I Can't Believe it's a Show: Betty White's Off Their Rockers

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Image via 'Betty White's Off Their Rockers'

It's not often you can blame a snack food for the demise of modern culture but here goes: Snickers, Betty White is YOUR fault.

It was YOUR stupid ad campaign featuring White as a hungry footballer that put the Golden Girls star back on the cultural map, and convinced people she was funny.

Since then we've had to put up with that exhausting petition to get her on Saturday Night Live (another old American institution that's not funny), the Betty White clothing line and guest appearances on practically every sitcom ever invented, not to mention the utterly god awful Hot in Cleveland.

And now, Snickers. NOW we have a new Betty White crime to pin on you: Her new NBC hidden camera show Betty White's Off Their Rockers, which premieres in America on Wednesday.

To quote the official press release: “Forget everything you thought you knew about the older generation. Betty White's Off Their Rockers takes senior stereotypes and blows them out of the water with a cast of sassy septuagenarians who are hip, sexy and ready to party!”

Ahem.

Did you just see that tumbleweed roll past?

BWOTR is basically Punk'd add 60 years – a hidden camera show where senior citizens prank youngsters in TOTALLY HILARIOUS ways. Like pretending to fall off walls and die:

HA HA, IT'S FUNNY COS THEY'RE OLD, RIGHT?

(Damn, did you see that tumbleweed again?)

Basically, BWOTR takes that Jackass skit where Johnny Knoxville and his gang dressed up as pensioners and wreaked havoc around town and stretches it into a half hour weekly show. Except that might actually have been funny, and this isn't.

Here's another hilarious prank, in which an old man pretends to be a ghost:

HA HA, OH SNAP! DID YOU SEE THAT GIRL'S FACE? SHE WAS TOTALLY... confused. Actually, I am too, a bit. What was that about?

Never mind, here's another gut buster: In this one, an old bloke pretends to pull his own tooth out with a pair of pliers! WA-HEY!

Hmm. Not only was that not particularly funny or believable, it was also kind of gross.

Fortunately we have the hilarious Betty White as host to save any low points and get us rolling in the aisles again in between sketches:

Hmm. Okayyyyy, so maybe not.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that BWOTR is based on a comedy program from Belgium, one of the least funny countries in Europe that once declared this the funniest joke of all time:

Q: Why do ducks have webbed feet?
A: To stamp out fires.

Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?

A: To stamp out ducks on fire.

It's possible that it lost something in translation, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I guess what I'm saying is, apart from the title being extremely grammatically irritating, Betty White's Off Their Rockers looks like it should be wrapped up in Depends and dropped in the nearest Hazmat bin.

In summary, and as always: I Can't Believe It's A Show.