Thu, August 12, 2004

What happened? It seems like not so long ago I was pounding out lengthy, semi-coherent diatribes about reality TV in a constant, uninterrupted stream. I liked it. You liked it. Everything was going great! What happened? It's amazing what a dead TiVo drive, a last-minute cross-country trip, a week and a half away from TV, and a couple of good books (reading! whoa!) will do to my reality-TV-commentating efficiency. Let's play catch-up.

For Love or Money

I'm still a couple of episodes behind on TiVo, but the third series has ended and segued immediately into the fourth. There's more to be said on the subject, but I'm aware that this is the least popular show I watch (as far as you people are concerned... screw you for judging me!), so I'll just say that PJ and Preston deserve each other. (Sincerely. She seems sweet, he seems nice, neither picked the money; good for them.) I'm delighted that Rachel is in charge of the new series, and it's even better that she kicked it off by defeating Andrea who I hated even before she was Rachel's nemesis. Easily the least attractive (even counting the dykey girl with the short hair and the "sense of humor" who was one of the first ones booted) and just plain obnoxious and over-dramatic. I couldn't stand Andrea. And – even though she demanded attention and wasn't always playing for love – I really adored Rachel. Still do. I'm glad she has her own show, and I hope she's making the best of it. I'll find out in a weekend or two when I have time to catch up.

Next Action Star

This has already come and gone! I never got to tell you what I thought! Well, I thought the final four should've been Mélisande, Mae, John, and Mark. Mélisande was a cutie – centered and self-possessed. Mae was exotic and interesting (as well as easy on the eyes). John was great on screen: unassuming but powerful. Mark was good. I just had to pick someone other than Jared who grated on me (more and more), and Mark was at least decent. This was an excellent concept for a show, executed less than perfectly. Of course I'd have preferred more rehearsal and stunt training footage and less time devoted to silly contests or "drama in the house," but without silly contests and drama, it's not reality TV, so I understand. I was hoping that before they aired the movie-of-the-week that the winners won roles in, they'd give us at least a 30-minute behind-the-scenes special. It seemed like such a no-brainer. Despite my lack of interest in watching it, I hope the MOTW gets good ratings, because it'll increase the chances of Next Action Star 2.

The Joe Schmo Show

This is easily the best reality show ever. Spike TV – utterly forgettable in every other way – has created such a fantastic, entertaining, and memorable show that is simultaneously a hilarious send-up of every dumb, trite reality program you've ever seen and a delightful Truman Show-style experiment in creating an entirely fake world around real people and watching them react to it. The first series was awesome, a breath of fresh, self-reflexive air into a sagging genre. Joe Schmo 2 ratcheted up the excitement in every way: two schmos (schmoes?) instead of one, a romantic show instead of a cash-prize show, a psychotic falcon – everything! Plus, they got found out by Jane Schmo and had to adapt mid-game, which they did superbly. Plus, while the first Joe Schmo was kind of dull, the new one (Tim) is fun and hysterical. Even the replacement Jane (Amanda) is great. She's amazing at rolling with the craziness the show throws at her, and the scene (last week) in which she and Tim go on a double date with Austin and Piper (the bachelor and bachelorette, played by actors) unfolded as perfectly as scripted unscripted entertainment ever possibly could. Amanda coolly took the reins once the drama set in, repeating "...and we're moving beyond this" and keeping everyone smiling. Tim even offered to beat up Austin! In his blog, one of the producers/show-runners comments that he'd put the show up against any other art form. I agree that it's pretty incredible, but I think (in the "greatest art ever" category) it suffers from the fact that half of its best humor is based on the silly conventions of other reality shows. 100 years from now, without a time capsule of other reality shows of the past few years as reference material, a lot of the satire won't read. Still, it's the best reality show going today.

The Simple Life

As promised, I watched the episode in which Paris and Nicole went to work at a nudist resort. Not only did Fox grossly misrepresent this episode as titillating in its promotions, the episode itself misrepresents the nudists as icky, and the whole "joke" of the two girls being lazy and obnoxious has clearly run its course. What started as a kind of funny (although usually annoying) scenario has been ruined by its self-awareness. Bringing the girls back after the success of the first series and amping up the drama by forcing them into more situations where they can be flip and irresponsible, then encouraging them from off-screen to go wild... it's just trashy and manipulative. Which, admittedly, I deserve for having watched it.

The Amazing Race

My Survivor friends are all crazy about The Amazing Race. Having retroactively enjoyed four years of Miss Alli's brilliant recaps of the show (and, without any Survivor to drive me to the brink of insanity), I agreed to watch the fifth series of the show with them. (Full disclosure: They baited me with poker and fast food also.)

