On November 12th, Netflix is dropping a new documentary about Eddie Murphy called Being Eddie. I got to see an early screener of it the other day, and one of the most surprising revelations was that Murphy is an unexpectedly huge fan of MTV’s Ridiculousness, which he actually called “the best show on TV” (you can see him say as much in the trailed embedded above). He’s not joking either, with him sincerely comparing the show to a film by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with him saying it’s similar in that you see all these outrageous shots and by the time you realize how crazy something looks, it’s on to the next weird image.
Sadly, Eddie’s gonna be sad to learn that MTV is pulling the plug on Ridiculousness after a fourteen-year run. The show, hosted by Rob Dyrdek and featuring viral videos which are – as the title suggests – ridiculous, ran 1700 episodes. According to THR, the show is so ubiquitous on MTV that almost half of the channel’s programming is devoted to it. Apparently, the reason it’s being dropped is that the new owners at Skydance want to return to a more curated form of programming, one more closely related to the channel’s history. My question to that is – do they mean more music videos, or more in line with the 2000s, when they had hits like The Hills and Jersey Shore?
Whatever the case, don’t expect Ridiculousness to really vanish. Repeats are expected to continue airing, and new shows are still being rolled out, as not all the new episodes have premiered. It’s also streaming on Paramount+, and in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Drydek returns with some version of the show on another platform – even if they lose the name Ridiculousness. It can’t be that expensive to produce, and it feels like a brand that could still be milked for years to come – even if it pivots to an online-only version.
What do you think of MTV cancelling Eddie Murphy’s favorite show? Let us know in the comments.
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