tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70599285449914582872024-02-07T19:45:49.392-08:00The Fabric Of RealityWhere reality TV challenges come to die. And then get reborn. Because reanimated corpses? So much cooler than sparkly vampires.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-6567747744585817842019-05-10T18:55:00.005-07:002019-05-10T18:57:52.950-07:00We Have A(nother) Challenge For You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Not really anything to note here, but <a href="https://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/themolev3.pdf" target="_blank">the The Mole challenge guide</a> (PDF, 1 MB; I'd suggest downloading it rather than using an online PDF viewer) has been updated to include both the mediocre nineteenth (!) Dutch season and the simply marvellous seventh Belgian season. There's been a couple of other minor changes to fix typos and such that jumped out while I was skimming through (and I'm not guaranteeing the rest of the guide is error-free), but the rest of the guide aside from these two seasons is otherwise identical. Still, it's done.<br />
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Also HOW HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG FOR A MOLE FRANCHISE TO GO TO VIETNAM.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-55685206344160070232019-01-03T23:26:00.001-08:002019-01-04T18:42:25.525-08:00We Have a Challenge For You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVWu-fD1LGOoXf4_xA8dVkeBjlDOk9uW4FzOXuFXMbkSBZdrvwC_DqxI_POtTdNPNCkkGuIwLamv9sMw1rLvCy1haNTkFQYZcKVRJMTTDwCn8VL85TABgPY3yNFo7O8XSy515hvvT3go1/s1600/demoldemol-730x438.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="730" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVWu-fD1LGOoXf4_xA8dVkeBjlDOk9uW4FzOXuFXMbkSBZdrvwC_DqxI_POtTdNPNCkkGuIwLamv9sMw1rLvCy1haNTkFQYZcKVRJMTTDwCn8VL85TABgPY3yNFo7O8XSy515hvvT3go1/s320/demoldemol-730x438.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Otherwise known as 'the updated <a href="https://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/themolev2.pdf" target="_blank">guide to The Mole's challenges</a>' [PDF, 976kb].<br />
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It's been way, way too long since I wrote a challenge guide. I've been working on them pretty constantly since the last one (released in 2014, holy shit), but trying to design a format that worked with enough consistency to use for multiple shows was a nightmare, and trying to do shows that were just too big to get through at any reasonable speed was draining (spoiler: a Big Brother guide will probably not be happening any time soon), and several other excuses, I'm sure.<br />
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I've tried to make the formatting for this one reasonably simple compared to the last guide I did for The Amazing Race. I do like the tables of brief explanations better and I do think they're more adaptable than blocks of text, but at the same time over the years this has been reworked and rejigged so many times that I kind of just threw my hands up in defeat a little bit here. Which sounds terrible, but last time I did a Mole guide I used this commentary space to say that Americans sucked at making reality television (they still do) and subsequently asked a winner of the American version of this show to tweet about it, so. Moving up, I guess?<br />
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With a new Mole season literally premiering in less than 48 hours and another following in a couple of months, I'll be doing a quick update after they both air, but don't expect a total revamp of the guide like I did for this version. Likewise, I'm 90% sure what show I'll be doing next (at the moment, it'll be a show that's new to this blog and pretty small by comparison to the 40 seasons I covered here), but... you know, look at all the times I said I knew what I was doing before. Doesn't it seem fitting that this is about a show where trust is bullshit now?Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-24587136696979399222015-07-12T22:30:00.001-07:002015-07-12T22:30:42.139-07:00Eurovision Revision IV: Another Time, Another Place<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Following the Netherlands' win in Frankfurt, the responsibilities for hosting the 1958 contest went to the Dutch, and in an era when the show was still mostly a radio event it made sense to stage the contest not at a stadium or a theatre but in a well-resourced television studio in the town of Hilversum, hub of basically all major Dutch media organisations and perhaps ironically the least famous venue this side of Millstreet. The cast of competing countries was basically the same as in 1957 - minus the UK in their only post-debut absence, with Sweden substituting and popping their Eurovision cherry - and the entries very much had a going-through-the-motions feel to them for the most part, not helped by four separate performers (previous winners Lys Assia and Corry Brokken, plus Margot Hielscher and poor Fud Leclerc) all representing their countries again. On the other hand, one of the most well-known songs to ever come out of the contest was introduced to the world in Hilversum, so who's to say whether this year's contest is truly as dull as it feels? Shall we begin?<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#25. Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu (Domenico Modugno, Italy 1958, 3rd)</b></i></span><br /><br />What is there to say about this song, better known as Volare, that has not already been said? I mean, it's one thing to win the contest. It's another to finish third but go on to be not only the only Eurovision entry to win a Grammy, but for that win to make it the first ever Song of the Year. Over sixty years, there have been so few songs to transcend the contest and become major successes in their own right - really it's just this, Congratulations, Waterloo, and Ooh Aah... Just a Little Bit, plus Riverdance - that for one of these songs to happen so early in the contest's history, in a contest (the second and last) without any songs performed in English, is remarkable. I mean, it even got performed on Quantum Leap of all places. Endlessly listenable, and if you're not throwing your arms up with Domenico at the start of the chorus there's probably something very wrong with you. <i>Italie, DOUZE POINTS.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#26. Heel de Wereld (Corry Brokken, Netherlands 1958, tied for 9th)</b></i></span><br /><br />It had to happen eventually. A Dutch entry I can't get wholeheartedly behind. Don't get me wrong, I really do like most of it. But every so often Corry Brokken has to break with the tempo of this slow ditty (about wanting to reveal a secret, for those of you playing along, just as Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu was about gettin' high on love) and run through about six syllables in a second just to get to the end of the line in time with the music. If the rest of the song was faster, or if the Dutch language wasn't so gloriously guttural, it could have worked. But it's not, and it isn't, so it doesn't. <i>Pays-Bas, cinq points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#27. Dors, Mon Amour (André Claveau, France 1958, Winner)</b></i></span><br /><br />It may be that I'm listening to this shortly after listing to one of the true classic songs of the 1950s, but... eesh, this WON? I don't know what to say about it because it's such a blah song (its theme of being about sleeping to enjoy the future is, how shall we say, more than appropriate), relying pretty much entirely on Claveau's deep-but-not-too-deep voice to sell it. And failing. <i>France, trois points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#28. Un Grand Amour (Solange Berry, Luxembourg 1958, tied for 9th)</b></i></span><br /><br />Move over, Imitation Beyonce, I have a new favourite Solange. It's not a particularly spectacular entry to Eurovision canon, but it's a good song sung well, and at this point in the contest's history that should be all you need to do well. Unfortunately, this is right around the time the visual performance is about to become important (as early as next year, it will play a huge role in deciding the winner), and we just don't have anything exciting to see here. <i>Luxembourg, sept points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#29. Lilla Stjärna (Alice Babs, Sweden 1958, 4th)</b></i></span><br /><br />Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The thing with Swedish entries is that I often find myself either really digging them or being completely bored by them, and this one, in which poor Alice Babs finds herself having to act like she routinely asks objects that can't hear her for romantic advice, finds itself wedged firmly into the latter category. And... like, it's not that it's a bad song, and I can see how they finished fourth, but I know Sweden can and will do much better. <i>Suede, cinq points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#30. Jeg Rev et Blad ud af Min Dagbog (Raquel Rastenni, Denmark 1958, 8th)</b></i></span><br /><br />No, Denmark. I don't forgive you for this mediocre regret-inspired song. Especially when the big note at the end of the song winds up being the smallest of all. The era of actual performances can't come quick enough at this point. <i>Danmark, quatre points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#31. Ma Petite Chatte (Poor Fud Leclerc, Belgium 1958, tied for 5th)</b></i></span><br /><br />As excellent as this generic love song is - and fast-paced swing is a very difficult thing to get right at Eurovision, as demonstrated multiple times over the years until finally Electro Velvet almost killed the genre for everybody - it does seem like Poor Fud Leclerc isn't entirely comfortable with singing it, even though he sells the heck out of the performance better than any other performer this year (yes, even more than Modugno). There's just something kind of wooden to his act that detracts from its tone, and I'm not sure that can quite be explained away by the social standards of the 1950s. <i>Belgique, huit points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#32. Für Zwei Groschen Musik (Margot Hielscher, West Germany 1958, 7th)</b></i></span><br /><br />In a contest that so far has pretty much been filled with soulful funeral dirges and Volare, an upbeat piece of social commentary on the ridiculous of corporate beauty pageants that changes after the first verse into a jazzy little number about the power and importance of jukeboxes is... a bit of a departure, it must be said. But it's not an unwelcome departure, in spite of its switch and in spite of it, you know, being jazz. It's easy to see why it didn't win - it's not a particularly European song or a particularly Eurovision song and is, still, jazz - but that doesn't mean it's hateable. And bonus points for being the first song to try and do something with the staging. <i>Allemagne de l'Ouest, sept points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#33. Die Ganze Welt Braucht Liebe (Liane Augustin, Austria 1958, tied for 5th)</b></i></span><br /><br />Look, it's perfectly adequate. But with the previous two songs being solidly above average, adequate isn't going to cut it right now. There are times when it will. But this isn't one of them. I don't necessarily need every song to be spectacular, but I'd like to at least realise the song has ended and looped around before the third run-through, you know? <i>Autriche, trois points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#34. Giorgio (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1958, 2nd)</b></i></span><br /><br />Or as I like to think of it, "Bambi Raps In Italian". And yes, it really is that bonkers to listen to, full of overly fast lyrics and the repeated use of the words Chianti, Risotto, and Polenta, almost as if you're trying to communicate with a waiter who speaks another language without having to do the ultra-slow slurred speech thing. Or you're just Marco Pierre White. <i>Suisse, sept points.</i><br /><br />===<br /><br /><i><b>NEXT TIME:</b> The 1950s come to an end. And not a moment too soon.</i>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-43974475528347803992015-06-28T20:51:00.000-07:002015-06-28T20:51:53.250-07:00Eurovision Revision III: What's Another Year?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The year is 1957. Following the logical selection of Switzerland as inaugural host for this festival of peace, and with the original plan of having participants take turns hosting, there were two choices for the sequel without randomly going to a country that wasn't present in Lugano - either go to a country that was pretty recently invaded by the Nazis and deal with the uncomfortable subtext of having to invite West Germany, or stage the contest in West Germany itself and use it to show how the country had grown up in the previous decade or so. Naturally, the latter was deemed a better choice, and the contest headed to Frankfurt with the understanding that in future years winning countries would be given the honour of hosting to avoid the drama.<br /><br />For the contest itself, the format was much closer to the format we know today. We're still in the "show in a TV studio" era of the contest and won't move to a concert hall until 1959 (with the move to stadium spectaculars full-time not happening until the new millennium), but this time each country only sent one song and we got to see the full voting in the interests of filling time transparency. The voting also won't change to the current format for a while, becoming the first of many changes to the contest brought about by the Swedes, but for this year the format is simple: Each country had ten jurors from outside the music industry, who each cast a single vote for their favourite song. Most votes wins. What could be simpler?<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#15. Straatdeuntje (Bobbejaan Schoepen, Belgium 1957, 8th)</b></i></span><br /><br />This one's a tough one. I think it's a perfectly fine song on its own, but... honestly, everything about it has been done significantly better elsewhere. A Dutch-language song about relaxing street music? The Dutch themselves will do it better in the 1970s. Obnoxiously catchy whistling? Thank you, Switzerland. A chorus that's basically just "la la la la la la la"? Many, many times, and it doesn't commit itself to the gimmick for long enough to make it worthwhile. The singer isn't even reality TV's best Bobby Jon. The one thing it does have, however, is that it sets into motion the tradition of Belgium alternating between French and Dutch entries at each contest they attend, one that will continue (with only one exception) until 1998. But still: adequate but not remarkable. <i>Belgique, six points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#16. Amours Mortes (Tant de Peine) (Danièle Dupré, Luxembourg 1957, 4th)</b></i></span><br /><br />So I listened to this song about five minutes ago and it's already been completely forgotten, aside from the visual of the singer clearly being unsure what to do with her hands and ending up with her arms positioned awkwardly like she was some kind of a porcelain doll. Which is bad enough at the best of times, but from about thirty seconds into the video all we get is a tight shot on her head, so it's not like there's even anything to distract from how deathly dull the song is. <i>Luxembourg, deux points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#17. All (Patricia Bredin, United Kingdom 1957, 7th)</b></i></span><br /><br />On the one hand, this is a surprisingly shrill entry from a country that usually at least sends decent voices, even if the stage presence and the songs themselves are now invariably awful. On the other hand, it's pretty much just a straight line from this to Electro Velvet, and at least the song is over quickly - the entire performance lasts less than two excruciating minutes. And while I'm definitely not a fan of the song, it's nice of people to realise the song is kind of terrible and to act accordingly. They won't always. <i>Royaume-Uni, trois points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#18. Corde della mia Chitarra (Nunzio Gallo, Italy 1957, 6th)</b></i></span><br /><br />Clocking in at five minutes and nineteen seconds, this is the longest entry in Eurovision history... and, unfortunately, you can feel each and every tedious second. It's not even until a minute in that the acoustic guitar solo (which, despite the lyrics, is not magically playing itself) ends and the song proper begins, and by that point you're already hoping for the damn thing to be over already. It's not painfully bad, sure, but it just lasts far too fucking long. <i>Italie, trois points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#19. Wohin, Kleines Pony? (Bob Martin, Austria 1957, 10th)</b></i></span><br /><br />I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to hear someone ask a pony for directions to the tune of the Married... With Children theme as performed in a spaghetti Western (a strudel Western?). I mean, I'm flummoxed that it finished last, but I'm not entirely surprised it didn't do well. There are definitely surreal moments throughout the history of Eurovision that work, but it's a technique that only seems to work for select countries. France can get away with it, because everyone expects them to think they're too good for this silly little fooferaw. Moldova can get away with it, because everybody understands they need to do whatever they can to help people find it on a map. But Austria is one of the countries where the technique never works, and it's always kind of embarrassing to see another attempt. <i>Autriche, quatre points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#20. Net Als Toen (Corry Brokken, Netherlands 1957, Winner)</b></i></span><br /><br />So I know I'm genetically predisposed to love everything the Netherlands sends, but even then it's kind of astonishing just how much this song rises above the comparative chaff we've had so far in this year's contest. Brokken herself is one of the forgotten icons of Eurovision - as well as being a staple of these early contests, she's one of only two people in history to complete the "winner, host, spokesperson" triple play (and the two-decade waits between each is much more impressive than Marie N doing all three within the space of four contests) - and it's a real shame she's not remembered as well as many of the other important figures in the contest's canon. Especially with a song this good. <i>Pays-Bas, dix points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#21. Telefon, Telefon (Margot Hielscher, West Germany 1957, 4th)</b></i></span><br /><br />For those of you wondering just what The Social Network Song would be like if transplanted into the early years of the contest, here you go. I kid, a little, but it's the same basic "love letter to glorious technology" concept (one which the West Germans would return to twenty years down the line) in the form of a 1950s chanson. This one has the added bonus of referencing the addition of the telephone voting to the contest, but it honestly doesn't need it. It's a good entry on its own, which is more than can be said for Poor Valentina Monetta's debut. <i>Allemagne de l'Ouest, huit points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#22. La Belle Amour (Paule Desjardins, France 1957, 2nd)</b></i></span><br /><br />In the early years of Eurovision, France was basically an unstoppable force - at risk of spoiling events over half a century old, they're going to win three of the next five contests, and will only fall outside the top five once between now and 1970 - but unlike later times when countries would consistently do well (the mantle will get passed around from France to the UK, Israel, and West Germany before a brief open period that confuses everybody into endorsing Ireland's plan for world domination), there's not really anything about this ode to nature or ballrooms or whatever (it's not particularly clear) that makes it easy to see why France was about to be so successful. In this case, it isn't even that French was a literal lingua franca - with the specific countries here, the German songs were more likely to pick up the At Least I Understand It votes - so I don't know. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly solid entry, but it's not as good as it probably should be for a runner-up. <i>France, sept points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#23. Skibet Skal Sejle i Nat (Birthe Wilke & Gustav Winckler, Denmark 1957, 3rd)</b></i></span><br /><br />Oh, hey. two singers. That presents problems here more than it does in other songs - Birthe has a Disney voice while Gustav's is almost comically deep and for the most part drowns her out when they sing lines in unison - but it's nice to get something to break up the monotony of yet another pretty young lady singing about loving where they live, and it makes sense to have two singers perform a song about one last afternoon of torrid outdoor sex before the man heads off to sea and explores life on the poop deck with his fellow sailors. Unfortunately, that's not why everyone mentions the couple. Because they share an overlong kiss at the end (spoiler?), the entry has kind of ended up with a disproportionate reputation, up to and including the Danish organisers of the 50th anniversary special having Birthe making a cameo to get kissed by Katrina minus the Waves. (I wish I was kidding.) And I just can't support that considering the song is actually kind of mediocre? <i>Danmark, six points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#24. L'Enfant que J'Etais (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1957, 8th)</b></i></span><br /><br />Maybe it's just that the last four songs have been getting worse and worse, but I kind of adore this one? The annual "Look, Lys Assia is still alive! Let's interview her!" segment is pretty much my least favourite part of every year's contest, and the slow songs usually wind up in the like-but-not-love range for me, but somehow she manages to turn it out and make this work, which is especially tough since it's about growing old and she's not exactly elderly here. I'm pretty sure a decent amount of the poor result is jurors either penalising her for beating a song they liked more last year or not wanting her and Switzerland in general to win back-to-back in the first two contests, but frankly I wouldn't have wanted her to win back-to-back either. <i>Suisse, huit points.</i><br /><br />===<br /><br /><i><b>NEXT TIME:</b> One of the most successful Eurovision entries ever. And two songs that beat it.</i>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-45103445268828106272015-06-22T01:09:00.001-07:002015-06-22T01:09:34.826-07:00Challenge Guide UpdateJust a quick update - I was originally planning on releasing the first part of the updated challenge guide (which, as you'll no doubt remember from when I shoved the details in the blurb for the Amazing Race guide, is going to be a single-format with shows uploaded in stages rather than all at once) in the next week or so, but that's not going to happen.<br />
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Basically, the first batch of seasons I was planning on uploading were the civilian seasons of The Apprentice US, the first few years of Big Brother UK, and a section of The Challenge - three long-running shows I haven't really done anything with on this blog yet, and where better to start than with ABC? - but in keeping with the blog's updated subtitle (the reasons for which should go without saying), there's going to be a change of plans. I'll still be starting with some long-running shows, yes, but the line-up has changed somewhat. Instead:<br />
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<li>The first third of Big Brother UK (five seasons, plus four spinoff seasons)</li>
<li>The first quarter of The Biggest Loser US (four seasons)</li>
<li>The first third of The Challenge (nine seasons)</li>
