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‘Game’ on: More Real Than Reality TV
by Jon Caramanica
During its first three seasons “The Game,” the dramedy about professional football players and the women who barely tolerate them, overflowed with cameos by black celebrities. There were singers like Musiq, rappers like Soulja Boy, athletes like Chad Ochocinco and more. Robin Givens and Rick Fox played themselves in recurring roles. These appearances added verisimilitude to a series already steeped in it. Few shows on television were as specific to their moment as “The Game.”
In the Season 4 premiere, Tuesday on BET, the surrounding culture has changed a bit. Near the end of the episode Tasha Mack (Wendy Raquel Robinson), gets a shock when meeting one of her boyfriend’s exes: Sheree Whitfield of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” playing herself.
It’s timely casting, and also a bit of a wink. “The Game,” which had its premiere in 2006 — before the “Housewives” explosion, before every other football player and 1990s R&B star had dating shows — was, until its cancellation by the CW network in 2009, an inadvertent precursor to the boom in reality television about the semi-famous. Its demi-monde was the behind-the-scenes universe of modern celebrities, and its best material about the embarrassments that lay therein, giving the show a ripped-from-the-headlines quality. Now, 20 months after its Season 3 finale was broadcast on CW, “The Game” is returning to a world that, in a sense, it set the stage for.
Read the Full Article @ The New York Times
‘Game’ on: More Real Than Reality TV
by Jon Caramanica
During its first three seasons “The Game,” the dramedy about professional football players and the women who barely tolerate them, overflowed with cameos by black celebrities. There were singers like Musiq, rappers like Soulja Boy, athletes like Chad Ochocinco and more. Robin Givens and Rick Fox played themselves in recurring roles. These appearances added verisimilitude to a series already steeped in it. Few shows on television were as specific to their moment as “The Game.”
In the Season 4 premiere, Tuesday on BET, the surrounding culture has changed a bit. Near the end of the episode Tasha Mack (Wendy Raquel Robinson), gets a shock when meeting one of her boyfriend’s exes: Sheree Whitfield of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” playing herself.
It’s timely casting, and also a bit of a wink. “The Game,” which had its premiere in 2006 — before the “Housewives” explosion, before every other football player and 1990s R&B star had dating shows — was, until its cancellation by the CW network in 2009, an inadvertent precursor to the boom in reality television about the semi-famous. Its demi-monde was the behind-the-scenes universe of modern celebrities, and its best material about the embarrassments that lay therein, giving the show a ripped-from-the-headlines quality. Now, 20 months after its Season 3 finale was broadcast on CW, “The Game” is returning to a world that, in a sense, it set the stage for.
Read the Full Article @ The New York Times
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