Shasta McNasty aired from September 1999 until August 2000 on UPN.
Semi-sensible Scott ( Carmine Giovinazzo), very dumb Dennis ( Jake Busey), and goofball Ran ( Dale Godboldo) were the members of the hip-hop music group Shasta McNasty in this offbeat series that used some of the same free-form film techniques and slapstick elements of the 1960s seies The Monkees. They lived in an apartment at Venice Beach, California, and had been buddies since first grade. The guys were preoccupied with sex-there were lots of scenes with very sexy girls in bikinis on the beach and their crude observations about them. Diana ( played by Mary Lynn Rajskub in the pilot and Jolie Jenkins in the series) was their platonic friend and neighbor. Scott,the " thinker," talked directly to viewers about the action on the show.
When the show moved into its 9:00 p.m. time slot in January, the title had been shortened to Shasta, but nothing else had changed; they were still a band trying to get their big break. In February Verne ( Verne Traylor), a midget occasionally seen ( and frequently humiliated) in the fall, returned and bought the bar where the guys spent most of their free time, and renamed it Captain Vern's ( yes it was spelled differently from his name). When Shasta returned in late May with new episodes, the guys were working at the bar for Verne and playing there as well. In July Diana, who was about to leave for a new job in New York, kissed Scott good-bye, and they had a passionate revelation of their mutual affection for each other.
The last episode was done as a documentary episode of Behind the Band 2010. After their early success Scott had become a spaced-out existentialist and Diana, whom he had married, was pregnant, while Dennis went off the deep end , spending a fortune and doing drugs.When their third album flopped they switched to a new look and new sound, but it didn't help; they each tried solo careers, which didn't help either. In 2004 they reunited, went back to their original sound, and were a hit all over again. The money from their successful tour gave them the freedom to pursue other interests. Dennis had gotten into puppetry ( he was horible); Ran who had changed his professional name to DJ I Smoka, was still making music; and Scott and Diana , looking like aging hippies, were performing at clubs along the Las Vegas Strip.
A Review from Variety
Shasta Mcnasty
((Sitcom; UPN, Tues. Oct. 5, 8:30 p.m.))
By RAY RICHMOND
Powered By Filmed in Los Angeles by Columbia TriStar TV. Executive producers, Neal H. Moritz and Richard Gurman; co-executive producer, Jeff Eastin; producers, Bill Canterbury, Tracey Ormandy; director, Dennis Dugan; writer, Eastin.
Scott ..... Carmine Giovinazzo
Dennis ..... Jake Busey
Randy ..... Dale Godboldo
Diana ..... Mary Lynn Rajskub
The Babe ..... Cindy Margolis
Romeo ..... Blake Reed
Mr. Kim ..... Toshi Toda
Pizza Delivery Boy ..... Brian Klugman
Huge Man ..... The Big Show
IRS Agent ..... Mark Daniel Cade
Finally, TV is offering a primetime comedy series targeted to the demo that finds Pauly Shore films too challenging. In "Shasta McNasty," UPN has concocted the definitive dimwitted sitcom for its young male viewership: It's a 30-minute cerebral meltdown --- a kind of Y2K bug of the intellect.
If "Shasta McNasty" doesn't hammer the final nail into the family-hour coffin , then nothing probably can. A parrot screaming "Jack off!" and chomping someone's crotch before getting pummeled to pieces. A pop-up video message informing us, " 'Randy' is also British slang for 'horny.' " Three Beavis and Butt-head-style losers leering at a buxom blonde neighbor and trying to figure out ways to "bang" her. And this is the comparatively wholesome stuff.
Where have you gone, John-Boy Walton? No sign of him in "McNasty," a fast-moving celebration of hyperstimulated libidos starring Carmine Giovinazzo, Jake Busey and Dale Godboldo as rowdy lifelong pals sharing a pad on the Venice Beach boardwalk. They are hip-hop musicians looking to score a record deal. In the meantime, they spy on their babe-o-licious neighbor through an elaborate voyeuristic system, including a telescope and video player, and work slavishly to put coherent sentences together (often without success).