<li>The first third of Masterchef Australia (two seasons, plus two spinoff seasons)</li>
<li>All of The Mole US (five seasons)</li>
<li>The first third of Ninja Warrior Japan (eleven specials, plus two spinoff specials)</li>
<li>The first fifth of Project Runway (four seasons)</li>
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The good news is I'm about half a celebrity season away from finishing the Big Brother section, and a lot of what's left just needs to be reformatted from old drafts on my computer. The bad news is it's still a lot of work, and it's probably still going to be at least another month or so away. Apologies for the delay. Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-74444337185169417362015-06-21T22:17:00.001-07:002015-06-21T22:17:27.193-07:00Eurovision Revision II: Love Enough for Two<br />
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Having <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/eurovision-revision-congratulations-i.html" target="_blank">last time</a> discussed the entries from all seven countries competing in the first Eurovision Song Contest, today we discuss... the entries from all seven countries competing in the first Eurovision Song Contest. Confused? Let me explain.<br /><br />Essentially, Eurovision is the world's longest-running reality show. And much like basically every one of the bigger modern competitive reality shows is vastly different in its first season than it is from its second season onwards, the first Eurovision was very different from the contest we know and grudgingly watch each year to see which country in Eastern Europe Scandinavia gets given the trophy by default. In addition to being the only one of the sixty contests to date without a female host or cohost, and in addition to being the only contest where voting results were not revealed, this is also the only contest where each participating country sent more than one song, mostly to help fill the broadcast at a time when broadcasting simultaneously in seven countries was prohibitively expensive and thus needed to be justified. (By the following year there were ten countries, and voting was used to fill out the remaining time instead because the thought of a Eurovision with twenty songs competing would just be nonsensical.)<br /><br />And now the stage is set, on with the show.<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#8. Voorgoed Voorbij (Corry Brokken, Netherlands 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />Going into this marathon, I was expecting a lot of these early songs to be difficult to get into, just by virtue of being the sort of music even Eurovision doesn't bother giving exposure to any more. But in spite of being a pretty standard break-up song, this doesn't feel all too different to the sort of thing France would send to a modern contest just to be faux-edgy? Of course, the fact that it's good is an easy way to tell it apart from most recent French entries, but let's not split hairs. In fact, it's good enough that Corry Brokken is one of only three artists from this contest to return in later years (along with St. Lys Assia and Poor Fud Leclerc), and the first in a long line of singers to also be found guilty of Attempted Hosting. Not for twenty more years, but still. <i>Pays-Bas, huit points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#9. Refrain (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />So... I'm supposed to love this one, right? Because it was the first winner, and that's supposed to be important or something? I'll work on it, I swear. But right now, I kind of feel like the lyrics (an old couple remembering when they were young and carefree) don't fit with the music? It's a fine entry, sure, but the reputation it has is a little overdone considering the actual quality of the song, which is really just a piece of background music from a 1920s silent film scene showing a love interest's introduction, with some lyrics over the top that feel a little too strongly-voiced for what it is. Or to put all of this another way, it's a good winner (and we'll have some truly awful ones in later years), but it's not one of the greats. <i>Suisse, sept points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#10. Le Plus Beau Jour de Ma Vie (Mony Marc, Belgium 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />Oh, Belgium. You're not going to make this behemoth easy on me, are you? Everyone else, you know how sometimes with old music the way the notes are held in that weird way that makes the voice sound distorted like you're literally listening to them through a foam cup with a piece of string attached? That's this song in a nutshell, even before you get to the story basically being a woman explaining how seeing her husband on her wedding day was the proudest moment of her life. Which despite failing the Bechdel Test on its own somehow manages to not be the most outdated Eurovision entry about weddings containing the words "ding dong" as a key part of the lyrics, so that's a plus for it. But it's pretty much the only one. <i>Belgique, trois points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#11. So Geht das Jede Nacht (Freddy Quinn, West Germany 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />Whereas Germany's first entry in this contest was something that would make you wonder just how big Shatner was in the country, this one's a bit more of an actual song. It's still not the sort of thing that would work at Eurovision - we've seen numerous times that swing is just one of those genres that never really catches on that well within the confines of the contest (rap and Motown have both failed in the past, and it took until the final song of this year's contest for someone to actually do well after trying to bring opera to the masses), plus the lyrics are pretty damn slut-shamey - and it's not even the best swing entry the Germans have sent, but taken on its own it's not that bad. That said, I'm not judging these songs in a bubble, and all of those things combine to give it a mediocre result. I'm sure Germany will wise up in future and send us a string of truly great entries, right? Right? <i>Allemagne de l'Ouest, quatre points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#12. Il Est Là (Dany Dauberson, France 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />In recent years, it's become common for the lesser singers to be overwhelmed by their backing tracks. And certainly this started in the same way, almost as if it was a deliberate attempt to lull you into a false sense of security like Dany's psychosomatic stalker seems to be. But then it kind of turned it around and became an adequate if unremarkable entry to the Eurovision canon. Unfortunately, by the time it did it I'd already zoned out. Sorry, France! <i>France, six points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#13. Les Amants de Minuit (Michèle Arnaud, Luxembourg 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />What I Thought The Song Was Going To Be About Before I Heard It: Consoling a premature ejaculator. What The Song Is Actually About: The 1950s version of a one-night stand, involving a late-night snack that isn't that kind of eating. So... close enough, but I still like my version better. And that's really the problem here - the version of this song I had in my head was much more interesting and involving than the song actually is. Especially compared to Ne Crois Pas, it just doesn't hold up. <i>Luxembourg, cinq points.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#14. Amami Se Vuoi (Tonina Torrielli, Italy 1956)</b></i></span><br /><br />And so we finally wrap up the first contest with... more of the same, really. I've been splitting hairs a lot of the time trying to work out how to analyse these songs since so many of them are pretty similarly slow and meandering, but this little ditty about how love never dies (or, if you prefer, only love survives) is among the best of those entries this time around. However, being the best of a mediocre bunch only gets you so far, and as it turns out that's somewhere around the upper-middle of the best-to-worst ranking right now. <i>Italie, sept points.</i><br /><br />===<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>NEXT TIME:</b></i></span> Austria. Also Denmark and the UK, but it's not like either of them ever produce notable Eurovision entries, so I don't know why I'm even mentioning them. (Also: video!)Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-55234857188734356822015-06-14T20:25:00.000-07:002015-06-21T22:17:42.561-07:00Eurovision Revision I: Congratulations, I Have Arrived<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is an idea I've had floating around for a while and never really felt confident enough to do, but it's been far too long since I posted here with any regularity and this is a perfect way to fix that issue, so here we are. Basically, over the next however long, we'll be visiting each and every of the 1396 entries in the Eurovision Song Contest catalog and discussing them one at a time before making foregone conclusions and declaring ABBA the best and Jemini the spawn of Satan. (Except not, because I don't actually believe either of those is true, but more about them when we get there.) Along the way, we'll be giving each song the traditional score from zero to twelve points (but, as one Scandinavian host put it, "never the points nine or eleven"), and then at the end I'll reveal a comprehensive best to worst ranking of every entry ever.<br />
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But there are a few things to note before we get there: First, I'm not counting any songs that weren't performed in competition at Eurovision itself, which means among others that the songs which lost in the qualification rounds in two mid-1990s contests aren't included and we (thankfully) won't be discussing the Wombles or Riverdance. Second, while semi-final qualifiers will be reviewed in the order they were performed in the semi-final, I'm using final performances wherever possible. (I'm certainly not implying Youtube is your friend if you want to play along, but if you put "Eurovision" followed by the country and year, you should be able to find everything you'll need.) Third, the 1956 and 1964 contests no longer have viewable video footage, but it's not as if Lys Assia was doing cartwheels in a bikini while performing, so I think we'll manage. Finally, I have the lyrics and translations for every entry, but I'm still under no belief that I'm ever going to understand what's going on, and while I've heard a huge number of these songs before I'm not going to claim I've heard everything. Shall we begin?<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#1. De Vogels van Holland (Jetty Paerl, Netherlands 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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Looking through the prism of modernity, it's easy to think that a 1950s-style Dutch ballad about birds would be monotonous and depressing. But Anouk isn't involved with this inaugural performance, so put down your noose and your razor blades for a little while, even if it's still not a toetapper. Instead, we have this peaceful and relaxing number, almost saturated with the upbeat wistfulness that infects the best Dutch entries to the point that it starts oozing from an open wound, about how birds love wet weather and are thus happier in the Netherlands than in other countries. And... like, it's great you want to use your song to make a point about how delightful your country is, but maybe don't point out the constant rain if you want people to drop by for some hash brownies? Just a thought. <i>Pays-Bas, huit points.</i><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#2. Das Alte Karusell (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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Or, as I like to think of it, "Mary Poppins goes to Hell". The song is actually about the titular old carousel needing a bit of lube to get it working again (and don't we all), but: come on. It's Julie Andrews riding down the River Styx in a boat made from the kneecaps of her enemies. Who said Switzerland was neutral? And it's not that it's a bad song (because it's not), it's just that like said rusty carousel, it goes round and round in circles instead of taking us on a journey. And I just can't with that unless it's a peppy mid-90s dance track. <i>Suisse, cinq points.</i><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#3. Messieurs les Noyés de la Seine (Fud Leclerc, Belgium 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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With a name like Fud Leclerc I'd contemplate drowning myself in the Seine too. Wouldn't you? There's no explanation of why Belgium actually sent a song about a depressed French hobo, but at least they made it sound appropriately Parisian, and I kind of love it? It's definitely my favourite of these opening seven songs, but frankly central European music of the 1950s really isn't my thing (not least of all because we won't actually get to the songs I was alive for until entry #585, the infamous "Bandido" from 1990), so take it with a pile of salt the size of Moldova. <i>Belgique, dix points.</i><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#4. Im Wartesaal zum Grossen Glück (Walter Andreas Schwarz, West Germany 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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It's lovely to see the tradition of Germany trolling Eurovision started so early in the contest's history. That's pretty much the only reason I can see for sending a song where everything but the chorus is spoken-word and where it can't decide whether it wants to be Pink Panther or Frere Jacques. Unfortunately, the end result is that it ends up somewhere around I'm Coming Home, which I think we can all agree is one of the lesser songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and yet that musical is so good throughout that almost anything that can be compared to it is going to come across poorly. Plus - and this may be because this contest is audio-only, but I suspect not - Schwarz just doesn't have the gravitas of Tim Curry. Also, the lyrics make precisely zero sense even by Eurovision's lax standards for coherency, and kind of come across as though Schwarz (who also wrote it) misheard the English expression "if wishes were fishes" as "if wishes were fishers" and decided it would be good to base an entire song around. Which: no, dear. <i>Allemagne de l'Ouest, deux points.</i><br />
<span class="short_text" id="result_box" lang="fr"><span class="hps"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#5. Le Temps Perdu (Mathé Altéry, France 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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I listened to this song (subject: the futility of waiting for someone at night when there are no belltowers ringing to demonstrate the passage of time) an hour ago and my ears still hurt trying to figure out what to say about it. It's the sort of song where I can't tell if the performance is just offkey or if it was legitimately supposed to be so sharp you could cut diamonds with it, but either way it's an actively painful way to spend three minutes, and now that I've done it I probably never will again. <i>France, nul points.</i><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#6. Ne Crois Pas (Michèle Arnaud, Luxembourg 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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It's much more apparent in later seasons that Eurovision is a socially liberal event, but the signs are present even in this first contest. In an era where women were still treated as submissive and a decade before bra-burning was even a thing, here we have an entry entirely about how beauty fades over time. More specifically, we have an entry about how MEN'S beauty fades over time, performed with the kind of upbeat excitement you'd expect from someone finally fighting back. It's simply delightful, and if the results of this contest were ever released (they didn't start showing the voting until the following year), I wouldn't be surprised to find out this finished second. <i>Luxembourg, dix points.</i><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><i><b>#7. Aprite la Finestre (Franca Raimondi, Italy 1956)</b></i></span><br />
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Sometimes, there are songs that really don't merit much analysis. This is one of them. It's a pretty unremarkable deal about using the arrival of spring to get your creative juices flowing and so forth, with the requisite spring in its step. (So to speak.) And... I got nothing else. It's fine, but it's nothing particularly inventive or exciting or even notable. Solidly middle of the road. <i>Italie, six points.</i><br />
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<i><span style="color: yellow;"><b>NEXT TIME:</b></span> It's all just a little bit of history repeating.</i>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-80341585158743021592015-03-01T17:22:00.000-08:002015-03-01T18:02:54.800-08:00Race in the Hole<div style="text-align: center;">
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There are very few competitive reality shows that have demonstrated the longevity of The Amazing Race - indeed, to the best of my knowledge the only ones to have matched the show's twenty-six seasons are the creatively-titled The Real World spinoff The Challenge (also airing its 26th season at the time of writing), CBS stablemate Survivor (which just began its 30th), and the British version of Big Brother (33, with the caveat that over half are shortened celebrity seasons and other similar spinoffs). But where the problems with those shows are fairly easy to point out succinctly - The Challenge's recurring cast being so familiar and awful even the contempt is breeding contempt, the Big Brother UK producers valuing style over substance, and Jeff Probst - The Amazing Race has experienced a rougher fall from grace than any of them, seemingly almost out of nowhere. So the question must be asked... why has this show declined so much so suddenly?<br />
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To analyse the situation, we must first look back about halfway through the show's lifetime to the fourteenth season, one that is incredibly divisive in fandom but which the show's producers seem to inexplicably love. There were two big changes this season that affected how the show developed: firstly, the producers thought the cast was too friendly towards each other and started turning the usual "eat, sleep, and mingle" rest between racing legs into a sequestration period with food to make the contestants crankier and more antagonistic towards each other, then on a more superficial level it was the first time the show's graphics got a major overhaul. The results of these were underwhelming to say the least - the casts for this season and the next two went down as three of the most unpopular sets in the show's history, and most of the lesser graphical changes were retooled very quickly even if the most troublesome of all (the subtext behind the new logo being akin to the show calling itself bigger than Jesus) remained - but by and large what's most important here is that this also happened to be right at the point the show rather paradoxically lost its confidence and started with a whole lot of self-affirming bluster about how capital-letters-and-fingerquotes "AMAZING" it was. On top of all of this, it's the first season to actively avoid new countries (Romania gets its first visit and Switzerland gets a second, both for single episodes with extended travel sequences that mean they really don't get started until about twenty minutes in, while everywhere else is appearing for at least the third time) and the entire back half of the route is a stale copy of the very first race, plus there are huge challenge design problems with many tasks favouring cheap comedy over being classy towards local cultures, so it's fair to say it's not one of the better ones. Sure, there were certainly attempts to remedy both the casting errors and the task design in later seasons, but it seemed as if the show seemed to think the opposite of "negative" was "not negative" and thus we got several middling seasons that kind of did nothing for anybody.<br />
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Which brings us a bit closer to the present day. You see, after a particularly controversial slip in The Amazing Race 22 that managed to offend people on both sides of the Vietnam War (the show routinely uses an alternate set of race flags in Vietnam as the usual design is similar to the flag of the former South Vietnam, yet in this instance the usual race flags turned up at a downed US jet left as a monument to North Vietnam's victory in the war, although of COURSE the conservative media only took offense at the side where Real I Was Born Here Americans got angry), there was a concerted effort to revitalise the show again. And the following season was legitimately quite good, especially if you can ignore the premiere and the finale, which have been such a sticking point for so long that it would have been more shocking if they weren't. Unfortunately, those are the episodes that tend to stick in the minds of viewers, and with the second episode of the season being the next least impressive (which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with Chile being one of a handful of countries that keeps turning up despite it never hosting a great leg in any franchise), the season was doomed from the start even though that middle run of episodes (from Leg 3 to Leg 8, certainly, and you could make a case for including Leg 9) is genuinely the best run of episodes the show had produced since at least the opening half of season ten, if not earlier.<br />
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So how, then, do you react to viewers not getting invested in the season? Well, if you're this particular set of producers, it's only too logical to put the problems with premiere design in the too-hard basket like so many "find a clue buried on a beach" premiere tasks of yore and instead decide to make season 24 an All-Stars season featuring memorable players from prior seasons. With the previous such season steadfastly refusing to cast from the early seasons under the belief that nobody would remember them (not that the show was available on DVD or anything, or that giving people a reason to buy them would make the show more profitable), the problem should be apparent: the teams that weren't milquetoast were almost universally teams who, frankly, were assholes who made for terrible viewing. So the cast was probably never going to be perfect, but out of all of the possible combinations you could have come up with from the six seasons considered, there's basically only one or two ways the season could have had a worse cast. And we very nearly got it. The basic problem, really, was that the cast included seven teams who filled the same Big Character archetype that appeals only to a vocal Twitter minority (including three who were making their third appearance and had all well and truly worn out their welcomes by the end of their first appearances), two teams who got in because of the unusual ways in which they were booted early in their first season rather than because they were entertaining (both of whom proved to be utter funsucks), a filler team seemingly only cast because it's not an Amazing Race without a team of generic blonde women who vow to use sex appeal to get ahead, and a team who was generally received well but was still a lesser imitation of better past teams. So your odds were basically one in eleven that the season was going to turn out well, but then one half of the good team was forced out of the game before starting due to a medical emergency, forcing the show to either scrap the team entirely or give the healthy partner a new teammate with a tenuous connection to him. They did the latter, and wound up being one of the most uncomfortable teams to watch in years before they were mercifully eliminated in Leg 2. (This will be important in a moment.)<br />
