Dial File — Steve Bornfeld: Odious ‘Action’ lacks traction

Friday, Sept. 24, 1999 | 10:26 a.m.

Steve Bornfeld is the Sun features editor. His television column appears Fridays. Reach him at 259-4081 or steveb@vegas.com

How sad.

Yes: How smarmy. How sleazy. How scuzzy.

But mostly: How sad.

The reaction is for "Action," the frantically debated Fox series that debuted last week to gratifyingly weak -- 72nd place -- ratings. The series centers around bratty, bile-spewing movie producer Peter Dragon (Jay Mohr) amid the dealers and debauchers of Tinseltown.

Touted as a savvy satire rife with ruthless predators wearing their perversity with pride -- plus bleeped profanity! -- "Action" is actually Hollywood's self-absorbed homage to its own hubris, unconvincingly disguised as savage self-mockery.

The premiere episodes poured forth: penis jokes ("It's an anaconda!"); tastelessness (a whore's hand down Keanu Reeves' pants); humiliation (a Disney exec as a sexual submissive in a maid's outfit); masturbation references (courtesy of Salma Hayek); blunt sexual phrases (Dragon got "a hump job at the People's Choice Awards"), kids as props for profanity (Dragon rehearses an expletive-laced tirade for his approving young daughter); and bodily fluid humor (a salad with a very homemade house dressing).

For all their big bucks and good looks, these are sad people living sad lives, attuned to their outer beauty and oblivious to their inner ugliness -- a boffo satiric set-up. Yet there's a discomforting sense that while the audience sees that satire for the clueless narcissism it is, the satirists ... don't. The producers are clueless narcissists.

"Action" feels more like a Hollywood orgy of self love, oozing with wildly misplaced smugness, as if even their failings are fabulous. Every supposedly self-mocking moment carries the unmistakable whiff of self-congratulatory hipness, i.e.: We're so outrageously cool!

Rarely has Hollywood seemed so disconnected from the rest of us. And rarely is satire this transparently vain.

"Action" is a mean-spirited rant in which broadcast-TV profanity pales against the show's true transgressions: the breathtaking callousness with which these people treat each other -- and how they seem to admire themselves for it.

While HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show" employed sly wit to expose and ridicule Hollywood psychosis, "Action" uses bombastic vulgarity to celebrate and deify it. How sad.

But America isn't joining the celebration. Be glad.

Croon a Tune -- The Return: New & Improved! Bigger & Better! With 25 Percent More TV Theme Power!

The name-that-TV-tune-style trivia contest that was once a Dial File fixture makes its return next Friday as a weekly feature of this column.

As before, you can call up to hear the TV theme song of the week, guess the title and, if you're right, get your name printed in glorious black and white in this column. The Croon a Tune repertoire will expand from its previous prime-time format to include morning, afternoon and late-night shows, as well as game shows and even commercials. Plus, we'll play snippets of theme lyrics to tease you into identifying some of the most cherished TV ditties of all time.

Keep your Gershwins, your Kerns, your Ellingtons, your Billy Joels. This is the Great American Art Form that gave us a horse is a horse.

Sheer brilliance? Of course, of course.