A reality TV retrospective

Cafe Society
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(I noticed we don’t discuss reality TV much here anymore. Dunno why.)

For no particular reason other than it’s a lazy Sunday and I always enjoy the occasional bit of quiet reflection, I decided to go back and think about the shows I’ve seen and the lessons I’ve learned from them.

Survivor - As much as we’d like to deny it, getting rich is largely a matter of luck.
Let’s be honest. For all the talk about strategizing and playing the game and the usual 20-20 hindsight nonsense about supposed terrible blunders some contestants made, can you really draw any kind of parallels between how the first three winners won? I remember how a lot of viewers praised Richard Hatch as a brilliant, scheming villain who proved that nice guys finished last and the key to success is to screw everyone, and even then it sounded to me like a cry for help from 1. young scumbags who were on the cusp of entering the real world and desperately hoped it was true and 2. established scumbags who found no success in life and desperately hoped it was true now. Well, sorry, guys, but for every Donald Trump there are a million Michael Milkens, and Hatch being propelled to victory by some lettuce-brained rant about rats and snakes didn’t change that. Truth is, there are just so, so many random flukes and quirks in this show (Remember the time someone who didn’t get a single vote cast against him the entire contest was knocked out by a random draw? Remember that?), not to mention all the monkey wrenches the producers throw in on purpose to keep things fresh, that saying you have the “winning strategy” amounts to self-delusion. It’s really no different from the track: Ya picks yer horse, ya bets yer money, and then ya prays like holy hell yer horse don’ step inna gopher hole or nuttin’.

American Idol - The one career reality TV always prepares you for is reality TV.
See, there are a few things you need to know about a singing career. You have to sing full songs. You need to do enough to fill an album within a certain deadline. Your success is dictated by buyers, not fanatically powervoting teenyboppers. And a rival who has a bad stretch is not “eliminated” and never a threat to your sales ever again. So if you didn’t have what it takes to be a professional singer, AI won’t help you. But you could, in the future, get a guest spot on Hell’s Kitchen, and it’s almost a given that one of those second-tier shows will give you a holler someday. That’s something. Not what you were after, but something.

The Amazing Race - Putting video game conventions in a real-life contest is an astoundingly bad idea.
I can understand why rubberband AI exists. It’s an uneven playing field. Mismatches happen. Unexpected ringers happen. Nobody wants to be the schmuck who finished twenty laps back. But when it’s real people, real emotions, and real money, that’s a recipe for catastrophe. You’re pretty much guaranteed to screw a lot of people over and give the prize to a team that didn’t deserve it at all. If this show needs down-to-the-wire finishes (and I’d actually argue that it does), run it like the Tour De France and record everyone’s time after each stage, just don’t reveal it until the end. Why do I always have to be the guy who thinks of these things??

Dancing With The Stars - Ballroom dance competitions have next to nothing to do with dancing.
Let’s see…three professional hams, one clumsily pretentious, one mercurially wrongheaded, and one flat-out insane, a second-rate comedian, a talking head, lots of puff pieces and SNL-esque sketches, Akihabara-level costuming, tons and tons of bad acting, and a crowd that’d be right at home in a WWE arena…I’m sorry, which ballroom is all this from again? This is a case where the baggage and window dressing and embroidery have completely taken over the actual product. Seriously, it could turn into an offshoot of the World’s Strongest Man competition and I probably wouldn’t even notice.

The Voice / America’s Got Talent / Shark Tank - Rich white people (and rich black people who act just like rich white people) have to make everything all about themselves.
Other than One Direction, I remember a grand total of ONE contestant on The Voice, E.G. Daily (and only because I watched The Powerpuff Girls). The judges preen, posture, taunt, bicker, and swagger, constantly, and they only care about their charges to the extent that they’ll give them another trophy to wave in the other judges’ faces. AGT used to have pretty straightforward judging (with the occasional crazy cat lady moment from Sharon Osbourne), and I mentioned before how Howard Stern startled me with his intelligence and maturity. But now the judging has devolved into a neverending catfight, with sniping and snarking and petty bickering and constant interruptions. I never thought I’d see the day when Nick Cannon was the least irritating regular. I used to avidly watch Shark Tank, and it was strangely thrilling to see the forces of crass capitalism in action, but eventually the talking over each other and gimmicks (particularly the utterly asinine “24 second clock”) just became too much. Seriously, when it comes to the ability to suck all the air out of a room, this bunch puts Kirby to shame.

