Everybody Hates a Hot Mess

Tonight was the "Everybody Hates Chris" panel at the TV Academy. The last few I attended were quite good, so although I was thinking I should save gas and sit this one out, I decided to go.

BIG MISTAKE.

Not that the show episode wasn't cute and the cast/Chris Rock/Ali LeRoi weren't charming and lovely. It's that Kelsey Grammer definitely disappointed as a moderator. I've seen what a bad moderator can do to these types of panels...lose control and they turn into boring love-fests with the actors just patting one another on the back; don't ask interesting questions and it turns into a big snoozer; allow the audience too much latitude with their queries and you get long, rambling, self-serving non-questions.

Kelsey came onstage, offered compliments about everyone on the stage with him, then opened the floor up for questions. WTF? Why was he even there? Better to bill the program as "audience q&a with the cast of Everybody Hates Chris."

Some valiant audience members did try to ask the good "talk about the audition process," "tell us about a typical week on the set," and other perfunctory questions, since it was obvious that Kelsey wasn't going to, but the program quickly degenerated as one freakazoid after another budding-writer-looking-for-a-job took the microphone. The all-time lows were when a blogger asked for pictures with the cast and a sometime actress asked Chris if she could give him a copy of her self-published book. Pity. In their defense, the actors, Chris and Ali were very gracious and tried to stay on point and keep some level of decorum (and, in Chris's case, be funny, although there were so many kids in the audience that his joke choices were a little uncomfortable). It's just a shame that the panel for the one all-black show on the schedule had to be so ghetto.

Note to TV Academy activity committee: stick with reporters and journalists when it comes to booking panel moderators.