In non-election news, tipsters are blowing up our spot to tell us about The Papdits, a TV pilot being shown online at Innertube, CBS’s broadband outlet. The creator is someone called Ant Hines, who is credited as a co-writer on Da Ali G Show and Borat.
The Papdits are a fictional Indian family (Kashmiri, the website specifies, strangely) who go around the United States in an RV on a mission to purchase and operate quartz mines. (Bear with me here.) We see them in Arkansas interacting with local yokels who are unaware that this is a “reality/scripted hybrid” played by actors who want to make them look ridiculous. I got through the corny music and overdone accents and made it to the point where the daughter wants to “make toilet” in a lake off the side of a boat that the family is trying to rent. You can see it all here.
The show is coming out of what Variety calls “two years of development hell,” being first developed for — and rejected by — Fox, before landing with CBS:
When it came time to make a decision on a series greenlight, however, CBS decided the show was simply too out there for its relatively mainstream aud.
Out there??? Try idiotic, borderline racist, a complete dog!
But [CBS exec] Tellem said Eye execs were hard-pressed to simply dismiss the show, which prompted serious laughter in the net’s screening rooms last May. …
Execs quickly decided it made sense to put the Sony/CBS Par show on the net’s Innertube broadband service. Rather than just throw it on immediately, however, net opted to wait a few months in order to piggyback the online premiere of “The Papdits” with the release of another, similarly themed project: “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”
Yeah, just like Borat, right? No, for at least one salient reason: while Sacha Baron Cohen is not, in fact, Kazakh, Ant Hines found himself some real-life desis to play the Papdit family. The mother, father and son are played by Priya Ayyar, Nitin Ganatra, and Kunal Sharma. One trusts this will not be the culminating achievement of their careers. CBS, meanwhile, thinks it’s onto something, and Hines ends up a winner either way:
While it’s highly unlikely the Innertube exposure will lead to a CBS berth for “The Papdits,” Tellem doesn’t hesitate when asked whether more episodes of the project could end up on Innertube.
“Absolutely,” she said.
In the meantime, CBS has given Hines a vote of confidence, inking a deal with the scribe to develop a new project for next season.
UPDATE: I think The Papdits is awful, but Priya at Nirali has a different view. What do y’all think?
i haven’t watched this yet, but a couple of my (brown) friends told me about it and they found it hilarious. i guess i should watch it to see if i agree or disagree…
the widow-burning jokes got tiresome really quickly. ok, we get it, indian men are oafish and misogynistic. next.
I absolutely love this. I hope CBS puts it on real network TV. Yes, the Indian accents/attitudes are overdone. But, it is ridiculously funny.
Can it be considered insulting to Indians/FOBs? Yes, I’m sure those in the SM community with thin skin will take it that way. But, the target of their humor also come across as looking like idiots in many cases. (Just like Borat’s victims.)
I loved it. The reactions are priceless. Thanks for the tip, CMF.
the girl on the left has a nice face…
I thought it was pretty funny but only if the show includes “asides” where it is clear what the actors are really thinking.
blech! no wonder the pilot failed the pap-test. what a steaming,dishonest, quarter assed pile of fad riding fudgepacked turds.
I thought it was Dumb. I think the jokes were not witty enough- like the kids at The Kumars who are ridic funny and witty. Shows like this really are dependent on a funny cast of characters- and um, I just didn’t see that. Maybe in the father, if he weren’t trying to play a stereotype so hard, and spent more time on being funny. RECAST. I want Russel Peters to play the dad, and Rasika Mathur as the mother. Ok, so it’ll be a young traveling bunch. And RESCRIPT. How about instead of being a motorhome of quartz miners, how about i dunno, starting a hotel business. I would definately get the Badmash boys in the script writing process too…
Sorry. I can’t. Desis in an RV? Forreal? This is kraptastic.
