Thanks to my good friends at Reality News Online I now have the upcoming summer reality TV schedule. Here are some of the highlights (and no, I am not making any of these up)
Dancing with the Stars: Six celebrities (including Rachel Hunter and one of the guys from New Kids on the Block) are paired with a professional dance partner and compete in a dance competition where one couple is eliminated each week. Best case scenario: It’s Dance Fever with celebrities. Worst case scenario: it’s Dance Fever with celebrities
Beauty and the Geek (Executive Producer: Ashton Kutcher): Seven beautiful but “academically impaired” women are paired with seven brilliant but “socially challenged me. Contests are along the lines of “Men have to compete in a fashion show, women need to build a working rocket”. All I can say is “Why the hell was I not made aware of the open casting call?” Talk about having your fifteen minutes of fame handed to you on a silver platter.
Hit Me Baby One More Time: Past artists like Loverboy and A Flock of Seagulls compete in an American Idol style competition. Again, I’m not making this up. Apparently the viewing public is dying to hear “Working for the Weekend” live one more time. I’m only watching this if the guy from Loverboy is still wearing the same headband from the video in 1981.
Big Brother 6: This will probably be my reality show addiction for the summer. I started watching it last year and at some point it begins to grow on you. Stick a bunch of people in a house with no contact with the outside world, nothing to read, no television, nothing to do but interact and then have it be a contest for a half mil. If there are cool people on the show it is fascinating. If not, it is just awful.
Rock Star: INXS: Ok, many of the people who read the blog are already part of an email chain dedicated to analyzing this show. It’s American Idol where the winner will get to be the new lead singer for INXS. First of all, I wonder if they’ll ever mention what happened to the old singer, since the story probably wouldn’t be considered fit for prime time consumption (and is depressing as hell). Second, yeah it pretty much strikes me as being completely against everything I hold dear about music but remember who is at fault here. No one is making the guys in INXS whore out their musical legacy. It’s their call, that’s the frightening thing.
The Biggest Loser 2: This show is the ultimate guilty pleasure. First of all, the concept is actually noble: several severely overweight contestants are placed on the show and are coached on diet and exercise plans and the one that loses the most weight at the end of the competition is the winner. Of course, what happens during the show can be some of the most disturbing contests ever. Like “Let’s put all of the contestants in a room filled with desserts that they’re not supposed to eat and see what happens.” Or my favorite from last year: “Ok, today’s contest is to run to the top of this fifty story skyscraper. First one to get there is guaranteed not to be eliminated.” I still can’t believe that contest. I’ve never imagined that I would watch a game show where the entire goal is to see if someone will actually suffer a heart attack while on camera.
There are more (including Tommy Lee goes to College) but these are the highlights. And when you think about it all this does is make me even more pissed that they didn’t pick up my pilot.
2 comments:
Hollywood has officially run out of ideas.
Am I the only one that sees this as the equivalent of the Roman Amphitheatre circa the second century BC? I could go into this analogy at detail but the readers of this blog are smart enough to draw the inferences for themselves. I said it before but I’ll repeat it here: this makes me nauseous. You don’t replace the singer of a once great band by way of a popularity contest for the mere amusement (and subsequent financial gains by increasingly despicable networks) of the public, even if the band themselves (damn them) came up with the idea. For what it’s worth (very little I know) I will publicly state my opinion here: worst show idea ever. The only thing I can do is vote with my Nielson rating (won’t even watch the ads for this). I think NOFX said it best:
"For all the years of hit and run
for all the piss broke bands on VH1
where did all their money go?
don't we all know
Parasitic music industry
as it destroys itself
we'll show them how it's supposed to be
music written from devotion
not ambition, not for fame
zero people are exploited
there are no tricks, up our sleeve
Dinosaurs will die. Dinosaurs will die.
This music ain’t your fuckin’ industry."
I went to business school and worked in the business and I still hope big [music] business will fail.
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