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So the self-congratulatory season 24 was a bust, mostly because the recent seasons were dull and it was more of the same featuring the teams you didn't like the first time around. Naturally, the cure was... to make season 25 even more self-congratulatory? I kid, a little, but that's definitely one of the numerous big problems with the season, which succeeded in spite of its changes rather than because of them. The anniversary theme itself is a tough one because while I have no objections to doing it in theory, the way it was handled was kind of a failure. Put simply, the show also decided to finally do the island-locations theme that had been mooted by fans since at least season four (every single place visited except Morocco and the final city of Los Angeles was an island, and even the LA leg included a shipping task and a lighthouse), and having the anniversary theme on top of that meant neither shined the way they were meant to because the show spent a significant portion of the season ticking off memorable past tasks to recycle instead of capitalising on filming in places they'd probably never use otherwise, with the end result obviously being that precisely none of these recycled tasks lived up to the originals while the new tasks felt particularly uninspired, almost as if they'd been taken from a 1960s version of Wikipedia. (On behalf of the viewership, I thank the show for not referring to Berber nomads as "noble savages", but on the other hand they really should have avoided spelling Marrakech "Marrakesh" in the final task.)<br />
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There was also two other stylistic additions that didn't work and has inexplicably survived into the current season. One of them we'll save for later because Oh Yes There Will Be Ranting, but the other was having host Phil Keoghan make cameos on the course, introducing tasks while teams are running past. Sure, it was cute the first time it happened, but even as early as its second appearance it felt like a running joke that had run its course. And breaking the fourth wall and taking viewers out of the show just for a sight gag - not to mention giving some teams an advantage in knowing their positions because Phil mentions it - just isn't worth it.<br />
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In terms of the actual race itself though, there were three new twists. First is the Save, a shameless and extremely flawed attempt to seemingly answer an executive note from CBS asking why the show doesn't have something like Survivor's Hidden Immunity Idol or Big Brother's Power of Veto. And there are two incredibly obvious answers: (1) Non-elimination legs, and (2) Why don't Survivor and Big Brother have ten Emmy awards? But of course, the problem doesn't end there. The way it was handled, it could be used at any elimination up to and including Leg 9 to spare its holder. Except the problem is it couldn't be used in what was already a predetermined non-elimination leg (as we saw when the team tried to save themselves in Leg 4), meaning that for them to actually be eliminated they needed to finish last in an elimination leg, forfeit the Save, and then finish last again in another elimination leg. Not seeing why that's an issue yet? You soon will.<br />
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The second of these was the mid-race twist of having teams faced with two tasks at what the show calls a Detour and forcing them to pick a task knowing only their arbitrary titles. This one here undeniably had the most chance of succeeding out of the three twists, but even then the execution was abysmal. Pairing the twist with the two most lopsided Detours of the season, and giving those Detours lame and unhelpful titles on top of that, was an awful decision that turned what could have been an interesting study in decision-making into "don't pick whichever one of 'This' and 'That' is an hour away". I love that there was an attempt to create a mid-season twist in an era where reality shows have all but given up on the concept, and in another situation - say, season 22's choice between Tasty Puddin' and Whisky Rollin', in which the tasks (making haggis or rolling whisky barrels up cobblestone streets, because SCOTLAND) were fairly balanced and were right next to each other meaning your only decision is in whether to take the task that suggests a food-eating task - it'd work well, but here? No.<br />
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The last twist, and by far the most actually stupid because there is at least a way to justify coming up with the concept of the Save, was the decision to get rid of the elimination in the penultimate leg and have four teams in the final leg instead of the final three. A pre-finale non-elimination is perfectly fine in theory, and indeed most of the "classic seasons" had them, but this was catastrophic. Not only was the previous leg before this also a non-elimination, meaning that a season that didn't have all too much suspense to begin with gave up on limping home to a conclusion and called a taxi (no doubt earning a time penalty for not walking as specified in the clue), but the final four was cut down to the standard final three with a mid-leg elimination anyway, defeating the entire purpose. So in essence you have a Save that all but guarantees its winner a place in the final leg given the unlikely odds of finishing last twice in a specific subset of six legs, combined with removing the lid from the metaphorical pressure cooker, combined with a twist that amounted to letting a team get all the way to the finale without getting to finish the race? Beyond awful. Put simply, it's the least thought-out twist in the show's history (and I'm including the early-years non-elimination penalty that amounted to begging for money in havens of wealth such as Senegal), but it still pales in comparison to the show's attempt to embrace social media.<br />
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The show's existing social media strategy was actually quite good - one hashtag for the show, then Phil hosting a Q&A during broadcasts when he wasn't busy filming. But due to what I can only assume was more CBS meddling, the usual team relationship chyrons that appear onscreen were replaced for season 25 (and now for 26) with team hashtags ranging from the cutesy reminders of Treasure Hunters and Expedition Impossible and the other knockoffs I'm probably forgetting (#SoulSurfers) to the inane (any of the #TheSharedOccupation hashtags) to the pointless and spoilery (is there any way they would have kept #TheDatingCouple as a hashtag if the team had lasted more than two legs?). Here's the thing: It doesn't work. In fact, speaking in my official capacity as manager of Australia's national Twitter account, it actively hinders the show. Within the context of this pre-recorded show, the only way hashtags are valuable is by making the show trend, and splitting the number of tweets about the show over twelve hashtags - especially when it's just been moved from a high-rating Sunday slot to the Friday Night Death Slot and the timeslot move wasn't advertised particularly well - is a disastrous decision. And that's even before you consider the hashtags themselves don't seem to have been created with either an understanding that economy is key on Twitter - you only have 140 characters to work with, so nobody will ever use hashtags with fifteen to twenty characters on a regular basis - or that Twitter is an interactive medium. With the creators of this show also heavily involved with The Quest and its brilliant embrace of social media, it's inconceivable to think that a show like The Amazing Race that's usually pretty good at whatever it does (even if the risks don't always pan out quite as intended) is failing so spectacularly at this.<br />
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Which is, finally, how we get to the current season. Throughout the entire run of The Amazing Race, there has been only two constants: that Phil will be delightful (though even that is waning now he's turning into Kiwi Probst), and that the least entertaining, most forgettable team of the season will be a young dating couple. So, naturally, the season is made up exclusively of dating couples, five of whom are actually solo applicants the show has paired up for "the most extreme blind dates ever". Because heaven knows what we've wanted all these years is more footage of people who've barely met being unpleasant. And which teams did they use to showcase the concept of "dating couple" in a season-opening montage? A whole bunch of the most awful couples of recent years, several of whom have broken up since, plus the aforementioned #TheDatingCouple, plus a random dating couple from a decade ago that nobody could identify in a line-up. Not, say, any of the dating couples who were received positively over the years, or either of the two lesbian couples from the show's history (which is especially noteworthy in this, the first season ever without an all-female team, even moreso because a female team won last season). And if this gimmick wasn't enough to doom the show - and even the producers themselves appear to think it is, given they have openly made "at least it's not the Family Edition, right?" comparisons to the most-hated season of the show in multiple preseason interviews - giving the teams phones to take selfies of their journey certainly is. Because you know what I want to watch in the middle of a race for a million dollars? People taking selfies. (Indeed, in Episode 2, people pausing to do so led to an anticlimactic elimination when they missed their train.)<br />
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Frankly, the combination of the selfies, plus the season theme, plus the hashtag debacle makes me think all of these changes are being forced upon the show by a clueless CBS executive who wants to make the show cool for a younger market yet still thinks MTV is a music channel. Like, I'm pretty sure the "most extreme blind dates" spiel was pitched in a memo that spelled it "X-Treme" and may have also included the non-word "kewl". If the show gets another season (and it could go either way at this point), it really needs to be a back-to-basics season with no new changes or gimmicks, and most if not all of the existing ones removed. Of course change over time is inevitable, and the show is going to be completely different now than it was back when the first season was airing after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But not only is it not that show, it's not the show it was when the forgettable dating couple from the montage was racing. It's not the show that took baby steps to recover from the season fourteen mess. It's not the show that took a hit with the Vietnam incident but had enough goodwill to survive it. It's not the show that had a renaissance just eighteen months ago. It's not even the show that I found myself falling back in love with when I was writing <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-world-is-waiting-for-you-brief.html" target="_blank">the challenge guide</a> late last year. All of those shows are far better than this.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-58297139524362401972014-12-18T19:14:00.001-08:002014-12-18T19:18:36.275-08:00The World is Waiting for You: A Brief Obsessive Guide to The Amazing Race<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Still the best/only non-Bigger-than-Jesus show logo.</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/theamazingrace.pdf" target="_blank">Here you go</a>. (PDF, 1.36MB.)</div>
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I was planning on waiting until next week to release this, but with recent events we totally need a pick-me-up right about now. Consider it an early Christmas/on-time Hannukah/late Ramadan present. And so, to celebrate the finale of The Amazing Race's 25th season, it's the next in my series of reality show challenge guides. It's not quite complete because there are seasons currently airing and one that's finished too recently to get done in time, but they'll all be added in later versions. (I'll also hopefully be back sometime next week with the latest in my <i>other</i> ongoing series of posts, analysing and criticising said 25th Amazing Race season. Because as much as a whole bunch of things worked, a whole bunch more didn't.)</div>
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Which brings me to the other big news I was hinting at (if you came here just because of the guide, feel free to skip this bit): This is the last full-show guide I'll be releasing. From here on out, I'll be releasing seasons individually and combining them into a single giant compendium, allowing me to cover smaller shows without feeling like I have to come up with a way to justify picking, like, The Quest (delightful) over Big Brother (...not delightful). And when I say "giant", I mean it: including rewriting the old guides into a consistent format, the list of shows I want to get done is currently at over 130 entries and being added to all the time. The actual format is going to be almost identical to the one used for this Amazing Race guide, partly but not entirely because after watching that much of the show I have no burning desire to ultramarathon it again for a little while, and the only non-visual change is (obviously) removing the location column.</div>
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So that's where we stand right now: with the promise of more output, even if still only occasional, but also with more reason for all of us to keep remembering this blog exists. And that can only be a good thing.</div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-9971030710717957222014-11-12T23:06:00.003-08:002014-11-12T23:10:42.124-08:00Drumroll, Please<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Oooh, look at me, being all mysterious and junk...</i></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-34934403307928149942014-08-04T20:00:00.000-07:002014-08-04T20:04:47.899-07:00The Amazing Revival (Spoiler: It's Crap)Yesterday, before the first episode of The Amazing Race: Australia vs. New Zealand aired in the former country (the latter is getting the episode tonight), I tweeted that the spectacular failure of this twist is almost as predictable as Channel Seven's catastrophic revival of The Mole last year. The implication at the time was that I wasn't going to be writing up another post like this, but after some genuine curiosity and support I've changed my mind. (I know. You're shocked. Also, the last paragraph has task and location spoilers for upcoming episodes; skip it if you don't want to read that sort of thing.)<br />
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The Amazing Race has always been one of the great 'positive' reality shows, where your fate is entirely in your hands rather than at the behest of other players trying to fuck you over, overpaid hasbeen talent show judges, or the general public. But without the strategy or the audience influence, how do you make people want to watch? The obvious answer, and the one most seasons so far have used, is "make the show as good as possible and hope people have discerning taste". It's paid off - despite being a show about travel and having its first season air in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks, the original version has won all but one Emmy in the 'best reality show' category since it was introduced shortly after the boom of reality television, the show has been franchised in over a dozen countries and is Baywatch-in-Germany big in several, and the previous season of this very franchise we're discussing won an International Emmy for its excellence. So, naturally, with the respect the show has internationally, Channel Seven have decided that they know better than the rest of the world and have instead decided to produce this third season in-house rather than use the experienced producers prior seasons had.<br />
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This is a massive double-edged sword. On the one hand, new producers make it far less likely we're going to have to sit through leg upon leg of tasks recycled from other Amazing Race franchises with the excuse that nobody could possibly have used this newfangled interweb thing to research or watch said other versions or could possibly have watched it while actually visiting another country, which is a massive plus. On the other, the pedigree of the previous season means there is going to be less than zero tolerance for inadequacy this time around, and by giving the season its "Australia vs. New Zealand" theme, it's as good as sunk before it even leaves the harbour.<br />
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Put simply, The Amazing Race as a show is all about combating xenophobia. The whole point of the show is for people to see and experience a world they would never otherwise be exposed to, and learning to appreciate it. That's the very reason why countries like China and India turn up in so many seasons, and why we rarely if ever get tasks referencing the negative aspects of countries - the only time I can remember the show coming unreasonably close to the Line was an episode in Dhaka, Bangladesh involving picking dead rats off the streets, and even then the focus was definitely on the efforts to make Dhaka cleaner rather than being all "Ewwww, RATS!" So to entrench xenophobia - even in the context of the alleged playful rivalry of the sort Australia and New Zealand have - as the entire theme of the season frankly just proves these particular producers are idiots who have no business being anywhere near this show. There really is no better way to put it. It's like they watched the second season and decided, "This is okayyyy, but you know what have would make it really good? More Kym and Donna!", when everyone else had already forgotten them two weeks after they quit.<br />
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But television is also a business, and to maximise your profits, you must also maximise the audience. That isn't going to happen either. The cross-section of society that likes this show tends to overlap with the same sort of person who hates this kind of shit, so you're going to lose a decent portion of those viewers. The cross-section of society that would be intrigued by the twist would be turned off by the actual concept of the show. Where you could have sold another Australian-only season to a variety of obscure cable channels around the world and made a decent profit for your investment, much the same way as many of the major American reality shows are sold internationally, the idea of having to explain a rivalry that doesn't even really exist beyond My Sheep Joke Is Funnier Than Your Kangaroo Joke is going to turn away potential buyers. Even if you play along and assume the show could possibly overcome all of these obvious disadvantages, the show has been delayed for so long that it's now airing directly after the Commonwealth Games, which in Australia at least aired on a different network and means that basically nobody who could possibly be sold on the idea is even aware the show has started yet because they were all too busy watching actual Australia vs. New Zealand competition and are probably by now thoroughly sick and tired of it.<br />
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All this, of course, assumes the show itself is as good as it always has been. (Your mileage may vary on how good it has been, between the obnoxiously terrible elimination order of season one and all the missing tasks of season two, but let's say it's been adequate at the very least.) Unfortunately, having now seen the first episode, it's fair to say it's not going to be. In the interests of fairness, the show has decided to cut the number of teams from eleven to ten - five per country - and yet, even with a two-hour premiere, fewer teams, and fewer and simpler tasks than the two previous season premieres, it still didn't feel like we had any chance to react positively to anybody. It's not the worst premiere an Amazing Race season has ever had (that title will perpetually belong to The Amazing Race 15's premiere, with a start-line elimination and several gratuitously-outdated Japanese stereotypes including a sadistic '80s-style game show), but it's probably pretty close to the bottom of the list. And when the last US season premiere felt fresher despite featuring a cast of returning contestants so poorly chosen the general audience reaction was disbelief that anybody could possibly have got it so wrong combined with bad recycled tasks in a country that's been done to death AND the twelfth Los Angeles-area start in thirteen seasons, there's not much more that can be said.<br />
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But why exactly was this premiere so stale and uninviting? It's not exactly as if there have been so many trips to the central Australia or South Island wells that they couldn't have sustained one more. There are quite a few reasons. Insisting on building up "Team Australia" and "Team New Zealand" meant brushing through the teams rather than introducing them properly, which led to the situation where viewers were practically compelled to support their own country in the opening tug-of-war task even though, as noted above, nobody watching this show was likely to give a shit. Using a tug-of-war as an opening task sapped all the excitement out of the race's start when instead of running for their first clues, players basically stood still and pulled a rope for a few minutes, with half of the teams being given an immediate time penalty for losing the contest. But hey, it's not as if we're trying to sell this as some kind of a race or anything. Having the teams head directly to the airport after the tug-of-war meant that they were basically split into the two available flights by country, all but eliminating any possible drama the twist could have possibly had beyond building resentment and making the season bitchy and unpleasant to watch. The tasks themselves - the lame and counterproductive tug-of-war, an overnight wait in Christchurch, then the most boring footage of whitewater rafting ever and a Road Block literally involving tractors and sheep, because nothing says excitement and high stakes quite like FARMING - left a lot to be desired and meant that without a Detour whoever sat out of the Road Block spent the entire leg just helping nine other people in a tug-of-war and not particularly paddling a raft very hard in terms of tasks. Even with two hours of airtime, none of the ten teams proved themselves to be particularly supportable regardless of which country you're from, the ethnically varied casting of the previous two seasons seems to have been replaced with White Pride and Two Token Maoris, and host Grant Bowler was faking his middling enthusiasm even more clearly than he was last season, complete with an explanation for the tug-of-war that was clearly written by whoever had made poor Shura Taft sound like a condescending nitwit on The Mole last year. Oh, goody.<br />
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And that's just in last night's episode. Now I know somebody will probably surmise - as at least one person has with one of my past posts - that I'm a failed auditionee who was so disillusioned by failing to make the cut that I'm taking my anger out on the show. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've never auditioned and I don't particularly have any burning desire to. And to be fair, as most of the tasks last night were explained they did feel promising. The twist of the start line not being the start line was genuinely surprising and undercut only by the way it was completely mishandled. Christchurch as the first location was a refreshing change from the tropical Asian islands of the first two seasons, except then it turned out that instead of a decent city leg with an air of earthquake-related defiance, we were going to be stuck in some generic rolling hills. Whitewater rafting is by far one of the better extreme sports activities that turn up every so often on the race, and then it was a complete and utter funsuck. The Road Block sounded genuinely brilliant - driving wacky vehicles around an obstacle course and dealing with unruly animals are recipes for success, and we had both in a single task - but on paper the first half was completely uninvolving and the second seemed dangerously close to animal cruelty the way the sheep were being handled. And then the big Lord of the Rings knockoff they were pushing throughout the episode - where you had to collect two halves of a matching ring to reveal the final clue - was a bust as the clue formed by the matching ring was so vague teams clearly got some additional information to help them narrow down "go west" to find the actual Pit Stop location.<br />
