Some may remember Ashley Angel Parker as “the cute one” from O-Town, others may remember him as an animated guest star on “Clone High,” but most probably don’t remember him at all. Five years ago, he was on a show called “Making the Band,” a creation of Lou Pearlman, who manufactured the Backstreet Boys and NSync. Once those bands reached their apexes of fame, they sued Pearlman to emancipate their names, and Pearlman took the reigns of a making-of reality show featuring dance competitions, vocal lessons, plenty of wall-punching, and tears that resulted in the formation of O-Town. The group put out a horrible single called “Liquid Dreams” (sample lyrics: “Liquid dreams, my liquid dreams/Waterfall and streams, these liquid dreams”). Now, years after fading into oblivion, Parker has another MTV show called “There and Back” in the same vein as “Newlyweds” and “Meet the Barkers” that functions as a heavily-edited-so-it-looks-candid look into the life of a quasi-famous person. For Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, “Newlyweds” catapulted their failed careers and ultimately failed relationship into the limelight.
MTV turned the semi-reality sitcom into a formula as unyielding as the formula for pop songs: Here’s a 30-minute look into the life of a ditz who’s married to a sometimes musician. He laughs at her and then goes on a world tour, and then he comes home and they kiss. They enjoy wealth and fame and then they kiss. And then the moon comes up over their Spanish-style mansion and presumably they have sex, and in the preview for next week, wacky hi-jinx and the giving of really expensive gifts are promised. And very once in a while, they’ll sing a song or they’ll walk into a recording studio, but mainly they’ll just kiss. They’re poorly made shows, even reusing the same voice-over clips from episode to episode unapologetically. So you’d think that after so many incarnations of the same show, viewers would be hip to the fact that these shows are cheap shots at rekindling fame: the only place in which they differ is in the quantity of tattoos banded around the singers’ arms.
All of these shows are pointed toward the same demographic: white people ages 16-22, namely me. I am supposed to have remembered Blink 182 as a band that I liked in middle school, so I’ll like a show about their drummer. And now the producers of “There and Back” with Ashley Angel Parker hope we’re nostalgic for that boy band that barely existed in the first place. We watch Parker valiantly struggle to reclaim his career, to deal with a pregnant wife, and to maintain enough money to produce a new album. We watch as he sells his possessions in a yard sale and oversells his point: he is doing all he can for his family and for his career. He is a family man who has artistic integrity, and we should be supportive and sympathetic. We’re supposed to hope that he creates a song fit for radio and that his wife births an adorable baby named Ashley Jr. And it’s overt that we’re supposed to be so nostalgic for him that we buy his album in a fit of heightened reminiscence. But the catch is that he’s making more money off this show than he’ll make off of any album he puts out. The catch is that Parker was never a musician, yet we’re supposed to be rooting for his music career. “Making the Band made him semi-famous” and now we’re supposed to feel nostalgic for his first reality show with his second.
A spin-off of “Newlyweds” featured Jessica Simpson’s sister Ashlee, and that show had a spin-off about Ryan Cabrera, Simpson’s boyfriend at the time. And with every one of these shows came a DVD set, merchandise, clothing lines, and oh yeah, albums. Albums put out without thought or a message: albums that exist solely to legitimize their TV shows, just as their TV shows exist to legitimize their recording careers.
Television executives and producers understand how nostalgia works: once we vaguely remember, we are internally pushed to rifle through old belongings to accompany our memories. We are supposed to supplement our longing for the past with tangible icons, such as CDs and memorabilia. We are supposed to go out and buy Ashley Angel Parker’s album, which will no doubt be advertised just as the end credits roll post-season finale. The album will be marketed as a “comeback.” Even mid-season during an episode of the show, there’s a slideshow of Parker’s life accompanied by a song he’s written about himself. We’re supposed to look at the picture of Parker on a slide and remember how cute he was at age three.
I’d wonder if people actually buy into these obvious marketing schemes, but if show after show has been created and has garnered good ratings, I assume the formula works. MTV knows better than to make the same mistake twice (You haven’t seen a spin-off of “Undressed”, nor will you). So if everything we watch on television is an advertisement, then perhaps these programs are blatant self-promotion, a counter-balance to all the other sitcoms on television: thinly veiled persuasive messages and subtle shades of product placement.
So we know what we’re getting. And turning on MTV and watching “There and Back” makes me a consumer of his product. So kudos to you, Ashley. I can’t wait to buy your album. MTV tells me it’s great. And if I’m not convinced now, you’ll have a show about it in less than five years to remind me how great it was.
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