Hell’s Kitchen - You can be a lot better than a total failure and still not amount to anything.
In a sense, it’s actually better to be one of those stunt casting nutjobs than a contender. Those clods who obviously don’t know a thing about cooking and were selected purely to stir things up don’t have any illusions to shatter. They get called up, they irritate everyone for a few days, and they get thrown back to the dank pits they came from, no muss, no fuss. But the ones that work hard, maybe even get a black jacket, and think they have a chance…look at all the other chefs I outlasted!..and find that just because you can get risotto right at least two-thirds of the time doesn’t mean you can handle one of Gordon Ramsey’s joints…well, truth hurts, as they say.

The Biggest Loser - Self-improvement is not a competition.
Let me put it this way…if I worked out at the gym really hard and lost 20 pounds, and I found out that someone else lost 25 pounds, I’d still feel really good at having freaking lost 20 pounds. And if my gym instructor berated me for failing to live up to some made-up number, my response would be to find a gym instructor who’s not an overbearing loudmouth jerk. When did this become so hard?

Stars Earn Stripes - Gunshots, explosions, and smashing stuff up are plenty cool without any need for rah rah nationalist crap.
Seriously, two words…Hollywood. Stunts. Tell me it wouldn’t work.

Wipeout - The “right” way and the “wrong” way often lead to the same result.
“Patience, patience…I must be veeerrry careful about this and time this juuuust right. That way I will not fall prey to HEY WHAT THE…” <splash> “Hah! I will not make the mistake he just did! I will go completely balls out and thus avoid that overcautious fool’s WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA…” <splash>

Get Out Alive - If one man is allowed to have absolute power, it doesn’t matter how smart or well-meaning he is, at some point he’s going to make absolutely terrible decisions.
I got a confession to make. Remember when it was down to five, there were two teams who royally screwed up, and Bear Grylls took out Royce and Kyle for seemingly no clear reason, and I defended him? I was rationalizing. I was so desperate for a reality show with any semblance of rewarding real effort instead of dumb luck, I so desperately, longingly wanted this show to succeed, that I was willing to go to the damn wall for him. I regret that now. I’m sorry. You were right, I was wrong. And it set up the absolutely atrocious decision of the winner. Grylls screwed the pooch, royally. No wonder he’s doing one-off misadventures now.

American Ninja Warrior - Sports that don’t take themselves too seriously, have the same rules for everybody, haven’t been corrupted by big money, and are completely free of bigotry and pretense are the only ones worth a damn.
Athletes, mostly amateurs or part-timers, one course, one objective. When they succeed, they’re cheered; when they fail, they’re consoled. And that’s it. When Kacy Catanzaro went out on the Jumping Spider, you know who created the predictable disgusting sexist backlash? Nobody. Hell, even the MRA’s couldn’t be bothered. Only two or three dead-enders on YouTube (from the same crowd, I suspect, that keeps that “Chuck Norris” dead horse going and going and going and going…) even tried to joke about it, and they were promptly shot down. If you want a true athletic ideal, i.e. jocks just going at it without any baggage about salary caps or PEDs or domestic violence or publicly-financed stadiums, look no further.

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I never watched much RT, but can contribute my one or two shows that I stayed with during their runs to this thread…

Jon and Kate plus 8. A sweet, charming show that turned into a trainwreck early on. You could tell the couple was having problems… and, yeah, the TV show didn’t help them in their reconciliation efforts. I remember telling my wife “She’s driving that man away and he’s going to walk”, with her (my wife) not seeing it. Finally stopped watching because it was too sad.

Storage Wars. Still watch this (Dave Hester is back - guess he needed the money) though it’s not as fresh as it used to be. Really miss Barry and I never gave a crap if the lockers were seeded or not. They needed a foil, which Hester provided, but now that he’s back I just wish he’d go away.

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Of your list, I only watch Survivor and Amazing Race, though I’ve seen all of them once or twice (except Stars Earn Stripes. WTF? I’ve never even heard of it.)

I don’t buy your Survivor analysis. Yes, it took seven or eight seasons for people to get the hang of it, but since about 2005, the winners have all deserved their victories. Sure, there have been some people eliminated who probably deserved to win, but usually they were eliminated by the eventual winner who correctly identified them as a threat.