Why can’t they just make 30-min sitcom episodes of Harold and Kumar? I might actually bring myself to come near a television for that.
priya ayyar is one sexy woman
damn
I was laughing so hard at the “I want to make toilet in the lake” scene that I made a little toilet in my pants. This is great stuff. I wish we could have more.
I saw a minute of it. It was okay but takes getting used to, like the UK’s “Kumars at #42”.
craptastic it is yeckh
I found it mildly funny, but I have a feeling that we will hate this show for the same reasons Kazaks hate Borat.
Just wasted 30 minutes of my life watching this.
What rubbish. Unfunny, unimaginative crap.
ridiculous. I wanted to stop watching at 2 minutes but convinced myself to suffer another 3 more, and not be hasty in judging the show.
To think that’s 5 minutes I could have better spent watching Govinda dance… yechh.
Desidancer, I’m envious. Your life is officially 25 minutes more accomplished than mine. What was I thinking?
let me see if I get it
a stereotype of desis is that they are all the smartest people in the world
so the joke of this show is to show some Indians that are stupid…
oh wait…no … i don’t get it
Everyone in this show is made to look stupid, really really stupid
so if I didn’t know better from watching this show I’d think that Indians all live in the jungle and have no clue about the world around them.
I’m with you! That was my first thought. Someone give Russell a show or somebody gonna getta hurt! People need funny chemistry with each other and when the accents are fake or the situation too contrived it stops being funny. It needs to just be all naturually funny especially if you are going to insult and piss people off like the fathers in Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.
the next show will be Bhaskar discovering the Internet. And thinking it has something to do with fishing nets.
don’t want to put someone down for trying to make it in entertainment industry… but come on
how do they sleep after acting in this show ?
from http://www.russellpeters.com/
NEW SITCOM?
This week Russell goes back into network meetings for a possible new sitcom project.
Keep checking back for updates on this exciting new development!
RUSSELLPETERS.COM | posted on October 28, 2006
Wow, this brings back memories (mostly bad)! I was actually among the selected group of people who got to preview the show at the CBS studio in MGM in Las Vegas. My wife and I were then selected for a group discussion (got paid for it!!). About 80% of the people thought the pilot was stupid and made no sense whatsoever. Some people mentioned that they know Indian kids and they are in no way as stupid as portrayed on the show. I don’t know how anyone can find it funny. Stereotypes can be funny but this is definitely not. I love Russell Peters et al but this is nowhere close. One especially dumb comment comes to mind… the mother-in-law says something about dead bodies hanging on trees in Kashmir. WTF!? I am a Kashmiri, if she had said something about terrorists killing people or something I would have understood. But dead bodies hanging from trees!!!… Speechless…
I got to a little past 8 minutes and then had to shut off this useless, not to mention insufferably boring, show.
So I went back an watched more of the show (I only gave it a 3 minute look the first time). I got to agree that it doesn’t go anywhere. The crytsal meth thing and the caddy clip was just kind of lame.
Grrr…30 minutes…bah!
ugh. i hate this. the kumars at no. 42…funny. This show…patronizing, obnoxious, and artless.
i agree. it sucks. way too many stereotypes applied to make it seem real, except maybe to people who’ve only ever heard about indians before. although the line “she is ok” was good.
i think i’m just shocked that americans will actually put up with this much shit. if this happened in india…
Not a fan. I guess there is some potential there but I think it depends too much on stereotypes. I look at it this way…Apu for a couple minutes at a time is funny and can often be hilarious. A whole show of Apu? Not so much.
I did appreciate Nirali’s shout out to the displaced ‘Arrested Development’ fans, however, I don’t think this is the kind of show America (namely CBS) is ready to appreciate. Oh, to live in the UK and have the kind of humor that isn’t tinged with over-sensitivity.
Taz:
That’s an idea…but interestingly enough, I remember Russell Peters has very strong feelings about never playing a fake-accented south asian stereotype character for the benefit of American audiences. So this sort of show would probably make him a little sick. I remember in a CBC interview he said he’s rejected a lot of very 2 dimensional roles of that sort and that he has a picture of Malcolm X (with a quote about never selling out) to remind him of that promise to himself. (did anyone else catch this?)