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But that's now all in the past, so what of the future? Most of the countries visited this season have already been spoiled, as have a few of the tasks, and while there are some good unexpected countries coming up, it doesn't seem as though the season will actually get any better. In fact, it's probably going to get worse. The preview for next week broke one of the fundamental rules of reality television and fixated on a local delicacy challenge, and while I admit "tarantulas in Cambodia" is nowhere near the level of Fear Factor's "horse rectum for the hell of it", showing that kind of challenge in a preview tends to actively drive away an audience. I get why the challenge is there, but even then local delicacy challenges make for mediocre television at the best of times, and expecting your audience to be excited for it is an unparalleled level of genre blindness. There are other major problems too, though. With The Amazing Race 22 having recently finished airing at the time this season was being planned and having generally been considered anywhere from underwhelming to shockingly atrocious, it should have been fresh in producers' minds how poorly it and its tasks were received, but two of the very worst - an opening needle-in-a-haystack task involving sandcastles and a Survivor-esque firemaking task inspired by bushmen - have been confirmed as appearing later this season, with the firemaking task taking place in a different country (but Africa is like totes all one homogenous wasteland, so it's not in the least bit offensive or something) and the luck challenge being recycled in the season finale. Yes. They're recycling a challenge so terrible three teams quit during a season premiere when they weren't all fatigued and hadn't really done anything yet as one of the last challenges of the entire season, at a point when players tend to be struggling to even stand up straight. Slow clap, show. Add to this schlepping all the way to Portugal for a task involving counting beach umbrellas, because Portugal doesn't have a rich and varied culture or history you could exploit, and doubling down on continuing to refuse to cast non-heterosexual contestants (for the third season in a row, with excuses given in the past that are about as homophobic as you can get without actually having a smackdown with equal rights lobbyists) by celebrating with a trip to exotic Russia, and there's really nothing so far that suggests it won't be the Worst Season Ever. Let's hope they manage to polish a turd, otherwise this show's chances of survival are in deep shit.<br />
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(Addendum: The show got just 588,000 viewers last night. Blog favourite The Mole was dumped in a late-night timeslot last year with 555,000.)Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-43262030396815688732014-07-28T01:23:00.003-07:002014-07-28T01:23:46.736-07:00The Genius Game: A Brief Obsessive Guide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />After such a long and pointless absence, it really is logical to return to this blog with another detailed guide to an obscure reality show you probably haven't seen. So <a href="https://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/genius.pdf" target="_blank">here you are</a>. In keeping with my tradition of completely rejigging the format every time I open a guide document, I've added a brief description of the show's basic rules at the start of each season to account for the various changes.<br />
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Naturally, the next guide is already shaping up to have a significantly different format, so... you know, enjoy this one while you still can.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-43833752918391877962013-11-12T18:13:00.002-08:002013-11-12T18:16:07.666-08:002013: Unlucky for MostThe year 2013 has, to put it politely, not been among the better years of the reality TV genre's existence. Sure, there were some definite highlights throughout the year, but the problem is there weren't enough of these shows and those that were honestly weren't high-profile enough to attract mainstream attention. I mean, how do you sell a show like <i>The Genius: Rules of the Game</i> to someone when the basic concept is "South Korean celebrities (who aren't Psy) compete against each other for money in strategy-based cocktail party games"? Or <i>Canada's Greatest Know-It-All</i>, whose two main problems are right there in the title? Or <i>The Great Australian Bake Off</i>, which seemed to make a point of being the cooking-themed reality show for people who hate cooking-themed reality shows?<br />
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That last one might be comparatively easy to sell, especially for a new show, but it's surprising how few of the long-running reality shows managed to dish up enjoyable entries this year. In fact, aside from maybe <i>Project Runway</i> successfully fixing something we didn't even realise was broken, it's been one disastrous production decision after another this year, to the point where it wasn't hard at all to come up with this list of thirteen of the year's stupidest decisions. It's probably not too surprising that nearly half of the list comes from Australian reality shows, and five come from various versions of Big Brother, but... you know. If these shows were better, that probably wouldn't be the case.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#13 The Mole (Netherlands): Episode 6</b></span><br />
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This year's Dutch season of <i>The Mole</i>, filmed on location in South Africa, took a while to get going. While much of the issue there isn't entirely the show's fault - one player got seriously injured after a freak accident in a challenge the week before a planned non-elimination twist and had to be removed from the game to recover, making the season feel as though it was moving at a glacial pace when there wasn't a proper elimination for three episodes (not that anybody would try that deliberately or anything) - even once the show got moving again it was hard to care that much until we got down to the final four. Episode 6 was the first episode following this meandering section, and though it featured three challenges to keep it moving at a swift pace, the problem is all of them were beyond awful. Given the goal of the show is to win money while working out who is trying to lose money, it seemed like a bizarre decision to have two consecutive challenges that didn't involve money at all and ultimately didn't affect anything, followed by a challenge where only one player had any role in winning money at all. It doesn't help in the slightest that the non-cash, non-exemption challenges are invariably the worst of whichever season they are in, and as a result a show which had a good but not spectacular opening episode didn't start to feel like the Mole of old until about the eighth episode 8 of a ten episode season, where the final episode was a reunion and clipshow. Sigh.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#12 The Biggest Loser (Australia): The Fridge</b></span><br />
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Still, at least the above production decision only affected one episode. The latest game addition to completely fail on Australia's version of <i>The Biggest Loser</i> managed to suck most of the fun out of the show. Having been incredibly unpopular during its original incarnation as 'The Walk', where the winner of a challenge got to randomly pick one of four similar variations of the week's twist and had to deal with the consequences, I'm still not sure months later why they would revive it while removing the one mildly tolerable part about it, that there was some way to affect the result. Here, with the Fridge, there was only one twist and the team who lost the most weight the previous week had to decide whether to take reveal it themselves or give the responsibility to someone else. Which would be bad enough, except that out of six times the twist appeared (it didn't show up in the first week and the standard gimmick weeks later in the season meant there was no time), the twist of the week only had an impact on the game three times. Complete and utter waste of time.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#11 Big Brother (Canada): Too Many Cooks</b></span><br />
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Having watched and been annoyed by the Americans continually fucking up <i>Big Brother</i> beyond all recognition, the Canadians finally got in on the act this year. And while the show wasn't bad, in that it went about as well as a fusion of the bastardised American format and the original format could have gone without becoming unrecognisable to its audience, there still seemed to be a lot they didn't understand about the show. It was great to finally see the concept of secret missions (a staple of the format internationally) make its way to North America, and to see the return of an official Big Brother voice onscreen, even if only in a minor role. BUT. I'm not sure we needed a mock payphone in the store room to give players secret missions in the Big Brother voice PLUS a talking ornamental moose head in the Diary Room airlock when they both serve the same function and when they could have just given missions in the Diary Room itself and called "one player" when they didn't care who had to complete the task. Indeed, when the phone was first used in the season premiere, the player who answered was sent to the Diary Room to get the rules for their task anyway, so what was the damn point? I know it's a small issue, but it's one that could have and should have been thought about in more depth.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#10 Big Brother (UK): The People's Puppet</b></span><br />
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Meanwhile, the British version of the same show has been well-known for years for testing the limits of its format, with many iconic <i>Big Brother</i> twists appearing there first (though ironically the three most iconic additions to the basic format were all introduced on the Australian version, which generally speaking would find it hard to copy more from the Brits without actually flying its host in every year). This year's opening twist came in two parts - a split launch over two nights, which has been done before elsewhere, and an actor entering the house for the first week pretending to be a genuine player while acting in accordance with the results of polls on the show's website. We've had real players be forced to take on the role of an insider in the past (most notably in the US, where it was used as a surrogate for not giving the audience the power to evict), but here where a professional actor was used it just didn't work. Part of it may have been the actor just couldn't get the mix of emotions right and came across forced a lot of the time, part of it may have been that he wasn't likable enough for us to get behind, part of it may have been that the fake twist invented to give him the power needed for the twist to work seemed like it would have been much better with a genuine player, and part of it may have been that having this player make the week's only nominations essentially made it so the audience got a free shot at whoever they wanted (though this was nicely mirrored in the subsequent celebrity edition where they were told the nominees were selected by the audience but were actually selected by some players who had been hidden elsewhere in the compound). Whatever the case, this is one twist that should NEVER be repeated.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#9 Big Brother (US): MVP</b></span><br />
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Oh, American <i>Big Brother</i> producers. So consistently abysmal it's a wonder there isn't a drinking game. This time around, the version's big twist was that while the winner of a challenge got to select two nominees as usual, the audience got to select somebody to pick a third nominee. And if you're thinking that doesn't sound so bad and what's the problem isn't this a show where audience interaction is good, I'd agree with you. Except for one minor thing. Three of the previous four seasons featured at least one returning player with a decently-sized fanbase, and while this season didn't, it did feature the sister of a player who has appeared twice on this show and once on <i>The Amazing Race</i>, giving her enough of a head start to sweep the poll every week she was in the house. Producers realised the problem early and made a blatant attempt to fix the issue, by making the audience its own MVP and having them directly pick the third nominee, but they didn't realise that while the former player in question was popular with a sizable part of the audience, they are incredibly divisive and there are just as many people who hate her with the passion of a thousand gurning nuns, allowing those people to automatically nominate the sister every week. The twist was finally scrapped for good when it was realised it was never going to work, but they really should have noticed the incredibly obvious problem beforehand.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#8 Celebrity Big Brother (UK): Rylan Clark's casting</b></span><br />
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Speaking of huge fanbases. What do you get when you put a very popular current singer in a glorified popularity contest with such comparable celebrities as, um, Toadie from Neighbours and a woman who was in a cheesy pop band in the late 1990s? (Nothing against Steps, who were awesome at the time, but COME ON.) It turns out the answer is "a boring season of <i>Celebrity Big Brother</i> in which the only people who don't act like the result is a foregone conclusion and therefore don't try to be entertaining are a pair of obnoxious American imports who probably weren't even aware how the show works". Say what you will about a British show casting the awfulness that is Speidi, but at least they weren't popular enough in the UK for it to matter too much (see also: Heidi "My cousin invented <i>The Bachelor</i>" Fleiss, who finished eleventh out of twelve in 2010). Meanwhile, Rylan is now hosting a <i>Big Brother</i> spinoff discussion show, so I'm sure the result wasn't predetermined at all.<br />
<b><br /><span style="color: yellow;">#7 Masterchef (Australia): Weekly Themes</span></b><br />
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We've all heard the phrase "don't fix what ain't broke" before. And this is one of two cases this year where the end result could be used as evidence in a court of law. In the past, <i>Masterchef Australia</i> has been quite content to experiment with its format while retaining enough familiarity that you could forgive them the occasional misstep. This season, all of that goodwill evaporated within seconds once the preseason commercials using derogatory stereotypes to sell a "battle of the sexes" theme started. It was so bad that it made headlines on major international blogs, with Huffington Post calling it "a new low for sexism" among the cafailcade of criticism. And yet, sadly, that wasn't the biggest problem in the season, nor was the bit where they neglected to mention that the gender divide was only the first of several weekly themes designed to make each week stand out (though certainly they both played a huge role in the season's low ratings). The biggest issue was that the themes selected didn't lend themselves to interesting challenge design, leading to a series of dull and repetitive team challenges followed by gimmicky elimination challenges, which in turn caused the mediocre cooks who would normally have struggled to make it through Top 50 Week (scrapped for this season) to make it far too far into the competition, and which resulted in someone being eliminated despite having the best dish of the day simply because their partner didn't pull their weight. Hell, in the FINAL we had someone end up with a raw chicken dish and attempt to serve it after lightly browning the sides to hide how obviously undercooked it was. And she got an average score of 7/10 for the dish. Unfuckingbelievable.<br />
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Incidentally, if you don't believe me regarding the challenges being gimmicky, these were all actual concepts this year:<br />
<ul>
<li>'Italy's flag is red, white, and green. Cook a dish using only food in one of these colours.'</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>'In pairs, make two identical copies of the same dish while being separated by a wall and unable to see what your partner is doing.'</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>'Our sponsors Qantas fly all over the world. Here are a series of ingredient-laden tables arranged like a map of the world, cook a dish using only ingredients on one "continent".'</li>
</ul>
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<li>'Kids like to play games. Cook a dish using ingredients collected from the pantry while it is pitch black.'</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>'Fast food is fast and all, but actually going to buy it takes too damn long. Cook fried chicken, souvlaki, and a burger with the lot before one of the judges is able to buy it all and come back.'</li>
</ul>
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There is not enough derp in the world, you guys.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#6 The Mole (Australia): Soap Opera Edition</b></span><br />
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Look, I've been there and said it already. Moving on, shall we?<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#5 Dancing with the Stars (Australia): Double Play</b></span><br />
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Even when the <i>Dancing with the Stars</i> casting department takes 'stars' more as a suggestion than as an actual requirement, it's still possible to enjoy and appreciate how the non-stars' dancing ability improves over time. But this season, Channel Seven left it too late to bring the show back, forcing them to schedule the show two nights a week in order to finish the season before the summer non-ratings period kicks in. Not only does this limit our opportunity to watch the non-stars develop over time in that the season is several weeks shorter, but having them lose most of their practice time in the tight schedule also means they genuinely won't improve as much because they're too busy trying to learn several dances each week to get any of them to a decent level. If the situation ever arises again in future - and let's hope to the deity of our choice it doesn't - they need to just have a smaller cast instead. From a show that started so well, it's honestly surprising this isn't the final nail in the coffin.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#4 The Amazing Race (US, Canada): Double Express Pass</b></span><br />
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<i>The Amazing Race</i> was once one of those shows where the focus was entirely on teams' merit rather than luck or how well they interacted with the other teams. Since about season five, however, we've been forced to deal with several similar twists that treat inter-team relations as a key part of the show, while simultaneously losing the part of the show where how teams interact with non-taxi-driving locals affects their performance. In addition, the leg design has now reached a point where everything is spoonfed and all that really matters is how well you do in the various tasks, with the travel elements mostly falling by the wayside. And the tasks themselves are timed to within an inch of their life to boot, with most not featuring much of a chance for players to fall too far ahead or behind. In season seventeen, a new twist was added where the winners of the first leg got an 'Express Pass', which basically allows them the option of skipping any one task they are having trouble with without penalty, simply by forfeiting the pass. It somehow escaped producers' minds when planning this twist that the pass amounted to glorified quitting on a show that's supposed to be about merit, making it feel undeserved whenever it is used (and it has been present in all seven seasons since it was introduced), especially when the season premieres are now traditionally underwhelming in design because WE CAN'T MAKE THEM WORK HARD FOR A MILLION BUCKS. Or something. In both of this year's US seasons, and in the Canadian version which aired in the months in between, an additional twist was added where the winners of the first leg got one Express Pass for themselves and a second they had to give to another team. In short, it is now possible and entirely within the show's rules to quit a task without penalty, without having to do anything to earn it beyond not being a raging asshole in comparison to other teams. Why was this twist even allowed out of the planning phase?<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#3 Survivor (US): Redemption Island + Loved One Switches</b></span><br />
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Four words that strike fear into the heart of every <i>Survivor</i> fan: "Executive Producer Jeff Probst". He's been running the show from the host's chair since season twenty-one a few years ago, and in that time he's seen the show's audience dip from an average of 12.25 million viewers to an average of just 9.6 million. That can't be explained solely by audience fatigue, since the show has been on for nearly fifteen years and ratings were fairly consistent before he took over, which means there has to be something else going on to impact the ratings. In those seasons we've seen an avalanche of failed twists, including but not limited to countering the problems of an 'old versus young' team division by adding a token that allows a team to take an advantage in a challenge, without realising that it becomes pointless once the fit young team gets the advantage, making both teams live on the same beach but dividing them by gender to ensure they remain segregated anyway, and the infamous Redemption Island, where the show's entire pacing was thrown out the window by allowing players who were voted out by their teams to compete in sudden-death challenges to try and win their way back into the game. It turns out all those years of 'fire represents life' were bullshit and 'the tribe has spoken' means nothing if you were wearing invisible headphones, apparently. And this season it's gotten even worse, with players coming into the game with pre-existing relationships with a person on the other team. Now, if you are voted out you can escape Redemption Island immediately by switching teams with your partner and having them take your place. So not only can you (1) get voted out of the game and have it mean absolutely nothing at all, but (2) you can get eliminated from the game without being medevaced or quitting and without getting a single vote against you, if you switch with your partner and lose a challenge. Not surprisingly, but very hilariously, this happened at the first available opportunity to the player Probst was undoubtedly hoping would dominate the season in spite of his not being great at challenges or at the social game. Oh, the irony.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#2 Big Brother (Australia): Strategic Nominations</b></span><br />
