  Nelly Furtado |
Not many TV shows create their own verbs.
Punk'd has achieved that.
"You got punk'd" or "I've been punk'd" has been accepted as recognizable lingo in the English-speaking world. That's quite an achievement for a show that really is little more than Ashton Kutcher's cruel escalation of the old Candid Camera project.
The final season of Punk'd will make its Canadian debut tomorrow night on the Comedy Network (it already has aired on MTV in the United States). The three celebrity victims this week are Canadian singer Nelly Furtado, Hayden Panettiere from Heroes, and figure skater Bucky Lasek (who dat?).
Kutcher does have a goofy charm to him. He came to fame for his role as Kelso in That '70s Show, which fell into the category of "guilty pleasure." It wasn't high comedy, but it could kill a half-hour, and if all else failed you could stare at Mila Kunis.
Kutcher, a.k.a. Mr. Demi Moore, doesn't mind riffing on his own life, either. In setting up the punking of Lasek, for example, Kutcher refers to Moore's 1993 movie Indecent Proposal, which he claims he never saw because he was too young and his parents wouldn't let him.
The likability of Kutcher aside, on a personal level Punk'd always has been sort of difficult to watch. "Humiliation humour," a la Borat, is okay in small doses, but beyond that you just want to cringe.
In an old episode of The Simpsons, Homer places police tape across the Flanders' yard, and then emerges laughing when Ned arrives and naturally assumes something horrible has happened.
"Fooled you, Flanders! Made you think your family was dead! Don't you get it?" Homer yelps with uncontrollable glee. "They're not, though ... but you thought they were! That's why it was so funny!"
To which a traumatized Ned meekly responds, "Heh, heh ... that's a good one."
Punk'd is based on the same principle.
As for tomorrow, Lasek is put on the spot when a man he believes to be Tom Cruise offers a large amount of money to sleep with Lasek's wife (hence, the Indecent Proposal reference).
Panettiere is sitting in a restaurant when a man and his son approach, asking if they can get their picture taken with her. The man sits down to chat for a moment, but then his wife comes charging in, loudly accusing Panettiere of trying to steal her husband.
And Furtado shows up for a television interview just before the bomb squad is called in to detonate a suspicious package. The suspicious package, as it turns out, is Furtado's purse.
Poor Nelly actually seems way more concerned about her expensive purse and its contents -- Blackberry, passport, etc. -- than the thought that there really might be a bomb.
"There's a reason we're a lot more secure than your country, ma'am," a U.S. bomb-squad member scolds Nelly.
Funny or cruel?
Language is a fluid thing, and like it or not, "punk'd" is now a word. Kutcher already has won.
