This is from the July/August issue of Dollars & Sense (although the version in the magazine is in black and white – oh, well). This is the second time I’ve drawn these characters; the first time was in March..
UPDATE: It may interest folks to know that there was a lot of wrangling with the editors over the punch line of this one. My initial idea was:
BROWNHAIR: The winner gets too sane to be on a reality tv show, so the show has to be cancelled before it even appears.
PINKHAIR: The perfect reality show!
That doesn’t work (“gets too sane” is a phrase that doesn’t work, and how is the show cancelled before it appears when the winning doesn’t happen until the end of the show’s season?), so the editors were right to reject it; and unfortunately, things were on too tight a schedule for me to have time to step back from the line, realize why it wasn’t working, and fix it. If I were to rewrite it today, I’d make it:
BROWNHAIR: The winner gets too much self-esteem to be on reality tv, so the show has to be cancelled.
PINKHAIR: At last, the perfect reality show!
I was tempted to redraw the last panel, this time using the above dialog, before posting it on the blog. I decided not to because I’m lazy and anyhow I don’t have the spare time (I’ve got a ton of drawing on various paid projects – including the Sept/Oct “Dollars and Sense” cartoon – I have to do this week). Additionally, I really like how the body language and expressions in the final panel came out. Besides, I’m not sure “my” ending is any better than the one that was used.
Anyhow, other suggested endings included:
BROWNHAIR: I dunno… self-respect? A measure of serenity?
PINKHAIR: You’d get better ratings if she got a million dollars and then had to wrestle in jello.
And this one, suggested by the editors:
BROWNHAIR: The winner will star in a spin-off called ‘The Simple Waif’, where she will match wits with Paris Hilton for the dizzy heiress’ fortune.
PINKHAIR: Now THAT’s hot.
(I didn’t fully get this one until the editors explained that “that’s hot” is Paris Hilton’s catch phrase.)
In the end, we went with “You really don’t get the point of reality shows, do you?,” which was suggested by my friend Phil Howe. Thanks, Phil!
This is so cute! I love it! I think your cartoons are really well-drawn, by the way. But also, what you are saying here is what I always think when I try to make sense of how anyone can watch more than 2 min of a reality TV show without turning it off in disgust.
What a wonderful, positive way to start the day:)
Thanks for posting this.
I love this one. Soon as I read it I thought of a passage from the Hitchhiker’s Guide.
‘The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for poof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
‘ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
‘ ‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.
Not related at all, but it just remined me of it. A reality show that becomes too sane to exist so it vanishes before it ever does.
Great cartoon. I also like the ending you did use. Pretty much sums up reality TV.
Phil’s wins; they went with the right one.
Also, please please please tell me the odious quotes about pitch were their insistence and not your idea. Please?
Seems to me that “reality” TV has to be disconnected from reality in order to work. It first hit me when I saw the “Real People – Boston” show and realized that they were showing 8 college-age kids in Boston where none of them were actually college students. Hardly reality. The situations these folks are put into are so far from actual reality as to be laughable.
Yeah, good cartoon!
I like “self-respect.” It’s short, sweet, and says what you want to say.
I think what they went with works best with the last panel’s drawing, but I’ve got to say, the jello-wrestling line was my favorite. (I think it would come off best, though, if Pinkhair had her hands in her pocket while she was saying it)
Well, we agreed on the content before I drew it; obviously I would have drawn it differently had one of the other punchlines been chosen. And I agree, hands in pocket would have worked well if the jello-wrestling one had been chosen.
Kip, I shall have to live with you being disappointed with me. However, for what it’s worth, I thought – and still think – that putting scare quotes around lots of words and phrases in that word balloon was a reasonable way of conveying the character’s sarcastic tone of voice.
The ending you used is the best of them. Although I like
BROWNHAIR: I dunno… self-respect? A measure of serenity?
PINKHAIR: You’d get better ratings if she got a million dollars and then had to wrestle in jello.
a lot too.
That seems to be the idea of this new Fox show they’re trying to market, “Tyra.” I’m not actually sure if it’s like that, or anything, but from the ads, at least, that’s how they seem to be marketing it.