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The basic idea of nominations in the Australian version of <i>Big Brother</i> is that you get five points each week, and you have to allocate them to the two people you want to get rid of, and whoever gets the most points will face a public phone vote to determine who is eliminated. Traditionally players have been forced to make these nominations for personality only, but in recent years the option to nominate for strategic reasons has been added, although discussing nominations with other players is still strictly forbidden. This year, one week of nominations was held with players specifically told that they had to nominate for strategic reasons only. Reading between the lines, you can already see the boneheadedness of this decision. If you are a player in this situation the only possible strategy you can have is to nominate the people you believe are popular in the outside world, hoping to eliminate your biggest competition before you end up in a vote against them, and the only way you can guess who is most popular is to pick the people who are most entertaining in the house. In essence, getting about 45 seconds of bored non-surprise from players who don't care that much who goes as long as it isn't them is apparently enough payoff for the small cost of basically forcing the elimination of one one of the most entertaining players in the season. This twist is such a stupid idea that it's frankly not enough to guarantee it will never be used again. The producer responsible for it needs to be fired from the show. Immediately.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>#1 The Biggest Loser (Australia): Trainers Vote</b></span><br />
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Though this final idea is easily the worst of the year, it's also certainly in tight competition to be the single worst production idea in the show's history. Basically, <i>The Biggest Loser</i> is a televised fat camp, and each week the players who lose the lowest percentage of their body weight face a vote with the other players deciding who gets eliminated. Early in this year's Australian season, a twist was introduced where the other teams played no role in the vote and the three personal trainers had to vote instead. Or, at least, that was the plan, until the trainers in question unanimously decided to abstain. It's bad enough when players refuse to go along with wacky twists. But when people who get paid to work on your show refuse? You've got serious problems.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-4151164295058280262013-08-10T20:27:00.000-07:002013-08-10T20:28:45.496-07:00But Wait, There's Mole!Can you believe the current Australian revival of The Mole is somehow managing to find ways of getting worse and worse? Why are we at the point where we need a third big post about what went wrong, when we shouldn't have even needed one? And why do I feel the need to dumb it down to match the show's tone?<br />
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1. How is it this season is so awful when most of the ideas are being taken from the excellent Dutch version of the show? We're not even in 'worst Mole season ever' territory any more. We're coming up on 'worst season of a reality show ever', if not indeed already straddling the fine line between it and 'worst season of a TV show ever'. And we're only about halfway through. I mean, even the tonedeaf BBC intern who picks the British Eurovision entrant is thanking their lucky stars they're not involved.<br />
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2. With eight players left, we've got tall, blonde, dark, and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean all covered (thank YOU, Sam, Erin, Aisha, Nick, Ally, Kerrie, Hillal, and Shaun). But it's raining molls (and Moles), and what we really need right now is a streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds. There's four utterly irredeemable twunts left. Assuming one of the four tolerable players is booted next, because it's been that kind of a season, we have a 63% chance of getting at least two of them in the final three. Those aren't good odds. In fact, we'll even lower our standards. He doesn't have to be a white knight upon a fiery steed, and he doesn't have to be strong, and he doesn't have to be fast, and he doesn't have to be fresh from a fight. And with the success we've had so far, we'd actually kind of prefer if he wasn't larger than life. Is it too late to clone Hillal? I know where we can find a good home once you're done with him.<br />
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3. Eleven episodes in, there are still too many people to even pretend to give a flying fuck about. And it doesn't help that there are still too many assholes hogging all the screentime to make us care about the few redeemable cast members left. One of the basic tenets of reality TV is 'don't cast anyone you wouldn't want to see win'. So who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to have even one player along these lines, let alone SIX?<br />
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4. When you lose over 35% of your audience within the space of a week as a result of having more padding than the Wipeout course, that's a bit of a hint that it's time to get the show back in the edit suite and recut it. Instead, the only noticeable difference in the late night timeslot is the removal of the joining sections between episodes that are now back-to-back. It wouldn't be hard to find unnecessary scenes to cut out. Seriously, cut the flashback rewinds, the endless re-exposition (including the obnoxious graphics reminding us what <strike>jokers</strike> freebies are every time they are mentioned), the self-aggrandising confessionals (SAM), and the 'before/after the break' scenes (yes, thank you, we know what we saw three minutes ago), and you're probably most of the way there already. In related news, challenges that were designed for about ten minutes of airtime? Stop dragging them out into half-hour ordeals, some of which seem to be being shown in slower than real-time pace. They become less 'psychological pressure cooker' and more 'psychosomatic slow cooker'.<br />
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5. 'But aren't the confessionals like the meat in the sandwich?' No. The challenges are the meat in the sandwich, and with the amount of recycling this season it's probably more like Spam than actual meat at this point. The confessionals? You don't win friends with salad.<br />
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6. When you don't air an episode of the show in some markets due to a live program's overrun earlier in the night, and when it's a show perfect for encouraging online conversation (and when direct prompts to do so are added into the show), it's probably a good idea to treat those viewers with respect. As opposed to, say, not announcing the episode's replacement with a repeat of Criminal Minds on air when the episode was supposed to begin, not changing the electronic program guide listings until ten minutes after the show was scheduled to begin, not putting the episode on the show's website for affected viewers to catch up on, and removing the show from both the dropdown search menu and the A-to-Z program list on the network's website. Not that this show would do that, of course.<br />
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7. For a show that's been advertising a maximum prize of $250,000 every episode, it's worth noting that we're already at $259,500. And I'm not counting the three challenges with open-ended prizes, or the one where the total possible prize isn't calculable, or the one where the maximum prize depended on the previous challenge. With half the season still to come, it's flagrant false advertising. And if the actual kitty is going to wind up at about that value, it's going to make the Mole look like they did absolutely nothing to sabotage the team.<br />
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8. Even then, whoever has been picked as the Mole has done a terrible job. After the first week, I wrote a post detailing the reasons why Shaun was the Mole. And he's still a huge suspect - he's somehow managed to find himself in the ideal position for the Mole in most challenges AND has tried to sabotage almost every challenge in every possible way from his position (both subtly and blatantly) - but... it's too easy if it's him. On the other hand, if it's not him we'll be in the same situation as in 2005 where the Mole did very little and nearly a decade later people are still swearing they weren't actually the Mole at all and Seven fucked up when they revealed it. Which would not be surprising at this point.<br />
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9. As Shura's terrible scripting and inability to adlib stated way back in Episode 3, 'every advantage must be defended'. Unless, of course, they are <strike>jokers</strike> freebies. Or if you are Erin. Seriously, if you're going to make a big deal about Kerrie having to 'defend' her first-test free pass (in a challenge clearly not designed for either defending a free pass or for being used at that point in the game, the latter being another recurring issue that makes it look like producers have been throwing darts at printouts of the <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/mole-brief-obsessive-challenge-guide.html" target="_blank">Mole challenge guide</a> when selecting the season's challenges), then make sure you follow your own damn continuity.<br />
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10. Likewise, if you're going to go to the effort of providing graphical explanations for most challenges, spend a few extra minutes and make sure they're accurate. There have been so many errors so far this season it's ridiculous. In Episode 4 alone, for example, the H was missing from the value chart graphic for the jetboat challenge and three separate iconic Melbourne locations were mismarked on the map graphics in the subsequent navigation challenge, one of them by over four city blocks. Also, nobody buys that Shura is watching the challenges happen in real-time on his product-placed tablet.<br />
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11. Allow me to explain rudimentary supply and demand, as taught to most Australians in high school. If there's a limited amount of something important, its value is greater and people are willing to do more in order to get it. If this same item is ubiquitous, its value is lesser and nobody cares about the implications of having it, because they know they can get more. Or, in game terms, if you want <strike>jokers</strike> freebies to have any impact at all beyond being used immediately and making each and every elimination a total crapshoot, defeating the entire concept of the show, STOP GIVING AWAY SO DAMN MANY OF THEM. (For context, since they were introduced in the Dutch version in 2006, there's usually only been two chances to win them during the season, and in most cases designed so that each player is only able to win about three at a time. So far this season, they've been available five times, and in the best possible scenario a player could currently be holding onto nineteen.)Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-18777604756866168162013-07-24T16:39:00.000-07:002013-07-24T16:39:38.607-07:00A Tout le MoleRemember how a couple of weeks ago <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/mo-money-mole-problems.html" target="_blank">I wrote a post</a> detailing all the things that would conspire to make the relaunched, reformatted Australian version of The Mole a complete and utter catastrofail? And then how I was proven entirely correct when it was dumped in a late-night timeslot, like, almost exactly a week later? Well, as the season limps on, it seems I was perhaps being too generous with my critique. Believe it or not, The Mole keeps getting worse and worse, to the point where it's beginning to look a lot like another 'Tom Williams plus live eliminations!' season might have actually been preferable. I know. I KNOW.<br /><br />Spoilers ahead, in every sense of the word - discussion of the season to date, discussion of the season result thanks to incompetence on the part of people who really should be smart enough to know better, discussion of the future of the show Seven replaced with this mess, minor discussion of upcoming Aussie reality shows on other channels - and all the faults are now so intertwined I'm not going to split them up this time. Also, swearing. And Soylent Green may or may not be people.<br /><br />The most obvious issue is the pacing. It was one thing when the season premiere basically had a grand total of one-and-one-third challenges in it, but it really doesn't seem to have improved by enough. Take the most recent double episode, for example. Though each episode in the original 7:30 timeslot was extended by fifteen minutes to fit more commercials, the individual episodes are back to their usual one-hour pace in the 9:30 slot. So how was it that, with five full challenges, an elimination, fewer commercials, and a total of thirty minutes less airtime, the episodes still dragged on unbearably? I... literally do not even know how they managed to do it.<br /><br />While this show may also be a casualty in the apparent desire for fatally sluggish television, I'm starting to think there may be another victim: The Amazing Race Australia. You see, the reason we have this show instead of that is because it was too expensive to produce a show on that scale for the ratings it was getting. But instead of, say, putting it in a decent timeslot and advertising it effectively, Channel Seven apparently decided to investigate the cost-effectiveness of making a stripped (nightly) version of the show to get more episodes for the same amount of money. Of course, if you're going to attempt it with a reasonable chance of failure, it makes more sense to potentially ruin a lower-budget show in your guinea pig scenario instead of forking out the extra money for another race and have it fail just as miserably, essentially destroying the potential of two shows (both the local race and the American one) in the process. My thought right now is that a third Amazing Race Australia is only going to happen if Seven fail to learn from their litany of errors here and strip the show regardless of what happened with The Mole: Soap Opera Edition. And that's not going to happen, especially since advertisers (most notably the Nova radio stations, who had tie-in competitions promoted through onscreen graphics) seem to be pulling out of The Mole left, right, and centre.<br /><br />Of course, one of the things Seven could have done effectively even with the show as it is would be to prevent the results from being leaked. And they didn't. Sure, the Mole was never going to go undetected for the entire season - not least of all because they clearly chose Shaun, who had as much chance of going undetected as the rotting corpse of Marcel Marceau has of winning next year's Eurovision Song Contest - but managing your show's website to prevent spoilers is a basic thing, and yet you can tell that Nick is the winner. How? Each player has two headshots uploaded to the website, one normal one to show they are still competing and a shaded one (in the background, ready to be switched over as needed) to show their elimination... except Nick, who only has the normal one. Ergo, he is the last player standing -- and for the record, we already know he believes Shaun is the Mole, since he gave Shaun the two jokers he was forced to give away in order to remove them from the game (explaining it to us with this exact reasoning).<br /><br />But you know what? I don't care that Nick is the winner. I don't care that Shaun is the Mole. I don't even care which of the other players joins them in the final three. Which, frankly, is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Counting the extra time added to the first seven 'hours' of the season, this show has already been on for longer than any of the other five previous seasons, and I still don't give a shit about any of the players. Why not? My only possible theory is the casting people were so obsessed with the Culture Clash bullshit that they forgot to check the people they cast (1) were actually enjoyable to watch and (2) had any awareness of how the game works. I mean, take out the people who have proven themselves to be insufferable assholes (all the men minus Hillal, plus Ally) and the people so dull you forget they even exist until they turn up in a clearly scripted confessional (Hillal, the woman who kinds of looked like Jan but wasn't nearly as fun, the blonde one, and Q-Bert), and you're already down to three, one of whom didn't last long enough to judge. And is anyone really that invested in Kerrie or Aisha to stick around, especially since they were two of the main people the editors were trying to get us to hate early on?<br /><br />Shura, by the way, continues to be lovely - and confirmed the 'prominent, highly-respected Australian celebrity' he introduced a pixellated portrait of himself with was intended as mildly sarcastic, which earns him ten extra points for Hufflepuff (because you just know he is) - but dude is still not working in terms of hosting this show. I'm not sure how much of it is that he's uncomfortable in the role, which is unlikely given it isn't his first time as a game show host, and how much of it is that the scripting is so bad not even Grant Bowler could make it sound natural, but it's gotten to the point where I'm muting the show whenever he starts talking. And I really don't want to be forced to do that. But here we are.<br /><br />You'll note that up above I used the term 'jokers' instead of 'freebies', and not just in protest at how stupid the latter sounds. In many ways, that little, seemingly insignificant change is the epitome of this revival's flaws. You see, the producers have been so inspired by the long-running Dutch version of The Mole that they've basically gone and copied the entire thing. Most of this season's challenges (pretty much all of the ones that might have had some promise if handled competently) have come from there, as has the concept of the jokers/freebies, the pointless addition of the team selecting a treasurer to look after prop banknotes representing the kitty, and the decision to give each player a journal to track their suspects. Pretty much if they'd copied any more, Seven might as well have hired the people at SBS to put subtitles on the Dutch episodes and aired them instead. But would they have needed to? You see, at the time the producers would have been planning this season, there were four seasons of the Dutch version <a href="http://www.youtube.com/thatdarkspark" target="_blank">uploaded to Youtube with English subtitles</a> (this year's Dutch season has since joined them). Out of the nineteen challenges we've had so far, all but three are adapted forms of challenges from these four specific seasons. Coincidence? I doubt it, especially when the four seasons in question aren't chronological.<br /><br />There are several issues here: Firstly, recycling challenges and expecting people not to realise. Aside from being condescending and insulting to the audience, in this instance it's fair to assume that if they were able to find the subtitled seasons others also were. (Indeed, I did. Two years ago, back when only two seasons had been done.) This is the same reason I'm frustrated with Channel Nine's apparent decision to use a twist for this year's Big Brother that was already oldhat internationally TEN YEARS AGO. Secondly, recycling challenges and making them worse. If you're going to go to the effort of claiming credit for someone else's idea, at least make sure you're doing it properly. Among the other blunders, adding pointless binary decision after pointless binary decision - the shortcut envelopes in the opening challenge, the champagne tower in the sandbag challenge, having to choose one Scattergories category from each of two pairs instead of picking any two from the full list, the offer to wager a set amount of money on an increased prize in a quiz challenge and so on - to recycled challenges to make them seem more inventive just makes you look like idiots who don't understand the potential of this show. Thirdly, recycling challenges that didn't work the first time. There was absolutely no reason to recycle the opening hiking challenge, or to adapt the challenge that became Keys to Comfort, or the kite treasure hunt, especially since all of them were made worse when adapted. Next, recycling challenges that worked the first time, but completely ignoring what made them work. Even with the slow pace, why on EARTH would you save a challenge that's all about exposing the group's burgeoning alliances and their fear of being the first player eliminated (Path to Temptation, the game in the State Library with the boxes) until the tenth challenge of the season, when two players have already been booted? For that matter, why would you take a challenge designed to exploit the group getting to the point where they are narrowing down their Mole suspect (Chain Gang) and put it before the first elimination? As another example, I know I pointed out the season starting with three Walk Over There challenges in the first critique, but since then we've found ourselves having to endure what were essentially five quiz challenges in a row, with the pixellated images, aerobatic tricks, location distances, a 'how many fingers am I holding up?' game, and a giant spot the difference puzzle. Because you know what makes television seem fast-paced? Q and A.<br /><br />And then the two original challenges we've seen so far (the third of the challenges not taken from the subtitled Dutch seasons was taken from another Dutch season) have been among the worst challenges to have ever existed on The Mole. <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/mole-brief-obsessive-challenge-guide.html" target="_blank">And I should know</a>. The first was basically another Walk Over There challenge with players rolling a ball down portable gutters for an hour, except half of them aren't doing anything at all, except they can break the minimal rules as much as they want as long as someone calls them out on it. Believe it or not, that was basically the entire challenge. Still, at least it offered the opportunity for subtle sabotage. The second, on the other hand, had no such hook. It was literally 'ride a zipline and hit pinatas with prizes on them', with the only additional rules being blatant stopgap measures to stop players from smashing everything on the way down - only the first pinata broken by a player counted, and individual prizes awarded were given to the player on the randomly-selected baseball bat used. It was even more terrible than I'm making it sound.<br /><br />It's not as if we can't come up with decent ideas in this country - the infamous PYRO timebomb challenge in season two of this show was original, as was Big Brother's 'ignore the obvious' challenge, and even fucking Australian Survivor is responsible for the American version's glut of 'obstacle course with puzzle at the end' challenges - so to see show after show after show resort to recycling things from overseas simply because of sheer laziness and inability to even want to try anything new is, frankly, offensive and ridiculous. There's absolutely no reason Australia can't be a world leader in terms of quality. If you hire the right people, yes, you might still get an occasional failure like the gutter challenge, but you'll also stand a much better chance of having a high-quality product that can help recoup the costs of making the thing when sold to other countries. Do a show properly, you get Masterchef. Do a show poorly, you get The Mole. Shouldn't be too hard to realise, should it?Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-52716055735917430192013-07-16T19:48:00.003-07:002013-07-16T22:57:42.154-07:00Guiding the GuideI've done <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com/2012/05/mole-brief-obsessive-challenge-guide.html" target="_blank">The Mole</a>. I've done <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-crystal-maze-brief-obsessive-guide.html" target="_blank">The Crystal Maze</a>. I've even done Survivor <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com/2013/01/survivor-brief-obsessive-challenge.html" target="_blank">twice</a>. All with different formats. And pretty much every time I even open a draft of a challenge guide now, I find myself hating the format and wanting to rearrange everything to make it easier for my readers to follow. So I thought I'd go directly to the source and ask you how YOU want future guides to be presented. I've come up with a shortlist of alternatives for each of five important elements, each with pros and cons listed, and I'd like your input. Just comment on this post and I'll take your thoughts into consideration as I update the existing guides and continue to write guides for even more shows. (Obviously, if you can take the time to explain said thoughts that would be even better, but... eh, I'm not picky.)<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>I. PRESENTATION OF CHALLENGES</b></span><br />
