Welcome to The GBU, a weekly column coming every Monday where I look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly on TV.
This week Justin Bieber was everywhere. He had a new movie in theaters, he was at the Grammys, his music was on Glee, he was on the cover of Rolling Stone and he showed up on CSI. That’s a lot of Bieber.
Here’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Justin Bieber on TV.
The Good: CSI
First, I give Bieber a lot of credit for taking on a dark character. On CSI he reprised his role as a bomb-making, severely troubled teenager, playing way against type. Second, his character got shot repeatedly in an awesomely ridiculous ending that probably served as wish-fulfillment for all the haters. I actually like the fact that CSI‘s Nick Stokes has made a career out of taking down annoying pop stars (first he punched Kevin Federline, now he shot Bieber). Maybe in the season finale he can pistol-whip Ke$ha while waterboarding John Mayer..
The Bad: The Justin Bieber Experience on Glee
Glee used the songs of Justin Bieber for two simple reasons: to give Sam something to do and to make big bucks by covering multiple songs from the Bieb. The result was a hollow episode with absolutely no substance, just sugary, auto-tuned bubblegum pop. Just because a singer is popular doesn’t Glee has to cover his songs. Thank God the show didn’t exist in the ’90s or we’d have had an all-Hanson episode, and there’s no way to make “MMMBop” integral to a story.
The Ugly: Grammy and Rolling Stone Reactions
It wasn’t a great week for Justin Bieber in the media. First, after losing the Best New Artist Grammy to Esperanza Spalding, his fans took to Twitter to threaten her. The Bieb lovers need to cool it with threatening anyone in the Canadian pop star’s way of total world domination. He also didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, but I don’t seen his fans threatening President Obama. It would be kind of cool to see a YouTube clip of a tween girl being tazed by the Secret Service.
The Bieber machine also took a hit when a cover story on Rolling Stone featured an interview where Bieber talked about health care and abortion. The ugly part wasn’t his naïve, 16-year-old boy answers, but rather, the interviewer. Why would anyone ask Bieber about his opinions on these topics? The kid’s a pop star, and as much as his fans may think Bieberism is a new religion, he’s just a kid who sings. Leave the hard-hitting questions for politicians and pundits and go back to asking the Biebers of the world about first dates and favorite ice cream flavors.
(Images courtesy of CBS, FOX and Rolling Stone)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