The show is a frenetic mix of MTV-esque video stylings, high-energy hip-hop tunes, zany physical shtick and incessant carnal ramblings --- its only saving grace being the unlikely presence in the pilot of the deadpan Mary Lynn Rajskub (late of "The Larry Sanders Show") as Diana, the neighbor with whom our thick-skulled threesome shares a common kitchen (don't ask).
"Shasta McNasty's" message to adolescent guys is that if they don't want to be branded as losers, they should seek out chicks to ogle and make certain to avoid even the thinnest attempt at pro-social behavior. The show probably won't live long, facing as it does slot competish from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "That '70s Show," "3rd Rock From the Sun" and "JAG," but the damage it can do to good taste will be incalculable.
Good night, John-Boy.
A Review from The SF Chronicle
UPN gets down and "McNasty'
JOHN GOODMAN
Thursday, September 30, 1999
Unless you're male, 21 or younger, wearing a baseball cap, listening to hip-hop while simultaneously playing Sega Dreamcast and - here's the key - fully, ragingly, perpetually aroused, then there's no need for you to read any further.
Then again, you may get some joy out of an attempt to artfully, maybe even intelligently, dissect "Shasta McNasty," the new UPN offering that was the critical odds-on favorite for worst show of the season and possibly ever. That was before UPN decided that critics just didn't get the presentation reel and that, well, critics are idiots anyway and certainly not the target audience, so UPN didn't send out the pilot for review.
But if you're on the Christmas list of UPN President and CEO Dean Valentine - or maybe that's the hit list - you were lucky enough to get one. So here goes:
Critically, yes, "Shasta McNasty" (9:30 p.m., Ch. 44) is a neutron bomb of immense proportions. You may need to take a shower at PBS to really come clean. The effect is something like being punched really hard in the nose but not falling down. You're stunned into, well, stupidity. Which, come to think of it, gets you perfectly prepped for the second episode.
But perhaps it's too easy to just trounce "Shasta McNasty." It's like running around with a sandwich board screaming about how fake wrestling is. To say that this is no "ER" is to master the obvious (though "ER" in its own way is formulaic and tedious and probably bores young males witless). As you watch "Shasta McNasty" - and by all means, get a load of this thing - you will quickly learn that UPN couldn't dumb down this show to any greater degree. And that, of course, is the point.
UPN is going after young males. While The WB is going after young women and has, successfully, used that strategy to gain a niche in the competitive world of network television, UPN only this season has attempted to get the guys. The network put two hours of wrestling on Thursday night, has loaded up with a bunch of action-adventure shows and some sci-fi material, and now enters the comedy arena with a show so dumb, so low-brow that, if you compare it to just about anything else, is shocking in its lameness.
But that's really the point of "Shasta McNasty." It's a comedy for young guys, the people who loved "Dumb and Dumber" and others of that ilk. Valentine believes that there's a market for the kind of humor that runs through
"There's Something About Mary" - and he's right. (But this show has nowhere near the, uh, sophistication of that movie - which was able to attract all kinds of viewers, PBS-heads included.)
However, Valentine and UPN are certainly on to something here. Of course critics will hate this show. But the target audience may suck it down like a Big Gulp. In fact, Valentine says the show is testing through the roof with young males (though we'll see what the ratings tell).
"Shasta McNasty" centers on three slackers - two of them white - who are in a fledgling hip-hop group. They are Scott (Carmine Giovinazzo), who at least tries to have a conscience; Dennis (Jake Busey, son of Gary Busey, who is referred to twice in this show, making it the first time he's been mentioned that often in the last decade, outside of newspaper accounts of his motorcycle accidents); and Randy (Dale Godboldo).
The premise is that these guys pal around, do dumb guy things all the time, refuse to mature even an inch, and scramble to get money so they can continue their lifestyle, which apparently involves drinking, cruising for chicks and playing music (the dream scenario for the target demographic, naturally).
The pilot, called "Little Dude," features Verne Troyer, best known as "Mini-Me" in the "Austin Powers" sequel. As you might well guess on a dumbedy like
"Shasta McNasty," the "midget" jokes go off like fireworks - up to and including an actual dwarf-bowling scene.