(no idea why I know this much about Russell Peters)
Lame. I couldn’t force myself to sit through more than eight minutes. And is this really how we want to portray ourselves to the general American public? As overdone stereotypes who don’t know the difference between a waterslide and a toilet? Please. CBS did us a huge favor by not picking this show up.
Yes, that’s why Borat is #1 at the box-office. What?
No, though Americans are indeed over-sensitive, the main problem with the Papdits is unfunninesss. A crime of the first order in a comedy.
so the general consensus with borat is that the joke’s not on the kazakhs, but on the americans, since he’s exploiting their ignorance. perhaps that’s a nice way to spin it, perhaps not. i’m not sure. i’m not a big fan of cohen, anyhow. couldn’t sit through more than 5 mins of ali g.
also, if this show is going to air, i’d rather have indians playing these dudes than any other nationality.
couldn’t sit through more than 5 mins of this either. agree with sriram (#30). besides, it’s just not that funny. stereotypes or not.
Oh alright, I’ll agree to that, but I still don’t think Russell Peters is a comedic genius for accurately doing various accents and pointing out the difference between races.
Oy, Siddhartha, you don’t need to express your hatred twice 😉
Doesn’t even really seem like it’s gonna be that funny, but I’m wondering what the major difference is between this and the Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me. Yes the latter two had intelligent humour as opposed to dumbass humour but they still made fun of every desi stereotype…
I think though for me it brought up a little bit of hypocrisy at how easily I can laugh at Borat without caring about how those previously Communist Kazakhs must be feeling, or laughed at William Hung the nerdy Chinese engineer from American Idol probably more easily than if he was an Indian engineer. I guess the Papdits are now the desi equivalent of that. Sigh, somewhere a pair of saffron balls are shrivelling up…
Great Ganesha, I’m about to tell you something that will make my friends think I’m uncool.
I think Borat is funny as all hell. I do. The joke is on the people who fall for his stunts. But here’s my confession: the joke is also on Kazakhs. He depicts them as benighted, vulgar, stupid, callous. If he were playing an Indian, or a Korean or a Kenyan, there’s no way in hell this shit would fly, pardon my French. I think it has to do with the coding: Kazakhstan is white. White and poor. Like poor white trash. Which is funny. It’s no accident that many of his targets are Southerners with pronounced accents. White folks making fun of white folks.
Even the coding for Ali-G is very careful. He’s a wigga, which is acceptable humor. If he were a nigga, that wouldn’t wash.
But Borat just goes full bore and says, “Jagdemash, I’m from Kazakhstan!” Pretty appalling, if you think about it. But I guess the same is true of sausages, or the drinking water in most American cities.
But he’s damn funny. And, somehow, this combined with the fact that poor whites aren’t considered a species worth protecting, makes it all good. Funny wins.
If the Popzits were side-splittingly funny, I wouldn’t give a damn who the actors were, or how allegedly “offensive” the material was. Like me a good blue streak. But they are not, so I do.
Aren’t you part of the general American public too…
This really reminded me of when this terrible Eclipse chewing gum add came out with the hot boy off Monsoon Wedding and the accents were fully Indian and I just cringed in shame but my sister kept cracking up at it and loved it.
The reason she found it so funny? She felt she was part of the ‘general public’ and that the stereotype had nothing to do with her. I’m not saying that’s a better view to have, but it’s probably an easier view to have when faced with crap like the Paps.
Crap..and lame.
Some shows just have bad openings, but some of you sound like that guy, you know, the one who comes to every book club meeting, only reads the back cover, and makes sure to get a mouthful in while others who’ve actually read the book roll their eyes.
I respect those who’ve watched the clip in its entirety and don’t like it. I even share their dislike for it, but dismissing the clip after 2, 3, or 8 minutes is intellectual laziness. Come on, don’t be that guy.
