On The Lot

Wow, how could a reality show with such good backing suck so badly?

I really had high hopes for On The Lot. The premise of the Fox show is that 18 undiscovered directors will compete for a $1 million movie deal with Dreamworks pictures. The show is produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett. The judges are Gary Marshall, Carrie Fisher and a random director of the week.

But it’s bad!

There have been about four episodes so far and they’re down to the final 15 people. Over 12 thousand people supposedly submitted films, but I’m not very impressed by the quality of films that we’re being shown. I’m certain that 18 students from NYU or UCLA would put together better films. I also think 18 kids could be found on YouTube with films with more raw originality.

I’m disturbed at the weak subject matter. Between last week’s shorts and this week’s, we’ve seen a film about vomiting, two films about farting, one about giving birth (while refusing to get off a cell phone) and one about peeing and they were all boring and stupid. And it’s not adolescent boys making these films! Three of the films I mentioned were made by adult females.

I’m wondering what the problem is. Was there something wrong with the selection process? Did they choose photogenic people over creative people? Did they pick people who had worked in the industry before over truly raw talent?

I think Zach is the likely winner, since he has the edge with editing and post production special effects, but I wonder if the show will be canceled before it gets that far?

Golden Fraud

I'm so glad I didn't pay to see this fight!

They almost had me. On Saturday I watched a marathon of the reality TV series / pay-per-view promo De La Hoya / Mayweather 24/7, and, hey, it was pretty damn good. I think we can be sure of seeing similar promo "documentaries" whenever another fight comes up that needs the ducats.

The one thing that bothered me is that Mayweather agreed to make himself look bad to promote the fight. The whole series made Oscar look like a saint.

Uh, he has three out of wedlock kids and he had to pay off a girl who accused him of raping her at his condo when she was 15. Big family man.

His carefully crafted image makes me sick, which is why I'm always happy when his ass gets beat. He has a tendency to lose the high-profile fights, too. Trinidad, Hopkins, Moseley. And now Mayweather.

I hope none of you bet on this one...

Survivor: Cook Islands, Week 1

I finally got around to watching the first episode of the new race-based Survivor: Cook Islands. It’s hard to tell in the initial episode of a reality show how it’s going to go and who the “characters” will be, but I can already spot a few things.

I thought it was interesting, but not surprising, that the members of Hispanic team (Aitu) and the African-American team (Hiki) when interviewed both were really happy about the teams being separated along ethnic lines and they felt this made their team “the strongest.” They both felt they had to “represent” and show the other teams (and presumably America) how well they could compete. The white team felt no such pressure, and it fact, it would’ve sounded bizarre if they’d expressed the same sentiment.

Only one member of the Asian team (Puka) felt that they as Asians had something to prove. I can already see a schism on that team. The member expressing that sentiment, Cao Boi (“Cowboy”), is a self-proclaimed “boat person” from Viet Nam, and he’s one of the older contestants. The other members of the Puka tribe seem to be mildly embarrassed by him. They are younger, better educated, and he views them as “Americanized.” In an interesting segment, Cao Boi “cured” Brad of a headache by removing a “bad wind” from his head in a way the show played up to look mystical. Brad and the others were politely amazed that it worked, but they came off as weirded out by Cao Boi, which blows away the Asian stereotype of respect for elders.

There wasn’t much focus on the white or Hispanic team in this episode, save for a tiff over losing some chickens in the former tribe and a tiff over the correct way to build a shelter in the latter. The African-American team had the spotlight on them because they managed to blow the first challenge of the game and had to go to tribal council and vote off a member. Sekou emerged as the leader of the Hiki tribe on day one, and if you watch the show you know that leaders are often taken out early before they can become too powerful. The Hiki tribe conformed to at least one stereotype – they split along gender lines. When Jeff Probst, the show’s host, gave the losing tribe the right to name a member of another tribe to be sent to “Exile Island” as a penalty, Sekou and Nate unilaterally decided to punish Jonathan on the white tribe and didn’t ask their three female teammates for their opinion. When Jeff pointed this out to the women (which embarrassed them), it was guaranteed that one of the men was going to get booted. Though Sekou said the women would be stupid to get rid of them (I agree), Nate cautioned that the women “don’t think they need a man, they think they can do it on their own.” They knew one of them was going, and it was Sekou.

The choice of Jonathan as the one to be sent to Exile Island bears noting. Before the challenge, Yul from the Asian team pointed out that Jonathan had absconded with one of the chickens Yul had secured from the boat that brought the contestants to the game site. Nate and Sekou, rather than choosing a physically strong member of another tribe to send away, took on the role of enforcers and made it clear that they were penalizing Jonathan for his behavior. Needless to say, Jonathan was pissed. We’ll see how that plays out. It may be a moot point, since if the Hiki tribe loses again, the women will likely boot Nate.

Technorati tags: Survivor | Diversity | Race | Reality Shows

Vile Brother

Too bad we can't get some U.S. politicians to sign on for something like this.

From Reuters.com:

Four Mexican politicians completed a three-night stay in a spider- and scorpion-infested shack on Wednesday as part of a campaign to raise awareness about poverty dubbed "Vile Brother."

In contrast to the typical house on the reality television show "Big Brother," the shack was made of sticks, tin and plastic sacks, lacked a sewage system and had a dirt floor.

The group tore down the shack as they left, after buying a new concrete house for the seven-member family that had lived there, Mexican television news reported.