Pam Grier Coffee

August 2, 2011 6:23 AM

In the mid 1990s, comedian/actress Margaret Cho starred in All-American Girl, a short-lived sitcom based on her standup act. One episode, entitled "Pulp Sitcom", lampooned the film Pulp Fiction and revolved around a bootleg video seller named Desmond. Naturally, Desmond was played by Quentin Tarantino himself. You can watch the episode and read a detailed breakdown at Chronological Snobbery.
posted by griphus (11 comments total)

They were dating at the time, no?
posted by The Whelk at 6:30 AM on August 2, 2011

It's too bad that Cho's stage act was turned into such a dreadful, horribly-written, badly-acted piece of nothing like All-American Girl. The idea had a ton of promise, but whoever was in charge of creating the series just had no idea what to do with Cho or the whole immigrant family situation.
posted by xingcat at 6:51 AM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

They were dating at the time, no?

According to "I'm the One That I Want", yes.
posted by EvaDestruction at 6:54 AM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

I haven't yet checked out the rest of it, but that Chronological Snobbery blog is something else - well-written, detailed episode summary followed up with detailed research on the topic (with footnotes) and even follow-up interviews with listserv posters about their memories (or lack thereof) of the episode. "Thorough" doesn't seem accurate enough, and obsessiveness like this is what I come to the Internet for.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:12 AM on August 2, 2011

...this is what I come to the Internet for.

Basically, I wanted to do this as a post on my own pop-culture-minutae blog, started doing a bit of research, found the CS post and realized that no, I am never doing better than this.
posted by griphus at 7:17 AM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

I still remember her summary of this series as, "They told me I was too fat to play... myself"
posted by Mchelly at 7:19 AM on August 2, 2011 [5 favorites]

I think I might be blaming this episode for all the film comedies where a thing happens which references a thing that happened in another film instead of making a joke.

(Much love for Margaret Cho generally - and the year after All American Girl, she was appearing in one of my favorite film-totally-unlike-trailer films, Sweethearts.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:27 AM on August 2, 2011

As a Korean-American and fan of Margaret Cho, I had high hopes for this show, which of course were almost immediately dashed. Since Cho I believe was the only actor on the show actually from Korean descent, it was painful to watch. It was like M*A*S*H all over again.
posted by Pants McCracky at 7:32 AM on August 2, 2011

I still remember her summary of this series as, "They told me I was too fat to play... myself"

Yep. And who starred in her show's replacement? Drew Carey.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:10 PM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nice, embedded MPAA propaganda piece.
posted by haroon at 9:55 PM on August 2, 2011

For some reason, all these years later, I remember her character saying "Yeah, well you're trying to lose weight in your head!" And I have no idea what the rest of that scene was about, but that one line stuck with me. Weird.
posted by crossoverman at 2:50 AM on August 3, 2011