Now in its third season, Chris and John to the Rescue: Provincetown is the most watched television program on OUTtv. According to the producers of the show, “It’s a hilarious, glossy, no-holds-barred television series chronicling the latest crazy antics of best friends Chris & John. In each episode, these pals and self-proclaimed culture aficionados go on a demanding mission to save the world…one gay at a time.”
In this season’s premiere episode, Chris and John are given the task of finding a replacement fag, for Deidra - the morbidly obese fag hag. Chris and John find four potential fags for her, each representing aspects of the gay community; the young, the youngish, the old, and the pure weathered. Each “fag” is given a superficial task to win over the affections of Deidra (none of which is finding her a healthy diet or moderate exercise plan). Picture the scariest episode of elmiDATE and add in the gory parts of Queer Eye for the Strait Guy and some makeshift superhero cartoon sequences and there you have episode one.
Calling Chris and John culture aficionados is a bit of a stretch, thus OUTtv has made sure to note that this is a self-proclaimed title. I am sure that most culture aficionados keep the eyebrow twitches to a minimum - something that Chris has yet to figure out. Instead, Chris and John are better thought of as the spirited naivety of twinkdom that we all we wish could return to - or maybe not.
The show offers up some bubble gum band-aid solutions to some pretty superficial problems (Chris and John pale in comparison to the Edison Twins), which makes it hard to tell if the show is a supposed to be a sincere montage of reality television, or indeed a carefully crafted farce based on the ugly side of reality programs. Either way it feels as though you are watching a commercial for a useless product where all the testimonials are provided by poorly paid actors. The preceding plug for the crappy pop punk songs used in the show did not help this image out.
However bad it may seems, it is understandable to see how this show is the most watched on OUTtv. It was like a bad car accident - you know it is horrible, but you just can’t look away. But some might say this is the case for any queer orientated programming these days. With such a small selection to choose from it is hard to be picky. Chris and John, it seemed, were able to penetrate this need to have gay culture, especially younger generations, latch onto the notion of inclusion in society at any cost - even if it was only on a level of pure kitsch. Only those who have channel-surfed late at night on Showcase for queer programming will miss that art house element of queer shows from ancient

For some mental holiday fun you can tune into Chris and John to the Rescue: Provincetown Mondays at 10pm EST / 7pm PST on OUTtv