March 7, 2011
Reality shows. That's my jumping off point today. Reality shows, love them or hate them they seem to be here to stay, they're easy to make and cheap to produce, what with the not having to pay real actors. I personally do not care for reality shows at all. As they continue they just seem more and more, well fake, and obviously scripted, I'm looking at you MTV. And yes you can argue they're not scripted per se, but some of them you just know there's a producer some where silently guiding the events of the show.
On a related topic one type of programming I enjoy is cooking shows. One of my favorites being Iron Chef, which one could argue is a type of reality show, but I digress. A relatively new show on the Food Network is Chopped, a unique show that combines Iron Chef secret ingredient, on the spot creativity style cooking, and contest reality show-esque eliminations. For the most part I like the show, it serves the niche it has dug out for itself, but sometimes I think the heavy handed reality producer shows up a bit too much, by this I mean pretty much every contestent has to have a sob story to make you "relate" with them, only thing is it's only an hour long show, we don't need to relate to these people the same way you relate to someone in a twenty semodd episode show.
Truthfully giving someone who's only gonna be on screen for fifteen minutes at best a backstory worthy of a cheesy Lifetime Movie of the week comes off as pandering, both to the judges and to the audience. Or maybe I'm wrong, and they just have a massive pool of contestents the just happen to have a Father who just died. Or a tough no nonsense single Mother with the constant need to let everyone around her that she can make it in a Man's world. Or a someone who runs a resturant in the midst of forecloser and you just need this win to save it.
