, her absolute
willingness to be the butt of even her own jokes, “Fat Actress”
seemed too delicious to resist. Who wouldn’t welcome a chance to
laugh right along with Alley?
Reviewers, for one. The show got lukewarm to cold
reviews, and viewers obviously agreed. “With virtually every joke
hinging on the title's one-note gag, it's less about laughing with
or at the star than feeling slightly embarrassed,” said Variety’s
Brian Lowry.
The Washington Post’s Tom Shales called Alley, “vulgar,
silly, and shrill.”
The National Eating Disorder Association panned the
show, too, saying in a statement that there is “nothing funny
about eating disorders. . . . To make comedic references to
anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder is dangerous.”
“Fat Actress” never got past the look-here-she’s-fat
jokes to something smarter and more substantial. And that failure to
flesh out such a promising premise will likely lead to “Fat’s”
early demise.
Showtime representatives could not be reached for
comment about the show’s future. But things do not look good. In
comparison, the Showtime series “Dead Like Me” averaged less
than 200,000 viewers over two seasons and was canceled last year.
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April 18, 2005
©
2005
Media Life
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Abigail Azote is a staff writer for
Media Life.
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