Some winners just understood the game in an almost instinctual sense (Parvati, Sandra, Rob), some were just flat out better than everyone else - stronger, smarter, more likeable (Kim Spradlin) and most were hard workers who were good at challenges and around camp and had pleasant personalities. The only person I can think of who didn’t deserve the win was the little blonde who beat Russel Hantz in his first appearance. Even she figured out that the only way to beat Russel was to set herself up as his polar opposite and hope for the best. At least she identified a winning strategy and stuck with it.

When it comes down to the voting for the winner, most jurors seem to take the job seriously - who played the game the best? Sometimes it isn’t the one you want to win, but the reasons for the vote seem rational.

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I can only go by what I saw. I was never a huge fan of Survivor, but the lackluster all-star season (and learning Paschal got taken out by a flippin’ purple rock) was what killed it for me. If the show evolved into a legitimate contest where strength and skill mattered, that would be huge (comparable, at minimum, to UFC going from doomed easy-target fad to MMA empire). Huge enough that I have my doubts that it’s even possible. Detailed analyses of these post-2005 seasons would help a lot, but as Television Without Pity is now a thing of the past, I’m not sure where to look.

Yes, Stars Earn Stripes (and Boot Camp, which I didn’t watch) was a thing; a bunch of pseudo-military exercises done by teams of active servicemen paired with random “stars”. (The most spurious choice was Todd Palin, who admittedly is a pretty decent guy and way less annoying than Bristol.) They shot stuff, the broke open doors, they rappelled down cliffs, they swam and slogged and jumped and ran and drove, and a bunch of stuff got blown up. All in good fun, except that the host, a retired something-or-other, had to do the whole support the troops and defending our country and freedom isn’t free crap. In addition to being an expensive production, mindless flag-waving is never as popular as these militaristic meatheads think it is. It was a one-and-done.

Oh, and speaking of which…

Splash - Some things should not have eliminations, dammit.
March 19, 2013. The scores were tallied, the sabers were rattled, the boos were cascaded, and when it was over, the first contestant out would be either…1. the stunningly beautiful white woman or 2. the stunningly beautiful black woman. One episode in, and I knew this was a completely lost cause. Look, if the PGA Tour, a rich, incredibly prestigious sports league, can wait until the halfway mark to remove a big chunk of the field, certainly a meaningless program that nobody with half a brain is watching for the INTENSE competition can resist the temptation to axe the best part of the show. I’m sorry, there’s no excuse for this.

The Ultimate Fighter - The best thing about an MMA reality show is that there are no excuses.
Screw the pooch in America’s Got Talent, you can play the martyr, point fingers at the meeeean judges, and, if you’re lucky, even get a second chance. Drop the ball in Hell’s Kitchen, oh, you had bad teammates, or you got thrown under the bus, or Ramsey just couldn’t see your true skill. But get your skull pounded in or your arm locked in a vise, and you have nothing to say. You got your butt kicked in front of everyone, so shut your damn mouth and start looking for a real job. Yeah. I like that.

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I wouldn’t call hardly any of these reality shows. They are weird game shows.

I think of horrible shows like Real Housewives … and The Osbornes as reality shows.

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That’s it, Boyo Jim.

Reality shows fall into two category. Most reality shows are really just live-action game shows. Some (like The Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers) are documentaries, with elements that make them pseudo game shows with fake competition. A handful are documentaries, but that part seems to have died out.

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I prefer shows of the genre World’s Blankiest Blank.

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You can define it that way, but I’m pretty sure the term was invented after the success of Survivor and the slew of copycat shows that followed it. “Reality” was in reference to the fact that the contestants were regular people, not paid actors. Of course, nowadays half of the casts are aspiring actors.

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I disagree with your dislike of “Biggest Loser”. To me, there a no losers on that show.

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While the first statement might be true for other shows - e.g. I recently saw a commercial featuring a couple of women who were teammates on The Amazing Race (I think their “fan nickname” is “The Soccer Moms”) - Idol occasionally gives somebody who may not have realized they have marketable singing talent a chance. Would Carrie Underwood be where she is today without it?

Then again, Simon Cowell saw Idol as something else; a way to make money off of singers by signing them to his recording company.