<br />
Option 1: Shorthand text.<br />
Pros: Short paragraphs. <br />
Cons: Important details may be lost. Nobody can rant concisely.<br />
<br />
Option 2: Full, text-based paragraphs.<br />
Pros: Detailed coverage.<br />
Cons: Possible TL;DR-ness for more complex challenges.<br />
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Option 3: Text, divided into appropriate sections (eg Rules, Prize, Commentary) as needed.<br />
Pros: Easy to vary as needed for different shows, easy to search for necessary information.<br />
Cons: Disjointed read.<br />
<br />
Option 4: Simple table - title on the left, details on the right.<br />
Pros: Quicker to scan down the titles to find particular challenges.<br />
Cons: Same problems as using any of the above text approaches. Not all titles will be official. Why not just use Control-F?<br />
<br />
Option 5: Table, divided into appropriate sections (eg Rules, Prize, Commentary) as needed.<br />
Pros: Easy to search.<br />
Cons: Will be too wide for portrait (normal) A4 presentation, and table cells will be too tall to fit more than a couple on a landscape page, making printing pages impractical. Tough to vary for different shows without changing appearance.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>II. PRESENTATION OF REUSED CHALLENGES</b></span><br />
<br />
Option 1: Copy-paste descriptions.<br />
Pros: Saves searching. Easy to adapt for minor variations.<br />
Cons: Tedious. Increases file size.<br />
<br />
Option 2: Cross-referencing.<br />
Pros: Short, reduces file size.<br />
Cons: Pain in the ass when used frequently. Pain in the ass when challenges have very minor, near pointless variations (especially when the variant is then reused).<br />
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<b><span style="color: yellow;">III. PRESENTATION OF TWISTS</span></b><br />
<br />
Option 1: All twists treated as challenges and listed when they occur.<br />
Pros: Listed when needed. Same format.<br />
Cons: Repeated twists, for example Amazing Race non-eliminations. No differentiation.<br />
<br />
Option 2: Alternate colour, but listed when they occur.<br />
Pros: Easy to tell them apart from challenges.<br />
Cons: Eyesore. Repeated twists.<br />
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Option 3: Separate table, at the start of the relevant season.<br />
Pros: Simple.<br />
Cons: Non-chronological. Twists returning from former/international seasons - ignored or included?<br />
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Option 4: Paragraph, at the start of the relevant season.<br />
Pros: Simple. Easy to counter returning twists.<br />
Cons: Multiple twists, returning or otherwise, could get confusing.<br />
<br />
Option 5: Only challenge-esque twists included, listed as challenges.<br />
Pros: Avoids repetition.<br />
Cons: Some major elements, for example Survivor's hidden Immunity Idols, will be ignored.<br />
<br />
Option 6: All twists for a show listed before the first version.<br />
Pros: Easy reference.<br />
Cons: Tough to follow. What if a twist is directly tied to a challenge?<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>IV. SPOILERS</b></span><br />
<br />
Option 1: Ignore spoilers at all cost.<br />
Pros: No spoilers.<br />
Cons: Will make some challenges and twists nigh on impossible to describe accurately.<br />
<br />
Option 2: Puzzle solutions etc only, regular text.<br />
Pros: Still no result spoilers.<br />
Cons: Readers lose ability to try and solve puzzle themselves. Knowledge of season results often needed for Idol et al song selections and quiz challenge questions and answers.<br />
<br />
Option 3: Puzzle solutions and quiz questions/answers only, coded text.<br />
Pros: No result spoilers. Allows readers to try and solve puzzle.<br />
Cons: Text-based solutions are usually wordy and decoding them could take more time than simply figuring out the puzzle on your own.<br />
<br />
Option 4: If they come up, they come up.<br />
Pros: Makes accurately describing challenges and twists much easier.<br />
Cons: Constant risk of spoilers.<br />
<br />
Option 5: Spoil everything, regular text.<br />
Pros: Complete coverage.<br />
Cons: Someone WILL skip past spoiler warnings and STILL complain.<br />
<br />
Option 6: Spoil everything, coded text.<br />
Pros: Complete coverage for those who want it.<br />
Cons: Who would decode a result spoiler?<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>V. SORTING</b></span><br />
<br />
Option 1: By country, alphabetically, then by season.<br />
Pros: Easy to navigate to particular seasons.<br />
Cons: Impractical for regional versions, co-productions, and shows with recurring challenges. US versions usually original and/or most copied but often last alphabetically.<br />
<br />
Option 2: By country, chronologically by debut, then by season.<br />
Pros: General chronology.<br />
Cons: Essentially pointless unless each version only lasts for a single season. Hard to scan back and forth between versions - no logical order unless you know a show's history. Can't skip seasons with not enough available information.<br />
<br />
Option 3: By country, US first then alphabetically, then by season.<br />
Pros: Many readers looking only for US information.<br />
Cons: Seems random if US version wasn't the original.<br />
<br />
Option 4: By country, original country first then alphabetically, then by season.<br />
Pros: A nod to the origin of a show.<br />
Cons: Deviation from standard order could be confusing.<br />
<br />
Option 5: Individual seasons listed chronologically by debut.<br />
Pros: Tracks the history and development of a show - surely should be included in a detailed guide?<br />
Cons: Tough to find particular seasons, or to read only sections for a single version.<br />
<br />
Option 6: Categorised, for example 'Obstacle Courses' and 'Local Delicacy' challenges.<br />
Pros: Easy to find similar challenges.<br />
Cons: Amazing Race Detours, and other tasks that fit into two categories. Tasks so unique they don't fit anywhere. Tough to find exact challenges.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-49645516867756958162013-07-07T17:42:00.001-07:002013-07-07T17:48:40.001-07:00Colonel Bastard in the Library with the Re-Mole-verFirst things first: <a href="http://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/week1.pdf" target="_blank">Recap of and commentary on Week 1's challenges</a>. (Orange boxes mark challenges recycled from other versions, with the original episodes listed beneath the titles, which are bolded if official. NL = Netherlands.) (As a sidenote, while recycling ideas from foreign versions is good in moderation, I'd rather go and watch the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/thatdarkspark" target="_blank">fan-subtitled original Dutch seasons most of these challenges are taken from on Youtube</a> than sit through a vastly inferior copy.)<br />
<br />
Look, first I wasn't originally planning to share my thoughts at all outside of the usual internet forums and such. Then, after being convinced by <a href="http://www.molkstvtalk.com/" target="_blank">Steve Molk</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MolksTVTalk" target="_blank">whatever Twitter nickname he's using today</a>, I considered doing a weekly wrap. But then after sitting down to write it, I realised that there's no point when there's really no tension at all in the hunt. And also, there's no point writing a weekly wrap when, if the show's ratings get almost literally any worse (they're down 25% within two days), the show is likely to be cancelled by the end of the week. But in the meantime, it's Shaun. Consider the following:<br />
<br />
<b>1.</b> In the opening hiking challenge, he is the first to realise the instructions don't tell them they have to bring their suitcases with them. He justifies this to the rest of his team with a slip of the tongue, saying with absolute certainty "We're not gonna get penalised for leaving our luggage here", despite having been given no indication at that point that there were any penalties of any kind. At the end of the challenge, his team and another team are penalised a total of $800 for leaving their eight suitcases behind. Whether this slip was intended as the standard 'blatant first episode clue' remains to be seen, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it was.<br />
<br />
<b>2.</b> His team is the only one of the three teams to open their shortcut envelope, taking a rescue car to the challenge's finish line but being fined $5000 in the process. The two girls in the four-person group are hesitant to even consider the shortcut, but his slow walking throughout the start of the challenge is apparently a major contributor to Alex misjudging the passage of time and agreeing to taking the shortcut. (He also attempts to walk in the wrong direction, wasting more time, but is immediately corrected by his team.)<br />
<br />
<b>3.</b> He goes first in the high-wire relay challenge, and succeeds. It doesn't sound like a sabotage when you look at it on its own, but as part of the larger picture - where if a pair fails their attempt, the money won so far during the challenge resets to zero - it means that when a pair fails, which was bound to happen either accidentally or by someone deliberately pretending to be the Mole, the amount of prize money is cut from $16,000 to a maximum of $4000. You look good, and yet you still manage to win nothing. (His crossing was negated by the very next pair.)<br />
<br />
<b>4.</b> In the 'Money Bags' challenge, which involved groups of six players using an assortment of supplies to transport up to twenty sandbags along a trail from opposite directions to meet each other, he creates a simple carrier that is inefficient (only carrying three sandbags) and just plain didn't work (Aisha is later seen carrying the two component poles with no sandbags attached). The design is part of the reason twelve sandbags - worth a total of $1200 - are left behind.<br />
<br />
<b>5.</b> In the same challenge, having been told that "there's more money up for grabs today than there has been at any time in the game so far", he wastes time arguing about stopping at the $10,000 bonus flag, which if the two groups were to meet would have been added to the value of their sandbags for a total of at most $14,000. The problem? Both prior challenges were worth more. (He may have known the other group had a chance to swap their sandbags for a $10,000 pyramid of champagne glasses, but the rest of his group didn't, and they have no reason to stop.) Had they stopped, the challenge would have failed and they wouldn't have won $10,800.<br />
<br />
<b>6.</b> When searching a disused fortress for keys in the first part of a challenge, he is the only player to find more than one. After the search is complete, it is revealed that there was nothing to be gained from finding keys, but that with more keys found, there is more chance for money from the kitty to be spent on camping gear for the night. One of his keys is not used, but the other opens a $1000 crate representing dinner and dessert even though a $100 crate of survival rations had already been opened. (He is also notably the only person supporting Nick's decision to open a $750 crate containing sleeping mats without consulting the group, despite $500 having already been spent on tents.)<br />
<br />
<b>7.</b> In a challenge the following day designed to give players a chance to recoup their losses from the previous night, he puts himself in the 'puzzle solver' group that determines the result of the challenge, then does not contribute when his group faces their part of the challenge. (Unlike past instances where players are categorised and split, there doesn't appear to be a set number of puzzle solvers, meaning the Mole was always going to wind up in the group.) Despite this, his group is successful and the money is won, although approximately half is removed because the other group allegedly failed to complete their part of the challenge (which would have made the second half impossible, not that anyone analyzes this show or anything).<br />
<br />
<b>8.</b> The only way to sabotage the final challenge of the week is to take an exemption and condemn yourself and other players to spending the night chained up outside. The challenge was passed, suggesting the Mole was one of the earlier players to forgo the exemption and unchain themselves - if they take the exemption early it's too suspicious, if they take it near the end, it's almost understandable. Shaun was second person chosen to make a selection.<br />
<br />
<b>9.</b> The other players are clearly almost all expecting another 'under the radar' Mole based on the approaches taken by the previous five. It seems plausible that, expecting this, producers chose the most brash, opinionated player of the bunch as a way of making the game less predictable. It seems obvious that Shaun would have fallen onto everyone's radar almost instantly (both with the first challenge and with his general belligerence), but how many of them would have kept him there rather than discounting him as too over-the-top to be the Mole based on what they know? (If you're wondering, by the way, only Shaun, Kerrie, and Alex have lost more money than they gained over the first week, and the latter two haven't lost anything since the first episode.)<br />
<br />
So, basically, I'm ready to call it. After one week. Should I be ready? No. Alaina got to the final episode before any of her opponents even suspected her. I've watched seasons and not been able to rule out any of the final three before. And in the thirty-odd past Mole seasons I've seen, my ability to correctly pick the Mole after one week is currently working out to be three times less accurate than random guessing among the average ten-person cast. (I wish I was joking.) But what is making it so easy? Even I'm not entirely sure. Is it because of the three episodes a week thing, and the editors' need to fill time by focusing on every minor attempted sabotage as though it's a big deal, making it less "Are you sure you didn't imagine that?" and more "HOW ABOUT NOW? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME NEON LIGHTS IN THE SHAPE OF AN ARROW TO POINT IT OUT? MAYBE A CHORUS LINE OF TWINKS IN ASSLESS ONESIES?"? Is it because the other players are all completely inept at being inept and suck at the metagame, despite all of their bluster about how pretending to be the Mole is such a smart strategy? Is it because the Mole they've chosen doesn't appear to understand the power of subtlety, and is even easier to find than Petrina was? Honestly, all of the above are probably true to some degree. But I do know two things about this choice: While it seems the 'Culture Clash' edict has been fulfilled as many expected by hiring an obnoxious white bogan as the Mole, it really shouldn't be this damn obvious. And I really shouldn't feel this annoyed by the concept of having to spend the entire season with Shaun on my screen. Or feel that the entire season is bound to be ruined by the dumbest player in this show's history making it to the final by answering the elimination tests based on a personal grudge in lieu of actual evidence. And yet I do.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-49481060604411997902013-07-02T22:08:00.002-07:002013-07-03T21:40:12.893-07:00Mo' Money, Mole Problems<i>Edited July 4, 2013 to fix typos and finish off a paragraph I'd somehow left dangling.</i> <br />
<br />
So, The Mole is back. And even though the last season way back in 2005 pretty much all but smeared the show's reputation with its own excrement, there was still a loyal fanbase with high expectations for this. Did it meet those expectations? In short, no. Not really. As in, grab a plunger and some heavy-duty gloves. But how on earth have they managed to fuck up a show that should be impossible to fuck up... for the third time? And how have they managed to do it so completely?<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><b>Promotion</b></span><br /><br />The attempts to advertise and promote this show have all been abysmal failures. From being announced as "The Mole: Culture Clash" and dropping the title almost immediately after it was criticised as suggesting deliberate "Racism, yay!" undertones (and it will hopefully not come as a surprise that I'll be discussing that in more detail later), to the official website making a point of how the long-running Dutch version films in a different country each year even though it makes Seven look cheap by filming this season domestically, to not even revealing the show's airdate until eight days out and then doing so through a random tweet from new host Shura Taft, to then not adding the timeslot to the commercials themselves and adding a tag at the end as an afterthought... frankly, it's a wonder anybody watched at all.<br /><br />And then there's the "Coming Soon!" commercial. Appearing on screens since the Australian Open tennis tournament in late January, despite Seven knowing the show wouldn't air for months, the jawdroppingly stupid slapstick commercials only served to alienate those who remembered and appreciated the tone the good seasons of the old version had, and somehow managed to simultaneously be too light-hearted and too mean-spirited. It's quite astonishing, really. But what's more surprising is that they weren't shot down in the pre-production phase, given it's about as representative as advertising Lost with clips from Gilligan's Island and expecting people not to care because hey, tropical island.<br /><br />By the way, speaking of Shura, Twitter, and promotion? I've discussed the promo failures on Twitter a few times, and on at least two occasions he's replied to tell me, basically, that I wouldn't be complaining if I'd seen the show itself. But... shouldn't a better job have been done advertising the damn show in the first place, so it wouldn't even have become an issue? He also responded to a direct criticism of the comedic tone, saying the Mole takes their job very seriously. Which'd be great, if it didn't miss the point entirely. It's not the Mole I'm worried about, it's The Mole I'm worried about. (Again, more Shura later.)<br /><br /><b><span style="color: yellow;">Scheduling, Pacing, and Editing</span></b><br /><br />Can we please get away from the misguided idea that running a show multiple nights a week, when it's not a show that suits such a format, is in any way preferable? Or did we learn absolutely NOTHING from the runaway success that was Celebrity Splash? Because The Mole is definitely a show that needs to be on only one night a week. This is a show where you really need to sit down and focus, and honestly, people have better things to do. The Block sucks, but it rates fairly well as a stripped show because it's mindless entertainment where you don't have to pay too much attention. This... is not mindless entertainment, and any more than one episode a week is just overkill. It's not like there's a valid reason to saturate the schedule with a show that works infinitely better in small doses - and there's evidence of this in several countries where The Amazing Race (tonally a very close analog to The Mole) is aired multiple times a week. It just. Doesn't. WORK.<br /><br />But all that could have been said before the show began. Watching the first episode, it gets even worse. You see, because Seven have decided to have so many episodes, it means what would normally have been shown within the space of a single one-hour episode now apparently takes three. And each episode is also fifteen minutes longer. Because nothing says "stressful situation" like filler. Repetitive filler. If you're going to explain the basic format of the show over the opening credits, you don't need to explain the Mole's function over and over again during the show. We get it already, and it's condescending. Quit it.<br /><br />Consider this: The first challenge of the season was taken from the 2012 Dutch season, where it was considerably more difficult (players travelled individually and weren't told which direction to travel, only to get to the landmark in the photo) and was tedious after five minutes, let alone the twenty minutes it was shown for in its episode. Here, a much easier version of the challenge was shown for almost an entire hour. Why? No freaking clue. You want the show to be event television, with plenty of time to develop your cast? Show a slightly longer episode - either ninety minutes or two full hours - once a week. Best of both worlds.<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><b>Challenge Design</b></span><br /><br />It probably sounds a bit early to be criticising this, having only seen one-and-a-half challenges, but five have been revealed in one format or another. Three of them - the opening hiking challenge, the sandbag challenge seen in the preview for tonight's episode, and a signalling challenge listed on the TV guides for next Tuesday - are adapted from the Dutch version, meaning I'm familiar enough with them from my work on the challenge guide to know whether they will work or not, while a fourth also sounds like it's a less direct adaptation of a Dutch challenge, and the fifth is one of the ones we've seen already. And, honestly, it's a remarkably underwhelming bunch.<br /><br />When you're trying to have a big beginning to your show, you don't start with a challenge that at its heart is just 'walk over there, carrying this'. You certainly shouldn't ever do it for the first three challenges in a row. And yet it seems they have. For the first challenge, it's "walk in this direction with your suitcases". In the second, it's "walk across a tightrope while transferring a baton in a relay". In the third, it's "walk along a marked path while carrying a makeshift stretcher loaded with sandbags". Even in one of the remaining two, the challenge appears to (in part) be "walk through a cave, carrying keys found along the way". It's ridiculous. It's not as if these challenges are so kickass that it can be overlooked. Hell, they don't even require twelve people - the suitcase and sandbag challenges weren't originally designed for twelve people (the suitcase one was for ten, the sandbag stretchers for eight), and you can easily cut one pair out of the tightrope challenge and do it with ten.<br /><br />Also, let me just leave you with this: If players had to transfer the relay baton over to each other while on the tightrope, then pass each other to finish their respective journeys, doesn't that mean the baton travels back to where it began, defeating the entire purpose of the challenge?