Go to any screening of The Room, Tommy Wiseau's tour-de-force depiction of one man's personal relationship hell in a dystopian, near future fantasy world where humans have been robbed of all identifiable human emotions apart from abject spite, random bursts of maudlin rage, and occasional laughter associated with tossing a football around for some reason, and the conversation inevitably devolves into a bout of is he/isn't he discussion over the veracity of Wiseau's persona. Is he an elaborate fraud? A sort of Kaufman-esque character designed to troll greater humanity until his last, dying breath? Or is he really the exiled European royal eccentric who actually thinks his movies are awesome that many purport him to be?
Whether or not he was once batshit crazy in his own earnest way, any remaining trace of earnestness from the man's pocked, droopy-eyed visage appears to be long gone. Much as humanity's fate was sealed for the worse when Skynet became self-aware, any chance of us genuinely loving the kooky, indeterminately European filmmaker has pretty much gone thermonuclear, thanks to the new Machinima production, The Tommy Wi-Show.
For reasons defiant of reason itself, Machinima has apparently paid Wiseau actual money, which can be used to exchange for goods and/or services, to "star" in this "show" in which Wiseau plays video games assigned to him by a helpful, dickish alien, and then says things about them. In the first episode, after repeated complaints that the space station set in which he sits is not his house, Tommy plays Mortal Kombat, while making such wondrous observations as these:
"Oh wooooow..."
"Yeah, kick him! One more time!"
"I don't have a blade. That's not faaaaiiiir."
"Dammit! You Mexican...or whatever you are..."
While there is something slightly mad genius about taking a man who would typically be the subject of a RiffTrax episode and turning him into the commentator--imagine if Ed Wood had sat in on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000--The Tommy Wi-Show appears to have little interest anything beyond using Tommy's reputation as a purveyor of terrible everything in the laziest way possible. In fact, I think this show was ultimately summed up best by MST3K alum and current RiffTrax man Michael J. Nelson on his twitter feed today:
The Tommy Wi-Show: prepare to sigh deeply & say, "Why the hell did I just watch that?
Indeed. Feel free to ask yourself that very question as you watch the first three minutes of the embedded YouTube video below. If you can make it any further than that, your tolerance for overly self-aware bullshit is officially higher than mine.
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