8 Upsetting Things About JB Smoove’s New Game Show, ‘Buy It Now’
Anyone compiling evidence that our TV programming has taken a turn for the dystopic doesn’t have to look particularly hard to find it. In 2018, truTV aired a game show, Paid Off With Michael Torpey, on which the prize wasn’t cash but the value of the winning contestant’s outstanding student loans. Netflix’s Squid Game — a searing drama about people so desperate about their personal debt that risking their lives for a cash jackpot seems like a good idea — begat a Netflix reality competition exactly like the scripted show, minus the part where contestants die for real. By the time Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man comes out, the idea of a TV audience slavering for players to be violently killed might not be so outlandish.
This week, Prime Video will launch a new unscripted show hosted by JB Smoove. Though it’s presented as a showcase for small business owners, the backbone of the American economy, it’s as dark as any of the reality concepts cited above. Really.
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Let’s count the ways…
The show — which, again, airs on Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming video platform — is called Buy It Now, like the buttons on Amazon product listings that let consumers skip over all the data-entry steps that might cause them to reconsider their purchase. “What’s next, a Prime Video show about users’ Amazon wish lists?” Yes. “What’s coming after that, a Prime Video show about Subscribe & Save?” Probably.
Multiple times in each episode, an earnest entrepreneur pitches the product they’ve spent many years and thousands of dollars developing, to judges who spend about three minutes of screen time deciding whether to grant them virtual Amazon shelf space. Of course, there are other retailers these people can pitch if Amazon’s panelists pass, but none with Amazon’s reach, so washing out here could mean the end of the entrepreneur’s dream. This is intended to be entertainment for the viewer at home.
One of the entrepreneurs is the owner of a pool-cleaning company who’s not only invented a pool vacuum called the VacDaddy but has also made himself a large necklace — which I pray is just gold-plated and not solid gold — of his VacDaddy logo. I shouldn’t be made to invest emotionally in the choices of a person like this.
The only permanent member of the judges’ panel is Jamie Siminoff, founder of the company that produces the Ring doorbell camera, which he sold to Amazon for $1 billion. The Ring camera has one main purpose: surveillance. Thus, it’s hard for me to care what this guy — whose own entrepreneurship has definitely made the world a worse place — thinks about spice blends (you know there’s nothing more adventurous in his house than salt), or a game called Beer Darts (unless there’s a high likelihood in the latter case that he’ll get Beer Darted in the foot).
Members of the studio audience are asked to vote on entrepreneurs’ 90-second pitches, though proceeding to the judges’ panel only requires winning over 10 out of 100. In the premiere episode, Smoove has to start the applause for himself because they’re too slow on the draw. I’m supposed to trust their assessment of (for instance) a sheer organza face hood meant to protect the wearer from smearing their makeup on their clothes?! Clearly their judgment is questionable!
Reluctantly, I must admit that this is not the best work of Smoove’s career. As far as I can tell, he’s one of the few celebrities who doesn’t have his own signature line of consumer products, and his attempts to manufacture enthusiasm for most of the products fizzle. At the end of each episode, the pitchers whose products have been approved for sale in the Buy It Now store are all eligible for an additional $20,000 prize the judges award to the most outstanding supplicant. “This makes me— I’m excited!” claims Smoove at the climax of the series premiere, presumably repeating exactly what producers just said into his ear.
It’s a lot of that, and when it’s not, it’s jokes that may have only made the edit because no one in authority knew what they meant. (I’d love to know what Michelle Rothman, Amazon’s head of Shopping and Entertainment, thought about her introduction following a “window to the wall” gag.)
Smoove at least seems like a real person who’s trying to tamp down all his instincts in order to fit this assignment. Appearing alongside Siminoff are a succession of Amazon VPs attempting to perform humanity. I don’t care if a person purporting to be named Tanner Elton wants me to know he has five kids at home, or that Carmen Nestares is going to fake connection to a pitcher because they’re both wearing leopard print: I believe that, as soon as the studio lights go off, the executives walk straight from their chairs into charging stations. Nestares’ first episode also features, in the celebrity chair, Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, who sarcastically scoffs at Nestares’ concern about college kids playing Beer Darts because they’re under the drinking age: When you’re coming across as less relatable than GWYNETH PALTROW, make some changes.
On the whole, the stuff these pitchers are trying to sell is junk no one needs. Obviously, there are some exceptions: the biodegradable dish wipes that work without water, perfect for camping trips; a template to place on a patient in medical distress to help guide someone who needs to perform CPR on them; a reusable device for single-cup coffee makers to keep disposable plastic pods out of landfills.
Then there’s the Curveband, literally just a plastic semi-circle you stick in a baseball cap brim to give it the right arc. Ashamad, its creator, claims that because they come in different colorways, they’re collectible. Why is a utilitarian item, meant to be used exclusively at home, being treated like a vehicle for self-expression? Anyone watching would see this single-purpose tool and envision it 10 years from now as part of the Pacific Garbage Patch; that goes double for the rattling doodad you clamp on a camera to make babies look at the lens for better photos. If you actually are one of the problem drinkers people who wanted the nightstand lamp with a water thermos built into it so much that you spent close to $200 for it, never tell me.
Visit the Buy It Now store if you must. I can’t stop you. But if, when you’re there, you see a $12 duck to stick on a computer key to make your keyboard more “fun,” consider whether a food bank could use that $12 more.