<br /><b><br /><span style="color: yellow;">Casting (Both the Contestants and the Host)</span></b><br /><br />As much as the above issues irritate, they could have been mitigated somewhat if the cast was enjoyable enough to overcome them. But they're not. Not by a long shot. In fact, between those who are utterly unpleasant and those who are merely boring beyond belief I can't honestly say I'm looking forward to watching any of these people again tonight. And the sad thing is this was set in stone even before the audition phase, with the bizarre decision to subtitle the season 'Culture Clash' - a hint many took to mean 'a couple of token minorities and a bunch of white people to tell them to go back to where they came from'.<br /><br />To be fair, this tagline was scrapped in record time after the astoundingly negative reaction (which speaks well of Australia, but not of the people who thought it was a good idea to begin with), but it seems as though the people responsible for actually casting the show didn't get the memo. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having fewer straight white bogans on Australian reality shows - it's among the largest of the many things that killed Big Brother the first time around - but if you're going to do so you have to have the right context. And I feel like it wouldn't be too hyperbolic of me to say that doing so on a show all about fostering suspicion and distrust, with the planned subtitle mentioned above, on the same network that shows Border Security and Today Tonight, and which insists on casting the same 'Camp Gay' and 'Bitchy Asian Girls' stereotypes on My Kitchen Rules every season is about even with "Pauline Hanson campaign fundraiser" in terms of being the right context. (In related news: Four Queenslanders in this twelve-person cast. All white, all having some variation of "I tell it like it is, that's just who I am, fuck you if you think that makes me an obnoxious asshole" in their media kit bio.) In this case, either you're enforcing a negative stereotype about a minority contestant by making them the designated villain, or you're making it look like a white player has been hired to stop a minority player from profiting. Neither is a good look for the show or for Seven.<br /><br />Just doing it (without being forced by a negative reaction to how white the previous season's cast was, as was the case with The Amazing Race Australia) and not even trying to make a big deal about it would be a start - compare the reception given to Big Brother 2008 (which got the show cancelled) and Masterchef 2010 (where more than a quarter of the country watched the finale). For an international perspective, compare the preliminary reactions given to Survivor: Cook Islands (twenty players initially divided into four teams by race) and The Amazing Race 10 (which featured among its twelve teams a gay couple, a lesbian, black single mothers, two non-Arabic Islamic guys, Korean brothers, an Indian couple, and an amputee). Casting a minority just so you can say you did - which based on the subtitle was evidently the case here - is just as closed-minded as deliberately not casting any minorities. It's like that person in everyone's life who thinks "I can't be racist, my boyfriend's sister's fiance's cousin is black!" Do you really want to be that person, show?<br /><br />One of the things this show used to do so well was its casting. Yes, you got the requisite pretty people, but you also got a bunch of normal, unremarkable people who (while not always likable) were far more interesting. To be simplistic for a second, the casting comes across a bit like they were asked to consider what made the first season so great and came up with, "Josephine". Where are the Jans? The Lindas? The Patricks? The Beverleys? Even in later seasons, we had Brooke, Hal, Mal, Fiona, John, Helen, Marc, Bob, Ann-Maree, David, Thao, Kris, Josh, Greg, Stace, Craig, Liane, Mark, Brett, and Sonya. Not necessarily all nice people, but I get the feeling none of them would have gotten past the first stage of the audition - even with Thao, the only non-Caucasian contestant in the first five seasons, they'd probably be like "Law student? Sorry, we have two of them already. Try again next year."<br /><br />Finally, there's the host. Through Twitter and his past television work, Shura Taft comes across as a genuinely nice, cool guy. And that's a huge part of the problem. Being nice and trying to be the players' friend doesn't work on The Mole (as proven with Tom Williams's spectacular flame-out), and Shura isn't good at not being nice. Though wooden at times, he's at least conscious enough of the format not to try buddying up to the contestant, but finding the right tone for hosting on this show is a tough balancing act, and at times he comes across (intentionally or otherwise) as a smug dick. Smug works in small doses, but even then you've got to have the gravitas required to pull it off. Grant Bowler absolutely had it. So did Anderson Cooper in the US version, and Glenn Hugill in the British version, and Karel van de Graaf in the Dutch version. Shura? Not so much. Time will tell, and it may just be a nervous start, but between the seasons covered in the challenge guide and those watched since, I've been exposed to a total of sixteen hosts over eight countries, and without quick improvement Shura will be firmly inside the bottom three.<br /><br /><span style="color: yellow;"><b>In Summary</b></span><br /><br />Should have been an easy sell. Should have been fast and exciting, dragging viewers along for the ride. Should have had great, inventive challenges. Should have had a cast you can root for in their fight against the Mole. Should have had a host who felt like a natural fit. On all five counts, Seven and the producers dropped the ball. And all the impressive visuals and stylish graphics in the world can't save a show that's been that much of a misfire. The problem with this show is that either (1) it becomes a runaway success and they think there's no reason to bother changing anything, or (2) it doesn't do as well as Seven hoped and they axe it again, this time for good. And neither of those options is what this show deserves. This show deserves better. If the quality of what we've seen so far is any indication, I feel entirely justified in saying I could do better. I shouldn't. But really. I could do better.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-45183149121035778672013-06-06T00:17:00.001-07:002013-06-06T00:17:28.273-07:00The Crystal Maze: A Brief Obsessive Guide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've commented on The Crystal Maze in the past, doing two columns analysing the various challenges from the first season's <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/crystal-maze-uk-season-1-part-1-aztec.html" target="_blank">Aztec</a> and <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/crystal-maze-uk-season-1-part-2.html" target="_blank">Industrial</a> Zones, but I didn't feel the format worked as well as I was hoping. So rather than continue, I kind of held off for a bit, keeping it at the back of my mind while I was working on other things. Eventually, I decided to follow the same format I used for my recent <a href="http://realitytvdesign.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/survivor-brief-obsessive-challenge.html" target="_blank">Survivor guide</a>, making a couple of changes I was planning on making for future guides anyway.<br />
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So <a href="http://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/01-the-crystal-maze.pdf" target="_blank">here we are</a>. To cut a long story short, it's basically the same exact format with each challenge being given a rating from zero to five stars based on its design and entertainment value, and with the additional commentary now appearing as more text instead of in separate boxes. (I've kept the same basic format for the descriptions themselves, with each challenge being described in one paragraph.) Two other important things worth noting here are that none of the challenge titles I've used are official, as the show is too old to track down the relevant information, and the challenges are sorted by where in the Maze (in one of the show's five zones, or in the Crystal Dome finale) each challenge appears. Regarding this change, I figure this is the sort of show where you're more likely to remember that a game came from, say, the Medieval Zone than to remember it was in season four, making it easier to search for particular challenges.<br />
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The format I'm using for this guide probably isn't going to be continued in future - I've got a few different alternate formats in the works that I want to develop into a more comprehensive coverage instead of a "challenge title, big block of text, next challenge" design, while also keeping it suitable for various shows and subgenres. I mean, sure, this format works for shows like this, but what about for a show like The Amazing Race, where a bunch of challenges can often be described in one sentence? Or Wipeout, with its combination of recurring rounds, recurring obstacles within those rounds, and various one-off obstacles and variations on a theme? (Actually, if you've got any ideas how I could cover Wipeout without a bunch of repetition, I'd be very grateful.)<br />
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I'd love to hear what you have to say about this guide. Did I get the grading right? Was I too harsh on some games and not harsh enough on others? Are there any descriptions I completely butchered? Feel free to comment, and I'll endeavour to reply.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-16254967098341834122013-05-03T21:23:00.001-07:002013-05-03T21:28:21.959-07:00Product Recall: Australian Reality Shows, 2013Presented without much comment, because these just angry up the blood. These are all ACTUAL commercials for Australian reality shows. First, The Celebrity Apprentice, which began its third season last week:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/z6yKqKtdQkI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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I... I don't even know where to... huh?<br />
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Next, The Mole. Cancelled in 2003, revived in 2005, cancelled again after a disastrous season (live eliminations, WHY?), and revived again for this year. Now remember, this is a show about espionage and deceit and all the related stress and tension that goes along with it:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/CeTyCrwNjPw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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It's seriously like advertising Lost with clips from Gilligan's Island and expecting people not to be pissed because they're both about people stranded on an island. For comparison, here's the promo for this year's Dutch season:<br />
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So much better, you guys. Why is it so hard for Australian TV networks to understand how television works?<br />
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Third, Masterchef. Fifth regular season, tenth season overall (there have been a LOT of failed spinoff attempts).<br />
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Rightio, then. Because if there's something we all love on reality shows, it's obnoxious gender-split themes. And we'll just ignore the elephant in the room, all the judges being the same gender, shall we?<br />
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And then there's one - just one, mind you - that's actually pretty good. I KNOW! This is from The Great Australian Bake Off, a new show featuring - rather ironically - a former Junior Masterchef judge as its host.<br />
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I mean, it's clear the two hosts are both going to be autocue-strugglers, but aside from that it's just the right level of camp for this exact show. But still, can we PLEASE stop with overly-camp choreographed pre-season commercials?Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-57201506243659019932013-01-31T21:19:00.001-08:002013-01-31T21:19:31.794-08:00The Great Big Challenge Guide: Template DesignI thought I'd go a bit behind-the-scenes here and show the next huge project I'm working on. Basically, it's going to be a guide (like my earlier Mole and Survivor guides) for challenges on a wide range of shows in a single file, but this time before I get too far into it I'd like to get some feedback about the planned format. (Please note, the below image contains spoilers for the current Dutch season of The Mole, though features no actual results. Click to zoom in.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Up0jZksaX3SXunQl122tzoFn7Gauur3FdvvpEuburVEUE5MGR-ceRMGDk6VSJcG6e7ZCtc8eKOTzKFel-0R4UUrbxZBCq8AOqZdARnukCRHxhMcLPgTZUbD1hCQnYMrhkZBbaUcghkkl/s1600/mole2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Up0jZksaX3SXunQl122tzoFn7Gauur3FdvvpEuburVEUE5MGR-ceRMGDk6VSJcG6e7ZCtc8eKOTzKFel-0R4UUrbxZBCq8AOqZdARnukCRHxhMcLPgTZUbD1hCQnYMrhkZBbaUcghkkl/s320/mole2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Basically, there's four columns - episode and challenge title like on the first version of the Survivor guide, followed by the challenge rules and a separate column for commentary. I'm going to try and find something unique to say about every challenge I add to avoid having too much empty space, whether that be odd facts about the challenge, an analysis of why it worked (or failed), or something else entirely. Twists that don't come about as the result of a challenge - for example a new non-elimination penalty on The Amazing Race, as opposed to the "win or lose, you both go to Tribal Council" twist on Survivor - are marked with black episode columns. Since not every challenge has a known official title, and some shows I'm planning to include are in foreign languages, I've had to compromise - italics for translated titles, quotation marks for unofficial titles. Thoughts?Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-68711980657428778162013-01-29T16:44:00.003-08:002013-01-29T16:49:06.716-08:00Survivor: A Brief Obsessive Challenge Guide (Version 2.0)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I use the term "brief" <a href="http://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/survivorv2.pdf" target="_blank">ironically</a>, of course.<br />
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Since the last version of the guide I've kind of been continually updating this, but always wind up getting annoyed with the formatting before finishing it. Eventually I just figured to hell with it, and did the most basic version I could. It's not perfect, and right after I finished it I figured out a way to make the format from the old version a lot less cluttery (which I'm going to use for all of my challenge guides from now on, regardless of show), but here we are.<br />
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One thing to note: There's no section for results this time. I might upload a separate "challenge tracker" file in the near future (although first I want to figure out how to do a non-cluttered individual-players version to account for tribal shuffles and the like), but I haven't included the tables or even a list of winners in this version.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-85773711015613212482013-01-24T19:08:00.001-08:002013-01-24T19:11:09.967-08:00How To: Make A Successful Reality ShowI thought I'd do something a bit different with this entry, and go over a few of the finer points of how to make a successful reality show. Despite the vast number of shows and the vast discrepancies in formats and general quality, there are a few basic things which every show needs to keep in mind. Obviously my focus is still on challenge design, but this isn't going to simply be restricted to it. Shall we begin?<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>THE CHALLENGES ARE YOUR A-PLOT, THE CAST IS YOUR B-PLOT</b></span><br />
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Challenges determine the success of your show more than the players, more than the host, and more than the little bits of foreshadowing you stick in to make the winner seem obvious in hindsight. Good challenges tend to save seasons with bad casting, but bad challenges tend to ruin those with good casts. Seems simple enough to understand, right? You'd be shocked. How many reality TV seasons with decent reputations have terrible challenges? And how many seasons with bad reputations have good task design? Exactly. You definitely want both, but challenges need to take precedence over casting.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>"THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE", "TRUST NO ONE", ETC.</b></span><br />
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The easier it is to explain a challenge within a single sentence, the more likely it is to be remembered as a good challenge. It doesn't matter what show you're on. Go ahead, think back to the challenges that really made you go "Fuuuuuuck, that's awesome." Are there any that can't be described in one sentence, once you cut out all the extra variables and get down to the basic concept? Probably not. Whether it's "starting in separate locked hotel rooms, work together to escape using mobile phones and a series of hidden clues" or "search the streets of Zurich on foot for three numbers which can be combined to form the combination for a safe" or "Ignore all the gatecrashers passing through the Big Brother house", every single task that is memorable - for the right reasons, at least - can be explained succinctly.<br />
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On the other hand, the most recent US Survivor season (Survivor: Philippines) had a challenge that involved a three-round elimination format, with each round featuring both a trivia question (with cumulative penalties for wrong answers) and a race across a physical obstacle, plus the final obstacle was markedly different than the first two, PLUS it was basically the same challenge as one seen in the previous episode, PLUS as a consequence of the previous challenge one player qualified directly for the final round, avoiding both the exhaustion of the obstacles and the penalties. Unlike much of the online community, I don't believe the challenge was rigged to favour the advantaged player. I do, however, believe it was a ridiculously poor effort on the part of the show's challenge designers, even in a season that basically didn't have a single good challenge from about episode three onwards (and even given those three episodes were a godsend after pretty much eight or nine entire seasons of mediocrity). Would anybody have called it rigged if the challenge was at least mildly adequate? I doubt it.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>DON'T REPEAT YOURSELF. (NO, REALLY. DON'T REPEAT YOURSELF. <i>DON'T</i>.)</b></span><br />
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In precisely what circumstance is reusing a challenge from an earlier season (or even another version of the show) a good idea? There's no valid answer to this simple question. The challenge was great the first time? It won't live up to the lofty expectations set for it. The challenge wasn't great the first time, and you think it deserves a second chance? History has shown it doesn't work. Doing it for random nostalgia? It just serves to remind fans your show used to be much better. Doing it in an All-Star season, or a season with a similar gimmick? Your goal shouldn't be to compound the lack of originality in casting, it should be to compensate for it with even better challenges than usual. Just give us something new.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>KEEP YOUR TWISTS ORGANIC</b></span><br />
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It's great to have twists to throw the contestants for a loop. Really, it is. But make sure the twists you use are organic and don't feel like you're doing them for the sake
of ratings. The Amazing Race having a Road Block before a Detour for
the first time in its fourth season worked because it was just something
that happened, it wasn't as if the producers were going "LOOK TWIZT
ZOMG!!1!1!!1!" Survivor's Redemption Island twist, on the other hand? Yeeeeeeah.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>LEARN FROM SCRIPTED TELEVISION</b></span><br />
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Challenges are the closest thing you have to an actual plot on a reality show. Scripted television works because the storylines matter on two levels - both on the surface ("Homer buys Lisa a pony and has to work at the Kwik-E-Mart to pay for it") and at a deeper level ("How far will parents go to make their kids happy?"). Out of necessity the metaphors are more superficial on reality shows, with challenges based more on locations and cultures and sponsors rather than humanity's greatest questions, but you still do need them.<br />
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It's the same issue with pacing. On a scripted television show, you don't build a story up for six episodes and then have a filler episode directly before the finale, you put the filler episode first before the story arc begins. On a reality show, you need the same frame of mind. The challenges (and prizes, if there are any) need to get more and more awe-inspiring as the season goes, rather than petering out towards the end, but at the same time the challenges can't be too easy or too hard at any given point. The biggest issue with challenge design and pacing, it needs to be said, are the half-assed warm-up episodes at the beginning of many seasons. No. Just... no. They don't work, and they just piss people off. (The most notable example is Survivor, and while I'm going to do a proper "It's broken, here's how to fix it" post for it after seeing how the upcoming season pans out, for now: Stop using 'but we need to show everybody!' as your reason for doing it when you just spend the time gained from combining an episode's challenges showing the same people you were focusing on anyway. You got problems? Stop trying to cast more people than there are minutes in your show.)<br />
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Similarly, you also have to design a challenge so different types of strategy can be used to solve it, much like how a story on a scripted show won't work if there's only one way for the writers to handle it. That doesn't necessarily mean to combine different types of challenge in a single event - in fact, it just makes it more likely the same people are going to win challenge after challenge after challenge when the show is essentially replacing "Who is best at obstacle courses?" and "Who is best at jigsaws?" with "Who is best at jigsaws after finishing an obstacle course?" - but having multiple ways of approaching a challenge curtails the biggest problem many challenges have, that we as viewers are simply watching people do the same thing the same way, over and over again. (A corollary to this is the power of deception which, assuming the challenge is still reasonably difficult even with the added wrinkle, is a challenge designer's best friend.)Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-4092859238140924922012-11-19T18:57:00.000-08:002012-11-19T19:08:07.489-08:00Firing On All Cylinders, Volume II: The Amazing Race, Original RecipeEarlier this year, I dissected the Australian version of The Amazing Race and pointed out exactly why it wasn't working. Now, with the main version itself having found itself in a rut as big as the Grand Canyon or some other less impressive hugeass hole they would actually visit in a non-Family-Edition season, it's time to take on a bigger challenge: Can I explain why The Amazing Race hasn't been consistently good in about ten seasons without resorting to "I don't like change! Change it back!"? This time, only seven points, but more detail.<br />
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<div style="color: yellow;">
<b>Cylinder The First: Less Monotonous Route Planning</b></div>