The deck was stacked against TAR on this, because once I'd caught up with the recaps, I did watch an episode last season, and I hated it. Burnett's flashy, expensive production values on Survivor had accustomed me to a level of quality that one lone dude running around with a miniDV camera just can't achieve. (Plus, there were a lot of people eating live octopi in that episode – yerg.) As the new series began, I held firm to my belief that TAR was silly and pointless. CBS pays for all airfare, the teams are constantly "bunching" (the term, coined by Miss Alli, for the times when the leads held by early teams are collapsed by waiting for a venue to open, or a flight to take off, etc.) – it doesn't seem like there's really any racing to it. It seems like a course of pre-arranged obstacles, some of which happen to be riding on international flights. Where's the strategy in that?

Well, two things. There is a teensy room remaining for some strategy, as teams like Colin and Christie and Brandon and Nicole have shown. (As Miss Alli will tell you, these teams frequently work to find better deals than what's immediately offered to them.) And, second, who cares? It's too much fun! What an amazing show. I was forced to realize that what I am looking for in a reality game show like this is not necessarily a ton of intensive strategy, it's just a lot of things that people do in the process of competition that I can pick apart and evaluate whether they did them the right way (my way) or the wrong way. Read the Survivor columns – that's pretty much all they are, plus making fun of Probst. It's the whole rock-paper-scissors strategy thing times a thousand. I'm still not thrilled about the amount of the "race" that comes down to waiting around and engaging in silly tasks. However, I now realize that it's precisely that aspect of ridiculous time-wasting that keeps the show compelling, because even a seven-hour lead (like Colin and Christie had at the end of last week's episode) can be collapsed (like it was at the start of this week's episode) into a mere 40-minute lead.

Colin and Christie have been among my favorite teams from the start. (Well, at the start, I hated them all. Then I gradually began to admit that I was warming to the show. Since then, I've liked C&C a lot.) Now, they're by far my favorites. I still like Brandon and Nicole (dating/models) quite a bit, and I enjoy the Twinkies (Kami/Karli, stick-thin blonde twins). "Married Parents" Chip and Kim are rising on my list after this week. They're cute, smart, and really enjoying themselves. The other teams currently in it are the Bowling Moms (self-explanatory), the villain team of Mirna (a bitchy, poofy-haired lawyer) and her cousin Charla (a loud little person), plus this week's eliminees: brothers Lance and Marshall, who own a pizza restaurant which we will never be allowed to forget is called Cafe Nostra. I think it'd be enjoyable to re-pair some of the teams, even just for a minute. Brandon and Colin would seriously kick ass, and Nicole and Christie would give Kami/Karli a serious run for their money in the "identical" department.

I don't know if it's just a result of having been with the show from the start of the series, or if my compatriots' enthusiasm is contagious (probably some of both), but now I adore the show. (Don't tell them, by the way; they'll lord it over me.)

This week's episode probably cinched it. All the chips finally fell into place. My familiarity with the teams (and the accompanying adoration/disdain), the level of activity in the race, the streamlining of the pack due to eliminations, plus C&C's enormous lead at the start of the episode. Finally, begrudgingly, delightfully, I was hooked.

Then what happens? A sign at the first route marker – the Great Pyramid of Khufu, like ten minutes into this leg of the race – stating that it wouldn't open for another six and a half hours. Clearly this has just been added by CBS to contribute to the bunching, because it's a tiny laminated sign, in English only, reading "Operating Hours: 6:00am-10:00pm" – and when C&C finally get to enter at 6:00, it isn't like someone shows up to unlock the place or take their tickets. They just push the door open and walk in. Damn CBS! (But just you wait to see who ends up in first place!) I think this is sort of unfortunate, since there are plenty of tasks that have actual operating hours – it seems like C&C should've been allowed to at least do the things that only involve hiking at 11pm if they really wanted to. Plus, I can't shake the feeling that the producers just scurried over to the pyramid in the middle of the night and attached that dinky little sign. It's a tad suspicious that Mirna and Charla were scheduled to leave just after six, and six is when the pyramid "opens."

