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It is that time of year again when the television gods allow us to leave the mind numbing land of repeats and take mercy on the viewing public by throwing us some new shows. Granted the bones they throw us are generally rehashed versions of what worked the season before, but at least they are new.
New is part of the key to the television jail cell I have been in all summer long. I have been in the “Home Improvement TV” prison since the end of May and Fall has marked the date of my parole. Anybody who is married or has a significant other who is enamored with these shows, you know what I mean.
It looks like there is potential in some of the new shows and a couple that we have watched so far have been decent. In particular “Standoff” and “Studio 60” have been entertaining, but I am always leery of any show that is on one of the Big 4 networks, NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. They always have such knee jerk reactions to the Nielson ratings.
I can’t count how many times I have invested hours watching a new show just to have it yanked off the air because it dips one point in the ratings. This is especially frustrating when the show has a plotline that needs resolution and you are left dangling wondering how the story ends. It’s like reading a book and finding out that the last two chapters are missing.
It is always a gamble but it is one I am willing to make. If it is a choice between watching a good show that is doomed or another episode of “Design On A Dime”, “Trading Spaces” or “Flip That House” I will pick choice number one. I’ll spin the wheel of potential frustration instead of taking the sure bet of being frustrated now anytime.
The downside to the relief from repeats is that along with the new dramas and comedies are the new onslaught of reality shows. It used to be that we wouldn’t have to deal with them until later in the season. Now that they have become a staple of television viewing and grown in popularity they are some of the first horses out of the gate. Oh, joy.
As I have mentioned in the past I hate, I mean HATE, reality TV shows. Unfortunately, in my family, I am alone in my hatred. They have all been captured by this beast in one form or another. Whether it is my kids watching “Laguna Beach”, “America’s Next Top Model” or “Two A Days” or my wife watching “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” I can’t escape it. No matter where I go in my house it seems like one of these shows is on. At times it’s so frustrating I feel like I am wandering around in the seventh circle of Hell. Or worse yet, trying to drive through Monterey Park.
While they are on I do my best to make myself scarce, trying to find little “postage stamp jobs”, as my Grandma Nonie used to call them, to keep myself busy. This is especially true when “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” are on. When the jobs run out I give up and plop myself down on the couch to watch part of them, if for no other reason then to confirm the reasons why I dislike them so much.
I did have a glimmer of hope prior to last week's premier of “Survivor”. The producers of the show decided to ratchet up their little social experiment by dividing up the contestants in groups based by race, referring to then as “tribes”. The tribes would be made up of Hispanic, Asian, African, and Caucasian Americans.
Without even hearing what the talking heads on the news thought about it, I knew that this would be met with an outcry from every racial defense group. Could this be the beginning of the end? I could only hope.
Sure enough the racial guardian groups, once they caught wind of it, started chiming in, spouting charges of separatism and racism. For all intents and purposes, without having even seen it, they were calling for the show to be pulled from the air. Putting the pressure on advertisers to boycott the show, which of course some did. Most notably General Motors, a sponsor of the program since the show began, The Home Depot, and Campbell’s Soup.
With visions of race wars dancing in their heads everybody was running for the hills, virtual panic in the reality streets. Entertainment Weekly published an article in which they asked the questions, “What was CBS thinking?” and “Where did such an idea come from?” For producer Mark Burnett and CBS these public denouncements had to signal the show’s certain demise, shouldn’t it?
In answer to the questions posed by Entertainment Weekly they only had to look to themselves for those answers. According to the show’s host Jeff Probst, “ …a lot of it started in the offices of Entertainment Weekly. I would come in and always get asked, ‘Why aren’t there more black people on the show? Where are all the Asians?’ So the idea (was) to take on something we are criticized for. We decided, let’s try to have the most ethnically diverse cast in the history of TV.”
Uh oh, I smell a publicity stunt in the works here. For sure all of those same racial guardian groups were the ones who made those complaints since the show’s second season. So now that CBS had addressed their objections by putting together an equally balanced racial cast, they had to find something else to bitch about. I mean that is their job right? If they don’t find something to complain about, they aren’t doing their job, so what good would they be? We all know that these types of groups will never be happy or satisfied no matter what happens.
Not that I want to defend or help “Survivor” in any way, but one thing that all of these groups who were pointing the racial finger at the show probably didn’t know was one important fact. That is that it wasn’t the show’s choice not to have more minorities in past seasons. Again, according to those who produce and cast the show, the number of minorities who applied to be on the show was very small.
In fact, when they came up with the concept for this version they had to actively pursue minorities to participate, otherwise they wouldn’t have enough of a cast to make it work. The casting department had to search high and low for minority contestants. Everywhere from sporting events to the Internet until they had what they needed.
Unfortunately, for me at least, this gamble paid off for CBS and Burnett. The first episode racked up its highest ratings in almost a year and the show, due to all of the controversy, is once again water cooler fodder for office workers around the country.
There weren’t any racial slurs being flung around, nor were there any heated exchanges between the tribes. The only mention about anything racial during the show was confined to discussions within the individual tribes themselves. All the hoopla that swirled around before it aired did exactly what CBS and Burnett wanted, I’m assuming, to begin with.
A couple of nights later “The Amazing Race” began its new season. As I watched them introduce the pairs of contestants it hit me that these little tribes of two were even more ethnically balanced than “Survivor”.
They had a pair of Black women, a pair of Black Muslim men, Asian brothers, a Caucasian couple with the woman being an amputee, a gay male couple, and an East Indian couple. Throw in a redneck coal minor from Kentucky and his bride, a pair of male models/former drug addicts, a pair of cheerleaders, a pair of beauty queens, a dad and his gay daughter and your token Caucasian
hetero couple and you have a definitely more balanced group. Uh oh, they forgot the Hispanic couple. I see letters in their future
My hopes of “Survivor’s” imminent demise were premature. Based on the fact that “The Amazing Race” seemed more poised for racial strife than Survivor was, and not a peep was uttered, I felt as though I had gotten sucked into the stunt with everyone else. So unless there is a major drop in the ratings, I am sure that I am stuck with it for a while longer.
I guess I should count my blessings that nobody around here is watching “Dancing With the Stars”.
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