Careful with that axe, Eugene!

Like bad hair days, I seem to be having bad keyboard days when my keyboard absolutely refuses to let me type in peace. Actually, it is quite boring to go on with the story of My experiments with my keyboard. However, I would urge the curious reader to read my first blog – The Piper…for further insight. So here I am trying to make hay while the sun shines, writing out my blog while my keyboard is still on the helpful side!

At home, the TV is a viable means of entertainment, unlike, the Narmad common room where TV programs are limited to intellectual stuff like MTV’s extended chitrahaar or perhaps some contemporary gult rock. So with the regained remote control freedom, I was channel surfing this morning when a delay in the test match between India and Bangladesh, made espnstar telecast some city leg of the Dream Job- the hunt for Harsha’s heir (if I may say so!). I must admit, I like the way the espnstar guys handle shows. I mean John Dykes, Jason Dasey with all his CNN pedigree and of course our own Harsha Bhogle, not to forget Alan Wilkins and his Wimbledon-strawberry-and-cream-analysis with the redoubtable Vijay Amritraj. However this article is not aimed to be a eulogy to those guys (A Few good men…as they like to be called!). It is about the mushrooming of the TV Reality Series shows.

TV has been, among other things, a favorite of all those debate organizers who seem to run out of ideas. They are totally safe in throwing in a TV-boon or bane topic. The contestants are perfectly content to give all those clichéd arguments, while the judge finally rules that TV is indeed a necessary evil and hands over the best speaker trophy to the person who shows the best vocal and histrionic skills, for there would be nothing to choose between them on the basis of ideas presented. Coming back to the reality shows (coming back to life?!), the current reality is that they are very real and are a part of our lives (Gosh! Dubya would have been proud of that statement, but I shall not delete it, as this happens to be a reality article! I am not deleting anything. I am letting the article stay as I type it, correcting only the spelling mistakes) .

I am not going to bore you here (that’s if you are still reading) with all the trivia and statistics about reality shows like the first reality show on TV or who has won the most money in a given show. I shall however tell you what I feel about them. The show that probably set India on this reality craze was KBC hosted by the impeccable B. There were other shows before but none of them offered a crore to the winner! The green notes that happened to remain happy, despite it’s owners,( even the ones with digital watches,) being sad managed to set the shows rolling (wonder what DNA would have said about this). So you have the weakest link torn apart with pretty caustic remarks, you get to sms who you think would be the next superstar, vote for the national idol (if not for the PM), hunt for the next nightingale, the next pace sensation and of course for the next Harsha Bhogle. There are of course those survival shows, not to forget the sleaze.

That such reality shows have bred a whole new channel for themselves, is reason enough to suggest a qualitative evaluation on whether or not these shows are of any entertainment value, if at all they be reckoned necessary. The channel in question is, ostensibly devoted to promoting action and adventure in real life. The programmes dished out leave a real bad taste in the mouth and of course every one of them is preceded by a warning that asks viewers to take it all with a pinch of salt! They ensure that fortune favours the brave, offer you a half-minute appointment with dame luck, make you believe that the one thing you must fear is fear itself, and after all the make-believe reality they just say ‘Now see This!’

There was this friend of mine, a ‘bright’ chap, who liked these shows very much and the channel particularly for all the mind-blowing reality that it offered!(sic). He once said he liked that fear show because there were people made to drink maggot milkshake(sic) and eat tarantula sandwich and at the end of it all there were females who puked!(like he wouldn’t!).

If for people, that is entertaining, then I must say we have lost all sense of sense itself. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not for those silly soaps that portray Utopia and assert that it is real, nor am I for movies of a similar genre. What I feel is that the reality shows have been pulled a bit too far. To think that seeing a Eugene or a Mary struggle their way through some deserted ghost-house (but for the omniscient TV camera and perhaps the whole crew filming it! Nah! It won’t be reality then.) with a 15th century axe for ‘safety’ would match the excitement of a Sampras-Agassi five-setter just because the former is as live (and not deferred live as in DD!) as the latter is,is downright stupid. If the shows go on it must then mean that there are those desensitized morons amongst us who are happy to cheer those greater fools who have chosen to participate in them. All I could say is ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene!’