I watched the opening episode of Comedy Central's "Contest Searchlight" tonight. I had two distinct reactions to this show, which I will now detail.

1. There are no -- well, there are some, but very few -- original ideas in entertainment these days. The people who made it into final consideration for Contest Searchlight, their ideas weren't anything new. They took other people's ideas and either combined them, or they blatantly ripped them off. It's a sad state of affairs when every plot I hear for a movie or a show or any sound I hear for a song, I can describe to others by referring to work I have previously experienced. During the press junket announcing the project, one of the executive producers, Lenny Clarke, even said that they were being like the Japanese -- they were taking someone else's project (in this case, HBO/Ben Affleck/Matt Damon's "Project Greenlight") and improving on it. So this whole idea itself isn't even original.

How many times have you been able to describe something as "[insert title/name] meets [insert title/name]"? How many times have you heard a plotline and said, "Man, that reminds me of [insert title]..."? How many times have you heard a song and said, "They sound just like [insert name]..."? I find myself saying that kind of thing way too often lately. I'm beginning to lose faith in the creative ability of America. Or is it just the industries stifling anything different? That leads me to Reaction #2.

2. I was rather put off by the way the Comedy Central people handled choosing the winner. They found both main finalists lacking, so they decided to combine their ideas, pick one as the winner, then later on during production of the winner's idea, they'd tell him that they had some changes they want made to the show. In fact, the guys making the final decision said things to the effect of, "I feel bad stabbing him in the back like this, imposing our changes on his project, but this is show business and that's how it is."

If that's show business and that's how it's usually done, it makes me wish that I didn't know about it. It makes me feel awful that these guys gave the winner some false sense of euphoria in that he thinks he's going to be able to fulfill his vision, when in truth, it's not going to happen and they're going to force something else on him or push him to the point where he'll leave the project and they won't have to go through with it. If everything has to conform to what executives want, no wonder why there's nothing new under the sun.