The only thing this clip suggested about Indians is that they are damn good looking.
The joke is on America’s version of ‘cultural awareness.’ The people the Papdits encounter truly believe that in daughters are dropped over bridges, husbands plot the death of their mother-in-law, wives carry permission slips. They’re all shocked, but ‘cultural sensitivity’ prevents them from getting the joke.
Not too long ago, “culture” was a defense for heinous crimes. There are a bunch of cases where Hmong men were acquitted of rape because the defense convinced the jury that the culture made them do it and that’s how Hmong marry. There’s another case where a mother was acquitted of murdering her son born of wedlock because she couldn’t take the shame. For a very long time, human rights groups stayed away from FGM because to avoid accusations of cultural imperialism.
America loves it’s moral high horse. The Papdits turn that horse to a mechanical bull and it is damn funny to watch these good Christians flail. Comon — that scene where the wife is selling tupperware “made from special glass, called plastic” and the judge stares in respectful astonishment thinking “I just gotta figure out a way to save this poor woman.” HILARIOUS! She got bucked.
Espressa, I love your defense.
Don’t buy it. But love it anyway.
A moral high horse turned into a mechanical bull? Gotsa get me one of those!
You go.
Waiting for Kobayashi to die. Or shut up.
Hmmm… I’m gonna disagree with Mr. K for once. I really don’t think that Kazakhstan is clearly identified as “white”. Certainly the Russians did not treat Central Asians as “whites” when they ravaged the area; indeed, I’ve learned that the word “nigger” was introduced to Central Asia as a slur used by Russians against native people (which is interesting and f*&!ed up for so many other reasons)!
Obviously I’m talking in terms of social constructions, not biology, which I think is not particularly relevant to this. But my sense is that Central Asians would not be considered “white” by any “true whites” that have encountered them, certainly not in the context of Soviet[Russian] colonization or in today’s context either.
I feel like the coding is moreso that Kazakhs are considered irrelevant, voiceless, ambiguously Islamic, and generically “brown”, or at least nonwhite. If Cohen was mocking, say, a Pole, or a [white] Israeli, I may or may not have different thoughts on the matter. Mockery and bullying are two different things.
I also think that Ali G is intentionally ambiguous. Please do correct me if this is incorrect, if Ali G’s heritage is shown to be white, but I’ve often felt “Da Ali G Show” contained a subtext suggesting that Ali G was actually desi. Which does make a difference.
Also, please be warned that I have a long history of abusive remarks. I thought it’s only fair to caution you, I or my avatar, Narasimha-esque, may actually jump out of the screen and cause you mental and physical disembowelment. Love, yeti.
Also, comparison to the Ali G and Borat characters is slightly misplaced.
SBC’s characters aim to get people comfortable enough to say things that show Americans as stupid/racist/bigoted. The Papdits reveal the inherent discomfort a lot of Americans feel toward foreigners. I think its incredibly interesting. Borat does a little of this.
Also, Kazakhstan is a predominantly Muslim nation that loves its Jews — no instances of anti-semitism have been reported in the last two years! — so I wouldn’t really agree that its white-on-white humor. (yes, i know islam isn’t a color but that’s how the culturally aware americans classfiy it)
I didn’t like the Borat movie as much as I expected I would — they sacrificed subtlty to the god of ticket sales. Dave Chappelle pulled out to avoid falling prey to the same. Russell Peters, Margaret Cho, Dat Phan, Carlos Mencia — all hilarious. All risk causing more harm than laughter. All are aware that there is a fine line…somewhere.
Goodbye, “Blisterpack.” It was nice knowing you.
preempted by a yeti!
That makes two of us, biyotch.
Yeti, the Irish were “black,” doesn’t mean they aren’t white.
And yetis are…
(wait for it)
… brown!
In 42
should have read “The people the Papdits encounter truly believe that in :insert random foreign land: daughters are dropped over bridges, husbands plot the death of their mother-in-law, wives carry permission slips”
i dunno why that didn’t show…