Of course they don’t - at least, not ones with celebrities. They are about (a) fans of celebrities watching them and using their performances as another reason why “their” celebrities are the best thing going (and, as a result, “they” need to be taken seriously whenever they make Twitter/Facebook posts), and (b) people who want to see celebrities crash and burn (these were the same people who watched Idol or The X Factor just in the early audition rounds, just to watch the train wrecks; I doubt it was coincidental that Fox announced the cancellation of The X Factor soon after Simon Cowell announced that he was leaving).

The only other contestants I remember from that show were the two front-runners from the one season of American Juniors. (I am still surprised that Fox didn’t consider, after they were the first two to be put through to “the band”, the option, “Cancel the show now, and instead of a 5-person band, call me when the two sisters are releasing their first album.”)

And even if you do win, one of two things happens: either (a) “Remember that job you were promised? It’s not happening” (and note that neither Fox nor the show will ever mention this), or (b) you discover that “head chef” is just a glorified line chef / “somebody for the restaurant to parade in front of the media” position, although occasionally an executive chef will take a winner under his wing.

Here’s one:
So You Think You Can Dance? - So you think anybody in America who doesn’t already know who you are cares?
Unlike with Idol, where they tried to turn “nobodies” into musicians, SYTYCD has always been about career dancers (okay, and the occasional “street dancer”). Case in point: tWitch was in two films before he appeared on the show. Originally, they tried the Idol formula, and showed a lot of people who had no business being on the stage in the audition rounds, but eventually the only people watching the show watched for the dancing, so they very rarely air bad acts in audition shows now, and when they bring finalists from previous years back to dance with this year’s contestants, they expect the viewers to know them on a first-name basis. On top of that, it has become a choreography contest, with the prize being an Emmy (although choreography is one of those Emmy categories where they can choose more than one winner without it being “a tie”). Even Broadway dancers have looked down on the contestants, claiming, “Let’s see them try to make it on Broadway.” (Never mind that there are very few spots on Broadway open to dancers who can’t sing - and pretty much nobody on this show can.) Even the dancers know that the main reason they’re there to show choreographers what they can do.
As for becoming famous, the only people I can think of who have been on the show and later became anything close to household names did so for being on other shows - Chelsie Hightower (after being a professional on DWTS), and Heather Morris (who didn’t even make it to the finals - she later got a job dancing in Beyonce’s tour, and when she was sent to the Glee set to teach Chris Colfer how to do the “Single Ladies” number, the producers pretty much cast her as Brittany on the spot).

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I like my dancers to be two things; solid and gold.

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I like World’s Adjectivest Nouns, or When Nouns Verb.

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I don’t think running it as a timed competition would be an improvement. There was a similar show several years ago, with something of a U.S. history angle. We got to see which team won, and then the big, suspenseful reveal was how much money they got. That’s a climax only an accountant could love. I congratulate them on winning, but unless it’s my money, who really cares how much. Same thing with running the Amazing Race against the clock. The audience needs to see the winners (and to know their the winners) cross the finish line. The Racers need to know it, too. To have someone come out at the end and read off their times would not have the same impact. It’s a visual medium; we need to see them win.

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I like the simpler concepts: When Good Blanks Go Bad

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I stopped watching Project Runway when it became more product placement than an actual desgn competition. I’ve read a couple of articles about the current season being more Mickey Mouse than any previous season in that there’s less actual competition and more “let’s do something simple for the sake of the cameras”. This disappoints me to no end because one of PR’s charms, IMO, was watching very talented people take a concept and turn it into something wearable.

I used to be a diehard Top Chef fan, but I haven’t bothered watching the last couple of seasons. The concept is the same old, same old no matter how many twists they add to make things more interesting (hello, Survivor!)

I still watch The Amazing Race, but I’ve gotten a bit bored of it too for the same reason as above.

The biggest change I’ve seen over the years is how people are presenting themselves on these shows. True, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t care how they’re being perceived, but for the most part contestants have toned down their demeanor because they won’t want to be seen/known as X, especially on social media. This actually happened to someone in Top Chef a few seasons ago where one of the cheftestants talked utter trash about another cheftestant during every “interview”. Her restaurant suffered as a result, so she really played up the “I’m a good person” persona during the next all-star competition.

Makes me long for the original old-school Real World on MTV. It was unscripted and spontaneous for the most part, and the drama just naturally happened. Nowadays that drama has to be manufactured, and it shows.