I’ve caught some of the new season of American Idol, and so far it’s been pretty execrable. Katy Perry is looking like a complete disaster, and Luke Bryan is just another reality TV dime-a-dozen infantile whackjob. Aside from the fact that it’s been common knowledge for a long, long time that winning the show contributes jack squat to a successful music career, there’s the question of what the point of even bringing it back was.
The saddest thing is that there are some shows that I think actually do deserve to be brought back, and they wouldn’t need to change much, if anything:
Whodunit - The premise was that the contestants were guests at a swank manor where someone was recently murdered, they had to search for clues and gather information to describe the killing as accurately as possible, and the one who was the least correct would be the target of the next murder, which the remaining contestants would have to solve, and so on. I loved this; it was the first reality show in ages that had me fired up from start to finish. The murders, a very literal application of “anudda wun bi da dus”, were a beautiful creative touch, the conflicts were real and completely organic, the production values were fantastic, there was genuine suspense…it was just really damn good. The only quibbles I had were 1. the protests from viewers who didn’t like that a show was killing people for real (not enough rolleyes in the country for that), and 2. a very clumsy resolution (which I suspect was the result of a last-minute rewrite caused by #1). It was clear that ABC was banking a lot on this (they even wrote up an entire backstory for the butler), and it’s a shame that it never caught on just because it was a bit too weird. What I think would work would be if the murderer and victims were completely separate from contestants, who’d act as detectives, and whoever was the most wrong each week would be called off the case.
Get Out Alive - One of Bear Grylls’ numerous forays into reality TV. Teams competed in various survival and trekking tasks each week, with regular reward challenges and one team of Grylls’ choosing being taken out each week. Kind of like Survivor with plenty more action and no politicking. It was a thrill seeing these ordinary people tackling these challenging tasks, and the fact skill, strength, and courage were the ONLY ways to succeed was intensely gratifying. So of course he had to ruin it at the end by getting all mushy and tossing in a lot of crackpot nonsense about the judging criteria. Here’s an idea: Screw eliminations and pretentious “you wouldn’t get out alive” blather and make it a straight-up skills competition. Have the fire-building contest, the rope traverse contest, the river navigation contest, the fresh water collecting contest, etc., and give points for each. Highest score wins. Of course, Grylls would never go for it, so we’d have to get someone a little more open-minded. Phil Keoghan?
Splash - An amateur diving competition! Which had judges so insufferably pretentious I’m amazed the spectators didn’t suffocate, extremely serious training, and the absolutely holy ironclad anudda wun bi da dus format. And of course the first elimination came down to the stunningly beautiful white woman against the stunningly beautiful black woman, which the former narrowly won, thereby prompting screams and howls of…wait for it…racism. I’ve never seen a show that seemed absolutely hellbent on utterly dooming itself literally from day one. The producers took the Battle of the Network Stars formula and decided that what it needed was to be completely full of itself and no fun whatsoever. Huh…here’s how you do a show about no-talent amaetur divers! Have them do whatever they damn want! You heard me! Let’s have the cannonballs and kamikazes and torpedoes, have the audience vote on which ones the liked the most, and after a certain number of weeks WITHOUT any stupid eliminations, tally up the scores and give a nice trophy to the winner.
Beyond The Tank - This was a simple and intriguing premise; a follow up to the deals made on Shark Tank. It seemed that Shark Tank had gotten some heat for suggesting that making the deal somehow “guaranteed” success, and BTT was an effort to show the later chapters of the story. It gave a nice insight into what it actually took to make a capitalist venture work, and although this wasn’t a new concept by the time BTT came around, it was nice to see these “sharks” drop the posturing and roll up their sleeves. The problem? Fear of negativity. There have been many instances where the deal never got closed, usually because someone else with controlling interest in the company shot it down, or the shark saw the actual production facility and didn’t like it. And of course there were some companies that never gained any more success or even failed. But you never saw these, just the successes and happy endings and warm feelings. Why? It’s no secret that businesses fail. Nobody bats a thousand. Show the bad (and the just average) with the good, give a larger, more accurate picture, and there’s no limit to how far BTT can go.
Strong - Women getting into shape, learning positive body image, and competing in intense physical tests with almost no screwy rules. Honestly nothing I’d change about it. Why only one season? No idea.
Anything else worthy of a comeback?