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This section... really, actual facts here could do this particular section more justice than any amount of argument:<br />
<ul>
<li>In the first twenty-one seasons of The Amazing Race, fifteen - over two-thirds - of them have visited some combination of Japan, China, and Taiwan. Only six haven't. And five of those six happened before either Japan or Taiwan had been visited for the first time. To put it another way: The much-maligned Family Edition (which I'm counting as one of the six) aired in 2005. Only one season in the seven years since has avoided the three countries.</li>
<li>Add India, the other major Asian staple country, to the above trio and it becomes even more startling - four of the six seasons that skipped the trio visited India, meaning that in the entire history of The Amazing Race, only two seasons out of twenty-one have skipped India, China, Taiwan, and Japan. And the closest one of those two seasons came to leaving continental North America was swimming to a buoy off the Costa Rican shoreline.</li>
<li>Six of the last ten seasons have had clues in either Germany or the Netherlands. Three of the remaining four have had multiple legs in Russia. The only season that didn't go to any of the three? It went to three other countries that have German as an official language - Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.</li>
<li>In the last ten seasons, if the race has gone anywhere in Africa it has been for exactly two legs in a single country. We haven't had either multiple African countries or a single leg in any African country since The Amazing Race: All-Stars in 2007.</li>
<li>The race has visited Thailand five times, and the foreign versions have visited the country four times. When visiting Thailand, the race has never skipped Bangkok.</li>
<li>There has never been a visit to South America that skipped both Brazil and Argentina.</li>
<li>With the exception of the Family Edition, no season has skipped Asia, and the race has spent at least four legs in the continent in every season since 2007.</li>
<li>In the first eleven seasons, only three seasons started in Los Angeles. In the ten seasons since, all but one started there... and the one that didn't ENDED there.</li>
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<div style="color: yellow;">
<b>Cylinder the Second: Fire the Casting Directors</b></div>
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It has become commonplace on this show - and on CBS stablemate Survivor, whose casting is run by the same people - to see people who can best be described as G-list celebrities on the show. But the show's casting at this point is so far beyond ridiculous, ridiculous is thinking of sending out a team of sherpas. Dozens of models and national-level beauty queens (including a former Miss America). Youtube 'celebrities'. Two members of the Chippendales. A former Dawson's Creek writer. One of Ryan Seacrest's ex-girlfriends (I know, right?). Stars from at least five different reality shows, including five separate Big Brother contestants and four from Survivor. NFL cheerleaders, NFL wives, and a Major League Baseball coach. A Nashville songwriter, and a former Megadeth guitarist. Two separate teams of circus clowns. Professional athletes in soccer, gridiron, beach volleyball, bullriding, lumberjacking, and snowboarding, PLUS two of the Harlem Globetrotters. And that's not even all of them. To make matters worse, they've actively (and from what I can tell, illegally) ignored the "You must be 21 years of age to apply" restriction on at least three occasions, casting a twenty-year-old and two nineteen-year-olds. (None of whom, it's worth noting, were particularly good racers.) The casting of low-level celebrities has now reached a point where, basically, actual people who aren't filling the role of "token redneck hick team" have nearly no chance and need not apply.<br />
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To put it another way, would any of the iconic, still hugely popular teams from the early seasons - teams like Nancy and Emily, Ken and Gerard, Linda & Karen, or even the infamous Team Guido who basically put this show on the map - make it past the first round of auditions now? I don't think so. So why the hell do the casting people consider a 'celebrity' team like season 21's Ryan and Abbie so much better? He wasn't even on the (inexplicably) popular version of The Apprentice. He was on the one that regifted BETHENNY FRANKEL to the world. (NOTE: No, that is NOT an invitation to invite Omarosa onto the show.)<br />
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Now either America somehow conveniently figured this out after the first few seasons they overloaded with models and stopped applying en masse, in which case the casting people need to be fired and replaced for allowing such a situation to happen, or viewers are still applying for the show and the casting people are simply ignoring their videos, in which case they need to be fired for gross incompetence. Their entire job is to look at applications. Do they seriously believe there are fewer than eleven worthy applications in a pool of, let's be conservative, twenty thousand? Bullshit.<br />
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And why can't we get anybody with any actual foreign language abilities who isn't a Token Asian Team? Seeing a pair of Italian teachers (who also spoke fluent French) on the Australian version earlier this year really hammered home that American audiences are expected to celebrate uncultured boors. It's been basically eight seasons since someone bothered to learn simple words in foreign languages instead of bemoaning the fact that people don't speak English the world over.<br />
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<div style="color: yellow;">
<b>Cylinder the Third: Make the Race Exhausting Again</b></div>
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It's not just imagination that says the race is getting easier. In the ten years competitive reality shows have had a separate "best show" category at the Emmy Awards, this show has won nine times. The first year the show won - in the inaugural 2003 contest - the season 3 episode submitted contained a late-night drive through the German countryside, digging through a giant haystack to find a hidden clue, collecting a cluebox from the middle of a waterfall, not one but two long-distance train trips, a surprisingly brutal Detour involving Swiss banking, recreating the legend of William Tell, and a high-altitude hike that left one of the fittest women in the show's history gasping for breath at the mat, all with only twelve hours of rest at the previous Pit Stop before the leg began. And it was a non-elimination!<br />
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After that leg, there were another five before the end of the race. Now let's cut to season twenty, the most recent season to finish airing. Again, the sixth-last leg of the season was a non-elimination at high altitude. But once the opening flights of the leg were out of the way (having travelled from <strike>Azerjaben</strike> <strike>Abzerj</strike> from Baku), the alleged tasks consisted of a short downhill bike ride, a Detour that amounted to throwing a stick or jumping in place for one minute, and pitching a tent. That's the entire leg. No self-driving, no Road Block, no additional route markers or tasks, and the Pit Stop was right next to the tents. It's perhaps worth noting that the only submitted episode that did not win the Emmy was only marginally more difficult than this - driving to a bakery and buying a baguette, a lopsided Detour where only the stupid and/or U-Turned teams would have taken the task that didn't boil down to "crawl across a small field", and riding bikes to the Pit Stop.<br />
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Having a Road Block and a Detour on every leg including the premiere and finale, and probably additional tasks as well, is definitely in the best interests of the show. Not only does it make the legs more exhausting for the teams, it will also help fill episodes with more than just the usual flight sequences and petty squabbles. It's not a coincidence the final leg of The Amazing Race 12 is generally considered the best of the last ten finales - it's the only one with both a Detour and a Road Block shown. The addition of two-Road-Block legs from season 16 kind of helps, but until they catch up by having several legs with two Detours - or indeed simply put a Detour in those legs - it's going to come across as blatant cost-cutting when money could be more efficiently saved in so many other places.<br />
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I'm going to cover "better tasks, please" later on, but in these legs with either a Detour or a Road Block but not both, the crux of the problem are the two reasons they started to cut tasks away to begin with: The show's decreased budget (due to cutting two of the non-elimination episodes for season 12, though one was re-added two seasons later), and the desire to 'surprise' teams. The latter is quicker and easier to debunk, so I'll just point out that surprising contestants with your ability to make halfassed legs isn't a good thing, and return to the former. The first four seasons hardly had an earth-shattering budget, sticking mostly to established tourist haunts (after Namibia, the least touristy of the remaining countries visited during this time period is probably Portugal) and tasks with minimal props, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who's watched since the start and thinks what we have now is an improvement of any kind.<br />
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Also, while I'm on the subject: None of these ridiculously easy 'warm-up' legs at the start of a race. Start wearing them down early. But fixing the halfassed leg design is only half of the problem. Returning to twelve-hour Pit Stops wherever safe, with the occasional thirty-six hour extended Pit Stop to stop the crew from keeling over or to help Phil stay ahead of teams, would also help enormously. As stupid as letting teams go in the middle of the night only to bunch them at the first location of the leg sounds, letting the teams race outside of business hours (and not just for a random night leg) actually does make the show feel more amazing. In addition, the likely 'wait until this place opens in the morning' bunching also stops teams from getting too far ahead or too far behind. A longer Pit Stop just means teams are less tired in the latter part of the race and less likely to encounter the 'Killer Fatigue' phenomenon that led to many an entertainingly stupid racing decision in the early seasons - which also means position changes are far less likely in a leg without bunching, essentially making the entire episode an anticlimax. Why is the current approach considered better?<br />
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<b>Cylinder the Fourth: Eat, Sleep, and Mingle</b></div>
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In season 14, the producers thought teams were getting along too well with each other, and decided to sequester them separately during rest periods, simultaneously withholding food during Pit Stops in order to cause more fights. Not surprisingly, it and the following two seasons had some of the most unbearably unpleasant bickering in the show's history. The question needs to be asked: In what universe is having a bunch of toxic assholes bitching about people they barely know a good way to attract viewers? Don't get me wrong, dysfunction is okay in moderation. But in the current situation, it's borderline impossible for any relationship - functional or otherwise - to form between teams during the race. Aside from one quick conversation between two of the non-performers at a Road Block in Denmark in season 19 (which resulted in the heretofore unshown development that Cindy - part of the final six at that point, and one of the season's eventual winners - had a snarky sense of humour), when was the last time teams were shown actually speaking civilly towards each other?<br />
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Do you want an actual, recent, non-hypothetical example of how this approach doesn't work? Fine. Who was more popular: Carol and Brandy from season 16, who were one-note and seemed to hate everyone and everything that was happening, or Brook and Claire from season 17, who were also one-note but bordered on Flanders-level enjoyment of everyone and everything they encountered? Exactly.<br />
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<b>Cylinder the Fifth: Scripting, Editing, and Everybody's Favourite Non-Hobbit, Non-Xena Kiwi</b></div>
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Again, just a series of quick dot points. Not really enough to build entire paragraphs around, but also not small enough to ignore if we're serious about improving the show.<br />
<ul>
<li>Show every team departing every Pit Stop, regardless of whether they'll all end up together, even if you have to show six teams reading the clue in a montage.</li>
<li>Don't assume everybody's seen the show before. You still need to spend four seconds explaining what a Detour and a Road Block are, the same way you have to explain the Fast Forward and the Speed Bump and the U-Turn every time they appear.</li>
<li>Stop writing bad puns for the task descriptions. Phil clearly doesn't enjoy saying them, and it's only taking time away from explaining the tasks properly. If a Detour is "a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons", explain what the pros and cons are.</li>
<li>If you're going to spend the time explaining how tasks are culturally relevant, do a quick (for example) "In this Detour, teams must choose between two common local forms of transportation", not a thirty second rant about how boats are relevant to the culture of NORWAY.</li>
<li>Phil, tone it down a little. The tasks really aren't that exciting, and haven't been for years.</li>
<li>While you're at it, stop with the non-elimination fakeout questions. It's a huge giveaway that you're not going to eliminate a team when... you know, YOU DON'T ELIMINATE THEM.</li>
<li>Use the greeter pronounciations for cities and countries. In season 21, Phil managed to mispronounce two cities and a country, meaning that for five weeks in a row he got it wrong. Common errors or not (and the Bangladesh error in particular is basically mainstream), that's just inexcusable.</li>
<li>Tell us how far teams are travelling overland again. It doesn't come across that, for example, the season 20 driving from the start line to the airport and from their arrival in Argentina to the first cluebox was a total of about 500 kilometres. And no: Telling us a city is X hours away does nothing when for all we know they could be measuring time by pogo stick.</li>
<li>Choose a style and stick with it. The new fonts and graphics for every task make it look like a student film. A bad student film.</li>
<li>The rapid zoom-outs at every Pit Stop are no longer entertaining, and kind of function to show how insignificant the show is when you're contrasting the tiny check-in mat with the monument du jour. Tilting the camera down to close-up on the mat's world map design worked far better.</li>
<li>Stop playing favourites. No theme music to get us to like the teams you spent a lot of money recruiting for the show.</li>
<li>For the love of God, Buddha, Allah, Ganesh, L. Ron Hubbard, and Oprah, don't dumb it down for viewers. We don't need the splitscreens to tell us teams are racing at the same time. We don't need the idiot chimes to tell us when they're idiots. Just tell us about the locations instead of comparing them to America.</li>
<li>The wacky graphics and music whenever they're in far-eastern Asia have GOT to GO. Would any of the graphics used in recent seasons (the cartoon dragon in Japan, the "wrong!" gong in Taiwan, and the laughing-kid-on-a-table-tennis-bat in China) have gotten past the censors if it was suggested for, say, Canada? Spain? New Zealand? No. Every time they appear, I'm not just ashamed to be watching, I'm ashamed the show is still allowed on the air. They're that derogatory.</li>
</ul>
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<b>Cylinder the Sixth: Better Tasks, Please</b></div>
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(See? I told you so.)<br />
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There are two very simple rules that should always be followed when designing challenges for reality TV shows. Firstly, make them easy to explain but hard to complete. Secondly, if they aren't related to either the culture of the filming location or to the basic concept of the show, they aren't going to be a good task. Simple rules, right? And yet, this is probably the main reason the Race doesn't feel as Amazing any more. Despite everything I've said so far, it really doesn't matter how good the cast is (though obviously a watchable cast is preferred, so DON'T IGNORE EVERYTHING ABOVE). If the tasks and/or twists aren't worth writing home about, 95% of the time the season is already dead in the water. And the tasks haven't been great since about halfway through The Amazing Race 17.<br />
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Look at how The Amazing Race 19 turned out. An above average cast, with the best route in years (four totally new countries, including three that have been glaringly absent from earlier routes, two countries getting only a second visit, and Thailand, which all things considered compares pretty favourably to the other 'semi-regular' countries), and yet it already isn't remembered too fondly. Why not? Quite simply, it's because the tasks are crap. A lame twist in the opening episode that promised a "rolling effect" throughout the race but which delivered nothing. An even lamer twist in the second episode that only serves to boot one of the designated woobie teams far earlier than intended. Yet another random-luck starting challenge disguised as an observation task to fool idiots. Four separate legs without a shown Detour (though to be fair, one of them was a replacement leg after the original location became unsafe). Four separate Road Blocks that are the same basic "memorise this, then go over there and repeat it exactly" task in different guises (Taiwan telephone, Thailand temple, Denmark quote, Atlanta typing). The rich and vibrant culture of Indonesia being reduced to mall parking lots in its first ever leg. A long-distance bus ride bunch after the final major task of the leg. The just as rich and just as vibrant culture of Belgium being cut to Van Damme, waffles, and product placement tasks for both a car company and a movie. A bunch of tasks throughout the season that are needlessly complicated. And then to wrap it all up, the easiest season-memory task in the show's history, and the removal of one of the final remaining elements of the show's identity: clueboxes (which, while not technically a task, need to be brought back). Doesn't seem so surprising now, does it?<br />
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And the two seasons since haven't been much of an improvement. The current season in particular has been woefully designed. Usually, it's a good idea to vary the landscape on this show every episode or two (as evidenced by the approximately seventeen-week-long section of the Family Edition where they drove through the western United States). The first five weeks of this season were basically spent in Asian urban centres - Shanghai, Surabaya, Bangil, and two legs in Dhaka. It was about as exciting as it sounds, especially when you consider the two Indonesian cities and Dhaka have much the same kind of landscape and the four legs were filled with generic 'manual labour' tasks that could literally have been done in nearly any city on the planet with only minor adaptations. So when the sixth leg starts with a cluebox on the European side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul and the instructions "travel back to Asia", my (and I suspect many others') instant reaction wasn't so much "HA! WHAT A FUNNY TRICK LOL!1!!1!1!" as it was "Fuck that shit." At the very least, they could have travelled to the countryside just outside any of the cities in question, and tested the teams' capabilities in a slightly different environment.<br />
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The tasks don't even really need to be that complicated. Why does the Fast Forward need to be some big time-consuming stunt that costs so much there can only be one or two in a season? Couldn't the Fast Forward just be a cryptic clue leading to a local landmark, where they have to find a specific person to win it? It would allow you to have more and make the episodes more unpredictable in the process.<br />
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<b>Cylinder the Seventh: Non-Eliminations and Speed Bumps</b></div>
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Seriously, there's no point to penalising a team in a non-elimination when there's no bunching in the next leg and the time difference is already enough to send them home. It's counterproductive to have Speed Bumps (or any other penalties) when the damage has already been done due to the leg's poor design. Obviously a better leg design is needed. But even with that, can't we spend the extra 45 seconds reserved for the task on showing more actual racing, and let the fact they're already trailing the other teams be enough of a penalty? I don't believe it's coincidental that since the Speed Bump penalty was introduced, far and away the single best episode following a non-elimination was the one in season 17 (in Russia) where the penalty wasn't applied at all following production issues in the previous leg. The penalty just isn't anywhere near as great as the producers seem to think.<br />
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Also, scrap the idea of first-leg non-eliminations. They just ruin whatever momentum the show was building up during the premiere, and are a complete and total anticlimax in that circumstance. Early non-eliminations are fine, but... no. If you want one early, at least wait until the second episode.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059928544991458287.post-1673348559129742592012-10-28T21:56:00.000-07:002012-10-29T00:53:11.571-07:00The Great Big Challenge Guide: Survivor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.survivorjunkies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20090228070653Survivor.borneo.logo_.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://www.survivorjunkies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/20090228070653Survivor.borneo.logo_.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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So the idea here is instead of having one massive file that takes forever to sort and scroll through, I thought I'd split the second version of my Survivor challenge guide by season. I'm going to add these seasons one at a time instead of all at once, and each episode now contains a proper analysis of its challenges and twists. Note that despite seasons being missing, I am writing these descriptions as though they are present - thus, challenges repeated without change are skipped over and will be discussed in the original appearances. Feel free to comment on this post to tell me what needs to be improved and changed for future seasons, and to request particular seasons. (I'll also be doing this for seasons of several other shows at the same time, so updates may not always be immediate.)<br />
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Let's begin, shall we? They'll be listed in chronological order when they are added.<br />
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October 29, 2012 - <a href="http://bit.ly/Rg4zPG" target="_blank">Guatemala, The Maya Empire</a> (<a href="http://realityarchive.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/guatemalact.pdf" target="_blank">Challenge Tracker</a>)Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03584119601642111254noreply@blogger.com0