"Viva Laughlin" cashes out
Karaoke may work in reality television, but as part of a scripted series, it just doesn’t click.
That’s not for lack of Hollywood trying.
Similar to Steven Bochco’s short-lived ABC series “Cop Rock,” CBS’s “Viva Laughlin” had actors dancing and singing along to well-known prerecorded songs.
After a dull setup showing breakfast with his family and buying a new car for his son, Hugh Jackman goes to work at his new casino in Laughlin, Nevada – a couple hours south of Las Vegas.
He enters the casino, leaps onto a roulette table, and sings “Viva Las Vegas.”
That’s when we shut the TV off.
And so did the rest of the nation, as CBS cancelled the show after just two airings, losing a whopping 60 percent of its audience from its crime drama lead-in of “CSI” last Thursday and losing 40 percent after “60 Minutes” in what was to be its regular timeslot Sunday.
Unanimously panned by critics, the show couldn’t keep its own audience – by the time the episode ended, a third of the audience was asleep.
CBS’s website quickly expunged all traces of “Viva Laughlin.” What remains are comments from a few fans after its passing and in the “CSI” message forum: “laugh out loud,” “thinks out of the box,” and “it think you have all made a mistack” (sic).
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