“We have delivered a great evening… and our team sucks.” – Paul Stanley
What’s become really interesting about the inaugural season of 4th and Loud, a reality show I like quite a lot (and perhaps add a few more points out of 10 than I should purely out of my love for the game of football) is just how bad the LA Kiss are during their own debut season as a franchise.
Here’s the thing: all expansion franchises are terrible at first, especially during their first season or two and often for many years. It makes perfect sense: expansion franchises are typically dealt scraps in the form of a expansion draft, and pair that together with a new coaching staff, a new system, new facilities, and players for the most part who have never played with one another before.
So it’s especially juicy that LA Kiss co-owners Brett Bouchy and Doc McGhee and president Schuyler Hoversten are so wildly unrealistic about the prospects of their brand new team winning the Arena Football championship in their very season. It makes for a delicious combination of reality show tension meets real life you-almost-can’t-make-this-stuff-up comedy.
Note that I’m not calling out the far more famous LA Kiss co-owners (and they who loan their legendary band/brand to the team mascot), Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, in this regard. I actually have been impressed with their interest and involvement with the team, and their little pep talk to a reeling team during “Changing of the Guard” was admirable. Head Coach Bob McMillen’s grumbling during said speech, on the other hand, was not.
As the squad is in the midst of a huge losing streak, veteran quarterback J.J. Raterink is booted in favor of super veteran (read = old) quarterback Aaron Garcia. Though as soon as he gets in the door, Bouchy and company immediately talk him up as a future offensive or head coach. Which implies that firing Raterink (who played very well in his final game with the Kiss) was a panic move more than anything else.
Now, a quick aside about Paul Stanley: every time he appears on camera, I’m struck by how professional and thoughtful the guy is (and you can’t help but recognize with Stanley and Simmons both: Kiss becoming one of the biggest bands in the world was no pure accident from a business and marketing perspective). But I’m also struck by the hilarious Dana Gould’s recent depiction of Stanley hanging out with a young relative at a Color Me Mine in Los Angeles, as told on The Adam Carolla Show podcast. It’s a loving and warm satire, but deeply funny and rather spot on with relation to Stanley’s vocal stylings.
A perfect segue and another aside (and why not?) to another Adam Carolla anecdote. The LA Kiss management brain trust at one point suggests giving away bobble heads as a ploy to bring in more fans to the stadium (and keep in mind this is on top of the go go dancers, shock and awe pyrotechnics, rock n’ roll aesthetic, and extreme sports performers that LA Kiss home games hurls at spectators). Gene Simmons, channeling the Ace Man in a nearly spine tingling way, retorts, “Do you really think bobble heads will bring in more fans?” Straight faced, a management executive replies, “Yes, I do.”
As the episode ends, Garcia drops his first game at quarterback as the LA Kiss tank to 2-7. Hopes of a first season championship are out the window, so if nothing else the first season of 4th and Loud is nowhere near the PR juggernaut for the team that the owners and management were hoping out its depiction on AMC.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.