Troyer seems more than game to be made fun of - but also embraced by the goofy guys (after much slapstick comedy, some swearing and an instance where he bites Scott's girlfriend on the butt).
Not only does Gary Coleman make a cameo - to continue the short jokes - but Heather Kozar, a former Playmate of the Year, also has a few lines, right after the close-up of her breasts. You know where "Shasta McNasty" is setting the bar, right? But the fact that it shows no embarrassment, no shame in this approach (after dwarf-bashing, plus some racist and sexist jokes, the show has a kind of fearless we'll-do-anything moxie), is oddly refreshing.
UPN may have just nailed its target audience so accurately that it doesn't need the pontificating of the nation's TV critics to get the message out. Valentine wisely knew that it would be a clay pigeon session from the get go, and said forget it.
His network, in fact, is becoming the best untold story of the new season, as it rebounds from disastrous ratings and is beginning to punch the shoulder of its rival, The WB - really hard. "Dawson's Creek" and "Felicity" may have snagged the magazine covers and hype not long ago, but wrestling, cheap action and stupidity may ultimately be just as profitable, making the opinions of TV critics about as useless as a pair of Air Jordans on a midget.
An Article from The New York Daily News
UPN'S 'SHASTA' PEAK OF IDIOCY
BY ERIC MINK
Monday, October 4th 1999, 2:11AM
My head hasn't stopped hurting since I watched last Thursday's sneak preview of "Shasta McNasty," a new sitcom on UPN.
I wonder: Does UPN reject anything? Has the sentence "That's not entertaining enough to put on our air?" ever been uttered in the offices of the United Paramount Network?
Apparently not.
I was aware going in, of course, that "Shasta McNasty" is aimed, like most of UPN's schedule, at 12-to-34-year-old males. That's not me.
I also knew it was unreasonable to expect any "Frasier"-like dialogue or "Seinfeld"-ian situations or "Friends"-ish character development. Not from a show about three twentysomething male members of a hip-hop group living near the beach in Southern California. Not from a new sitcom on a struggling quasi-network in the midst of another programming-philosophy shift and facing an imminent ownership change.
No, this show would have to run on attitude and energy, the twin fuels of youth culture since the birth of rock 'n' roll; juice, not sophistication, would sustain "Shasta McNasty."
Attitude and energy?
The "attitude" embodied by the "Shasta McNasty" characters is something along the lines of "Hey! Just because we're idiots with no intelligence, no personality and no talent doesn't mean we can't make fun of everybody else, including people with birth defects!"
As for energy, well, the show's desperately fast editing and other gimmicks reminded me of the way we used electrodes in biology lab to stimulate muscle contractions in dead frogs.
Just as interesting as the show itself considerably more interesting, come to think of it has been UPN's launch strategy for "Shasta McNasty."
The sneak preview aired immediately following UPN's Thursday wrestling block. The sitcom was aggressively promoted on UPN's own airwaves, but the network did not make the preview episode available to TV critics for advance screening.
The true series premiere the pilot episode airs tomorrow night at 8. It, too, has been kept out of the hands of would-be reviewers, although the episode that aired Thursday is being repeated tomorrow at 8:30.
This approach is no accident. A UPN spokeswoman confirmed that the network knew the show would get horrible reviews, so there was no reason to distribute copies in advance to critics.
From UPN's standpoint, it makes perfect sense.
What made no sense, though, was using Thursday night's preview spot for an episode that didn't even try to establish the series' hip-hop-group, Venice Beach context.
Nor did the episode include an appearance by Internet soft-core pinup Cindy Margolis, who plays the recurring role of the bosomy neighbor on whom the guys secretly spy a character who presumably appeals to the show's salivate-on-cue target audience.
Instead, UPN chose to air an episode with guest appearances by Verne Troyer, whose "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" premiered last June, and Gary Coleman, who hasn't been an audience draw since, oh, 1986.
Brilliant.
Sidebar:
SHASTA MCNASTY
MINUS 5 STARS
NETWORK:UPN
PREMIERE: Tomorrow, 8 p.m.
PREMISE: Three "buds," the members of a mediocre hip-hop group called Shasta McNasty, live in Venice, Calif. and have wacky adventures.
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