TV REVIEW : ‘Color’: Merciless Rock Satire

As of a few weeks ago, MTV viewers don’t have segment host “Downtown” Julie Brown to kick around anymore--hold your applause, please--but she gets kicked around plenty just the same in tonight’s special episode of “In Living Color” (at 8:30 on KTTV Channel 11 and XETV Channel 6), a don’t-miss roundup of the comedy show’s recent pop music video parodies.

Less the gentle spoofery of “Weird” Al Yankovic than a particularly savage series of Mad magazine “to the tune of”-type take-downs, this strays out of the realm of affectionate ribbing into real, merciless satire. It seems safe to say that no one being skewered here will be glad for it, least of all Brown, portrayed as the wubba-wubba-wubba -ing queen of all fast-talking bimbos. This is rock criticism at its most riotous.

Given the series’ orientation toward people of color, it’s inevitable that two of the best parodies are of Anglos with attitude. Rapper Vanilla Ice gets it good with “White, White Baby.”

Even better is the opening dig at soul wanna-be (and “ ‘90s version of Pat Boone”) Michael Bolton, with “When a Man Needs a Big Hit” (“swipe a tune from a long-dead brother”); not to give away what happens to Bolton’s grimacing, voice-stretching, vein-straining visage at the climax, but let’s just say that Grammy-winner/Bolton-hater Irving Gordon would be very pleased.

Also taken on: Hammer’s baggy-pants days; monotonal singer Crystal Waters; Paula Abdul’s MTV Awards embarrassment (“Promise of a Thin Me,” complete with video “squeezing” techniques); Prince and Michael Jackson.

The King of Pop comes in for a particularly wicked spoof putting forth the musical question “Am I Black or White?,” with the “morphing” effects sequence here dissolving between his different faces over the years. Arrested by police after his car-smashing spree, the faux Jackson exclaims, “Well, I guess I am black!” It’s just a coincidence that this old gag happens to be airing now, in time to be the punchline of the week.