It was only a couple of weeks ago that I had cause to peruse the wonders of late-night television, and now, like sands through the hourglass (or something), I have been blessed with enough early rises/couch-sleeps to be able to check back in with my old friends Mel and Kochie.

Yes, it's Sunrise time. And today I thought I'd attempt a full complement of Sunrise fare. (Well, close to it, at least - I turned on just before 7am.)

My feelings about the show are as fickle as the wind; one moment I love Mel's demented sincerity and Kochie's shiny head, the next minute I am throwing things (used tissues, books, the cat) at the television in a rage.

On the former tip, they're certainly not quite as idiotic as Nine's Today team, with its bizarre home-chemistry-set mix of Karl Stefanovic's perma-winking delivery combined with seriose cat Lisa Wilkinson trying to rein in the stupidity (which generally skyrockets whenever Richard "Jeff Goldblum is dead" Wilkins is in the room).

But in the latter category, Sunrise certainly gives Today a run for their money when it comes to the gobsmackingly dumb stakes. Take this morning's 'news ribbon' highlights.

First of all the Sunrise team were reaching for that Walkley in the sky with the hard hitting:

  • 8.15 IS EVA MENDES TOO SKINNY?

Then the mystifying syntax of this item:

  • HOLLYWOOD CASTING AGENT TELL US WHAT SHE'S LOOKING FOR

Viewers read good, talk good, too! (Alas, I was in the bathroom during that particular expose, so I'll never know if this agent tell me what woman say me need to make heap good Hollywood talking picture.)

The Mendes non-story featured rent-a-quote talking head Melissa Hoyer in studio, and a representative from The Butterfly Foundation on the video link up. The conclusion they all seemed to reach was that "[celebrities] are people, too" and that talking about people's body shapes and sizes is damaging. If I may use an emoticon for a moment:

:|

It also involved Kochie and "Berretts" repeatedly requesting to see the offending Mendes/Calvin Klein campaign, while Mel looked somewhere towards the exit light like a combination of Tammy Faye Bakker and that puppet-headed woman who used to sell the Ab-Blaster and cyclonic vacuum cleaners.

Earlier on, with much fanfare, they had introduced the "promised" extended news bulletin coming up at 8am, which Kochie insisted would be ten minutes long. It started at 8.03am and they finished up the sport around 8.07am. Now, I'm no mathemagician...

:| x 2

Then Kirk Pengilly and Layne Beachley jumped out of a plane to raise money for eye health work undertaken by the Eye Foundation; the mystifying logic of the campaign seemed to be to "Face Your Fears", because Pengilly had fallen off a ladder (I think) and/or had glaucoma (I know), which naturally led to skydiving.

Throughout all this were the regular weather breaks to the enigmatic Fifi Box, who was in a Mildura town whose name she couldn't pronounce, watching children wearing hi-viz vests in a mesmerising trance of picking oranges, putting them in black buckets, tipping them into the biggest cardboard box in the universe, then putting them back in the black buckets.

This culminated with the school children's principal telling Fifi the kids had started their own business (which appeared to involve various citrus fruit slushees in fish bowls with giant drinking straws). Fifi responded by attempting to eat a small child holding a balloon.

Breakfast television is a bizarre anomaly in the television landscape - it doesn't seem to be able to work out whether it wants to be a jolly old lark or a serious news disseminator or a variety show or a home-shopping spectacular.

Here's a good example of what I'm getting at:



I gave up on this morning's Sunrise at about 8.27am because I was worried my brain was going to atrophy (I'm not sure if that can actually happen, but I'm sure if it could, we'd hear about it at 8.15 right after Melissa Hoyer drops by to discuss the width of Colin Farrel's solar plexus), but who knows? Tomorrow is another day, and such are the swings and roundabouts of breakfast tele that Friday could bring with it the greatest Sunrise I have ever seen.

After all, they did bring us this:



But such is Sunrise's inscrutability and manhandling of squinting modifiers that when this piece went to air a month or so ago, I didn't realise the dancers were rejecting the recession, and instead was preparing myself for Mel and Kochie to berate the recession dancers and send them packing from the entertainment industry (preferably by way of an oversized shepherd's hook).

If only Hollywood casting agent had tell them what choreographers were looking for in a dancer. Maybe they were in the dunny then, too.