The progress made in the last 15 years by five once-young men toward being taken seriously as actors—or singers or dancers, for that matter—melted away this morning in Rockefeller Center under rainy skies. New Kids On the Block played the Today show.

Particularly painful to watch is Donnie Wahlberg, the one who showed the most promise as an actor in The Sixth Sense, Band of Brothers, and Saws II, III, and IV. His sideways cap might have hidden his baldness, but no accessory could conceal his unbridled desperation as he hyped the crowd with a cracking voice. Braving the drizzle were a fresh batch of screaming teens too young to appreciate the irony of a New Kids comeback (or their own DayGlo nu rave apparel, for that matter). Their moms, now roughly the same age as the band, do.

One has to wonder if Lou Pearlman gets NBC on the tube in the rec center of the Orange County jail.

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