Worse yet, after the pyramid, the next task is to catch a flight that leaves at 11:30. C&C miss an earlier flight that left around 7:00, so they must wait for the 11:30 flight and watch their entire lead be obliterated. In the meantime, being the ever-savvy team that they are, they took the opportunity to investigate the possibility of other flights, so we're treated to the following exchange. C&C voice their plan to pull up to a terminal, hold their taxi, and pop inside to check on flights. The despicable Mirna and Charla mention their (non-despicable) intention to take the cab of the next team that pulls up. I don't know where they plan to go, maybe to check flights at another terminal, but the point is that their plan is based on the assumption (valid more often than not, up to this point) that the arriving teams will release their taxis because they don't need them any more. Just about any other team would probably do so, but C&C already know all about the 11:30 flight so they don't need to sit around waiting for it – they intend to pop in and then be on their way. So, it all begins as a big misunderstanding. A taxi pulls up, C&C hop out, Mirna and Charla hop in. Then the fun starts.

By this point in the race, Mirna and Charla have managed to alienate most of the other teams through some manner of whining, unsportsmanlike behavior, or both. As a result of Mirna's particular mental instability, the team has incorrectly classified this as unwarranted persecution by mean, "disgusting" other teams, and therefore they've adopted a rather brusque manner towards their competitors. So, rather than waiting for Colin and Christie to vacate their cab, they kind of muscle their way in. As a result, Christie doesn't have a chance to explain that they really were planning to hold the taxi. Instead there's just a big fight. Nobody's particularly interested in giving Mirna and Charla the benefit of the doubt at this point, so rather than casually explaining the very solid case (C&C haven't paid the driver, nor have they removed their luggage from the car), it's just kind of a screaming match/standoff for a few minutes, and then apparently it's all over, because all the teams are waiting together again for the 11:30 flight. The point is, even when they're innocently misguided, Mirna and Charla (particularly Mirna, but we'll come back to that) manage to make everything into a battle. Also, they love (LOVE) to hold grudges, so although each team has at some point been their favorite ally and each team has at some point (usually directly afterward) been their worst enemy, the spotlight of Mirna-hate is now on C&C. This will be important later, at the Best "Scene From Next Week" Ever.

From this point, there is the flying, landing, taxi racing, finding of clues, performing of Detours, finding of more clues, and performing of Roadblocks. Between the two Detour options (herding livestock onto a ship and crossing the Nile River, or carrying water by donkey across a field) there seems to be no clear "best choice" – both are fairly time-consuming to do, the farther one slightly less so. However, it seems that the teams who you'd select to have the most problem lifting and corralling sheep and goats are the same teams that choose that task. Chip and Kim handle it pretty deftly, although Kim gets a little yucked out by the animals and assigns herself the task of watching, rather than touching, them. But Linda and Karen (the frantic Bowling Moms) have trouble controlling the livestock; Mirna and Charla positively panic, whining, squawking, and blaming the goats (Charla: "That's the mean one." Goat: "Eh?"); and Marshall and Lance (Arksie's "The Brothers Douche") are crippled by Marshall's injured knees. Why didn't they think riding on a donkey would be easier for him?

Performing the water-carrying task, C&C and Brandon and Nicole breeze right through it. I know Miss Alli is going to make a big fuss over the fact that Colin is impatient with Christie for a few seconds, but really it isn't a big deal. Because of Colin's self-professed "intensity," Miss Alli thinks he's too short with Christie all the time. He can be a little overbearing, but in the context of a race, with all the hurrying and pressure, I think it's within limits. I know the type of guy she's thinking he is, and that guy wouldn't show Christie enough respect to include her in tasks or decisions at all. Colin usually does, and the two of them are really cute together. Physically, he reminds me so much of my friend Mark (who's headed to Bangladesh next summer by the way!) that I have to adore him. Plus, if you watch the CBS Insider clip online, you get a real chance to see how they interact in a non-race environment, and they are definitely a healthy couple. In the online clip, the two get a big laugh (although an entirely respectful one) at the sight of diminutive Charla standing on a table, wolfing down chocolate. I loaded the clip on Miss Alli's recommendation, to watch another example of Mirna's horrific whining, but the clip opens first with C&C giggling about the chocolate situation, and it's adorable. They're not making fun of Charla's size – they specifically take care not to be rude – but they can't deny that her appearance, coupled with her voracious approach to the chocolate task, was "maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life." I adore the way they talk to each other in this clip, and it's a good laugh, too!

