So speaking of all of those new voyeur TV shows (which I wasn't, but I am now), am I the only one who notices just how vapid, unoriginal, and uniformly uninteresting they are? Judging by the ratings, I am.
I'll admit, I tuned into the first season of Real World on a semi-regular basis, mostly because there was nothing else on. I also watched the second season in reruns every now and then. I EVEN used the third season as a catalyst for my daily catatonia therapy. I'll even admit that it was fascinating and engaged the attention of that part of my psyche that is normally telling me set stuff on fire. After 5 billion seasons in every smelly sphincter in the U.S. and the U.K., it's a little old. Then came Road Rules, where a bunch of Real World-like people are crammed into a Winnebago and traveled around the country solving a variety of challenges that any second-grader could figure out.
That was 1992. The major networks, quick to adapt as always, have finally put out their first copycat. Yes, CBS, the perennial sickly little brother of network TV, threw its hat into the ring of voyeur shows with Survivor, a show I recognized immediately as a rip-off of Road Rules. Then came Big Brother, an imitation of a German show which was an imitation of the Real World.
In spite of all of the hype, it's nothing new. They have challenges as inane as setting up dominos, bicycling, or holding your breath. On Survivor you at least have the bonus of watching the people slowly starve to death, but other than that, it's Road Rules with old, unsexy people.
Oh, what I would do if I were in charge! First, screw that voting people off crap! In Big Brother, for example, I wouldn't put any food in the house. After a week, I'd drop a box of donuts through a chute. There will be one donut for everybody. The twist is that one of the donuts is POISONED! Can you imagine the ratings? People will be ringing their hands, their eyeballs sticking to the screen, wondering who will get the POISON donut! When one of them dies, his/her corpse will be the only food in the house…until the next box of donuts, anyway!
Alternately, I can take a bunch of hardened criminals and put them in the house. Naturally, we'll remove anything that can be used as a weapon, but if a few get killed early, big deal. Every week, they'd vote for two of their fellow "housemates". Those selected will fight to the death in the Combat Pit Room! The ultimate survivor will get a pardon. Won't THAT be great?
Ok, if those seem a little stiff for you, I can at least think of a few more interesting things to do to shake things up for my prisoners-I mean, contestants. How about taking a big box full of WOLF SPIDERS and dropping them on the sleeping people? How about hiding COPPERHEADS in various places in the house? How about some shenanigans with that little pug they just added to the house? I can see it now: "Ladies and gentlemen, we've secretly infected this dog with RABIES! Let's watch now as we introduce it to the house and the zaniness begins!" I'd use a Rotweiler instead of a stupid pug, that's for sure.
Survivor lends itself to less creativity. After all, they're already at the mercy of nature…or at least they would be if the network hadn't virtually sanitized the entire island. I would leave all of the poisonous berries and venomous creatures. If there weren't enough such creatures, I'd add some. I think I might use a tribe of headhunters to raid the group every three days to take away a member and kill him/her, posting the severed head on the beach for all to see. I wonder if headhunters charge by the head or by the hour. The last one to live gets to go home!
Remember how those PETA freaks bitched about eating rats and that one chicken that had an eye scratch? Well, I wonder how they would feel if we released a pack of ravenous wolves without warning into the Big Brother house? What if we released a tiger or two on the island of the Survivors? I bet PETA would like that unless one of the wolves got indigestion. Then they'd be bitching about the quality of the contestants.
I missed my calling. I really should have been a television executive. Admit it! You'd watch those shows! You'd be logged on to the convict-cam 24 hours a day in hope of watching a brawl! You'd buy Big Brother Brand Donuts in the hopes of getting the one in a million donut poisoned just like those on the show! You'd be first in line for Jason D. Steele's Survivor: Death Valley Spectacular!
Of course, maybe I'd just stock the house full of models with the sluttiest one winning.
