Jason Hervey Sucks

Posted at 2:44 PM Jan 13, 2009

By Kenny Herzog



Nothing has curdled my stomach more in the last few days than grown-up screen brat Jason Hervey introducing the cast of VH1's Confessions Of A Teen Idol to a focus-group segment they were about to endure. Something about his little monologue reeked of the kind of self-satisfied, Napoleonic smugness that can only exude from one's paean pores after decades of portraying total douchebags both onscreen and behind the scenes of Hollywood.

Let's review: After peddling countless commercial goods in the early '80s with his bland precociousness, Hervey not coincidentally nailed the entitled man-child antics of a kid actor as Kevin Morton during the movie-within-a-movie climax of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Stunt casting, perhaps?

And then, of course, on The Wonder Years, Hervey was the human embodiment of the demonic older-brother caricature every terrified nerd carried with them throughout childhood. His contribution to the show seemed to be almost method in execution. But Hervey was no prodigious thespian. A la with Pee-Wee, it was evident that his authenticity as Wayne Arnold stemmed from a blurry line between reality and fiction. Art imitating douche.



But after his big TV payday, Hervey used his Hollywood leverage to infiltrate the bowels of the industry with his long-simmering Satanic impulses. Bouncing from one high-profile production/marketing gig to another, most recently partnering with particularly scummy pro-wrestling kingpin Eric Bischoff, he helped ensure our boob tubes brimmed with retarding inanity like World Championship Wrestling, the Eli Roth-penned (figures) Chowdaheads and Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling.

At least Hervey had the decency to disappear from public view for the most part. Now, however, he's back with his stupid smirk and "I've made it in the biz and the rest of you are a big pot of meek, Kevin Arnold pussies that I piss in on a routine basis" assuredness, whether as one of Scott Baio's Peter Pan pals on that overgrown attention-whore's reality show, or condescending to seemingly good-natured suckers like Chris Atkins and Billy Hufsey on Teen Idol.

Hervey is kind of like the bizarreo-underworld version of Peter Billingsley, aka Ralphy from A Christmas Story, who segued his kid-star success into a producer's role on slightly more noble work like Iron Man and Elf. And beyond the shadow of any empirically proveable doubt, definitely sucks.

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