Plus, I think these two run a really smart race and do a good job of being polite along the way without being pushovers. (After all, as Sars would say: "Raaaaace!") They perform the Roadblock alongside Brandon and Nicole, who performed the Detour with them and arrive at the Roadblock very shortly after C&C. The Roadblock assignment is to dig around in some sand and find a scarab. Nobody knows what the hell a scarab is. (Seriously, nobody. None of the other teams have a clue either. I have never seen such a large group of supposedly intelligent people with no idea of what a scarab is.) When Colin finds his, however, he shows it to the other teams in the sand (I think at least two teams are still digging at that point) before moving on. This is such excellent gamesmanship. He's leaving first, so there's no reason not to help out a few other teams. They still have to dig and find the thing; it's not like he's bringing them along with him immediately. And at least half the teams haven't arrived yet, so he's not helping everyone. He's just giving a leg up to the teams who are doing well, teams like Brandon and Nicole that he'd like to have with him in the front of the pack from here on out. He knows it's helpful – he didn't know what a scarab was, but he got lucky and found it first. And, it's the kind of thing that'll generate a little goodwill that might be repaid in a similar situation later in the race. He doesn't bend over backwards for them (the way Chip did for Brandon and Nicole and the Twinkies last week!) – he just offers a hand and goes on his way. It's the smart thing to do.

Similarly, when Chip and Kim find their scarab, it's the smart thing to do not to flash it around. By then, they're in the middle of the pack, most of the teams are around, and also Mirna and Charla are there. There seems to be an unspoken agreement among the teams that it would be super nice to see Mirna and Charla eliminated as soon as possible. (If there isn't, there should be.) But even without that, it makes good sense to try to extend your lead over the other teams when you're later in the pack; I'm sure it's nothing personal against the Twinkies or the Bowling Moms – Chip and Kim are best served by not sharing the scarab, C&C were best served by sharing, that's all.

The other teams scramble in the dirt. They get disillusioned, but the non-participating teammates of the diggers show different approaches to the problem. The Bowling Moms commiserate, whimpering together about the futility of their quest; Nicole prays for Brandon to find the scarab (which I'm not particularly fond of – God is, after all, in the tub – but as the obligatory Amazing Race Christian Team, Brandon and Nicole generally seem to resort to this less often than some reality show contestants); Charla just hollers at Mirna to hurry up. This is but one of a cornucopia of reasons why I don't fully agree with Miss Alli that Charla would just be a cute little button if she were to ditch Mirna. Mirna is undeniably the more insufferable of the two, but Charla has no problem holding her own in the obnoxious-off. Both of them frequently whine about how other teams don't help them – while going out of their way to block the other teams' progress. Both blame everyone else for anything that goes wrong, rather than accept responsibility for their own actions. Both are curt and hostile when things don't go their way. Mirna is constantly pausing to address the camera (and, thereby, America) and underline how "disgusting" the other teams are. Marshall and Lance holler "bitch!" at her in traffic? "Disgusting." Bob and Joyce move her abandoned luggage? "Trespassing" and "disgusting!" Both cousins frequently challenge the fact that others underestimate them because of Charla's size – but they take every opportunity to pimp Charla's dwarfism for whatever advantage it can grant them with ticket agents or other strangers. Marshall expresses appreciation when his brother Lance takes on the bulk of the challenges out of respect for his injury, but Charla offers no such equanimity when Mirna accepts the goat-lifting challenge in light of Charla's inability to lift animals that are in some cases larger than she. (Mirna, never one to suffer in silence: "I'm going to die.") She just hollers belligerently as Mirna performs her second task in a row. Neither Charla nor Mirna are generally nice people, and that's fine. They still do pretty well in the race. But it's no surprise that most of the other teams, and most viewers, are not fans.

And it's as a result of that, and everything else Mirna and Charla have done so far, that this clip from "scenes from next week's episode" is priceless: Mirna and Charla approach an airport just as Colin and Christie are entering. Colin is lagging behind (paying for a taxi?) and Christie is in the doorway. For some reason – perhaps they know there's only room on the good flight for one team – Christie attempts to bar the door. Not entirely sporting, but this is Charla and Mirna we're talking about. Two things happen simultaneously: Mirna calls Christie a bitch (disgusting!) and shoves her (trespassing! disgusting!), while Charla runs underneath Christie's arm, taking advantage of her compact size to exploit the weaknesses in Christie's plan to physically block the entrance. Great. So far, so awesome. Next comes the truly spectacular part. Colin catches up, all four run into the airport, and Colin regains the first position by leaping over a railing. It's like: Block! Bitch! Shove! Hey! Advantage: Small! Shove! Run! Advantage: Tall! All in the space of two seconds. Beautiful. I hope there's only room for one team on the flight, and I hope Colin and Christie get it. Or maybe they're running for the Yield! The first team to get it can make any team behind them sit and wait. That would be worth rushing for: not to be the lagging, yieldable team. We don't see a lot, there's absolutely no context, but that's what makes it great. Make 'em pay, C&C! Make 'em pay.

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