Important Issues of the Day: Celebrity Guest Appearances

I looked forward all day to booting up my DVR to watch the sitcom New Girl. I carefully arranged dinner on the coffee table, situated the remotes for maximum accessibility, elbowed the cats away from my plate, and prepared to relax with a chuckle at lead Zooey Deschanel and a great ensemble cast including a bunch of really cute guys. My hopes for a pleasant evening were dashed when I realized that it was a rerun of the episode where they all go to Prince's house.

I didn't want to sit through that one the first time, let alone as a rerun.

I know it's just a sitcom, but do you really expect me to believe a group of socially challenged, underemployed young people who can barely afford to cohabit in their LA loft actually get invited to a party thrown by a 1980s pop legend? Do people Zooey's age even know who Prince is? What favors were called in so he could promote himself on this popular show?

I'm usually pretty annoyed when celebrities make appearances as themselves on my favorite shows. It's unrealistic. Implausible. It disrupts ongoing plot elements. And if I don't like the celebrity, it bugs me even more. Prince, as it happens, has always really irritated me. Between the screeching and the hair I've always had a kind of stomach churning reaction to the guy.

But it's not just Prince. It's any self-promoting celebrity appearing on fictional television.

You may have to have been alive in the 1970s to remember the worst, or best, examples of celebrity aggrandizement on a sitcom. On Lucille Ball's TV sitcom, Here's Lucy, there was a different special guest star every week. I would get so irritated at Lucy gushing and fawning over the celebs who almost always played themselves. It was the same plot over and over. Lucy would act like she'd never met a famous person before when in fact, all she ever did was to meet them. She was, herself, bigger than most of them anyway.

To me, Here's Lucy reeked of lazy TV writing. But I was only in grade school at the time so what did I know?

Could I BE any gayer? I'm trashing a TV show that's been off the air for 40 years. But I never missed an episode.

There is one guest star who plays himself on a sitcom and pulls it off: Will Wheaton, who's acting career peaked when he was a teenager playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, has a recurring role on The Big Bang Theory. Wheaton plays himself with deprecation and humor.

Hot in Cleveland is a funny show where they also have a lot of celebrity guest stars. Joan Rivers, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, the guy from Modern Family, that other guy from that one show ... But on HIC, the celebrities play characters, not themselves. It's highly entertaining to see familiar faces in new roles, entertaining instead of just self-promoting.

Maybe Will Wheaton's career hasn't peaked after all. Big Bang is one of the most popular shows on television. And Carol Burnett looked great on Hot in Cleveland. Mary Tyler Moore, however, didn't look so good.