Reality TV Roundup

While this upcoming week is arguably the big premiere week of the fall season, this past week also featured a number of season and series premieres. This post is about 3 of those. Now, if you’ve looked at this blog, you should know that I’m kind of a reality TV junkie. You’d have to find all of the negative elements of the genre and bunch them in together to a reality show in order to really turn me away (Cough cough Big Brother 8 Cough cough). So I’m basically here tonight to discuss the premieres of Kid Nation and Survivor on CBS and Beauty and the Geek over on the CW, which I will not forgive for canceling Veronica Mars.

Lets start out over on the eye network with Wednesday’s premiere of Kid Nation. Now, I’ve read all the controversy about how the show is exploiting child labor and how kids scalded themselves with hot cooking oil. And I’ve also read how CBS is trying to have its cake and eat it too, saying that there was constant adult supervision but also that these kids were separated from adults for the entire time. But, having now watched the show, I don’t really care that CBS was trying to play both sides of the fence. Because, even if there were adults swarming around behind the scenes (which there obviously had to be, unless you had kids running the video cameras and such), the show really is about the kids ingenuity and them all finding their place in society and just trying to improve it the best they can. And everyone seems to be taking it seriously. I wasn’t a kid that long ago, and I absolutely get where these kids are coming from. I mean, granted, the show is trying to cast the kids we like and the kids we don’t like. And they did force them to participate in an inane Survivor-like challenge to determine social hierarchy and in-town pay, but it was at its core about these kids and their attempts to make something that would work, and so I say kudos to CBS. You have me watching.

Continuing on CBS, Thursday saw the premiere of Survivor: China, the umpteenth incarnation of CBS’s reality stalwart. Last season had its good and bad moments, but was, for the most part, not entirely memorable. In fact, earlier today I couldn’t remember for the life of me who won. I just looked it up and went “Oh yeah, that was last season.” That being said, so far, my hopes aren’t particularly high for this one. Yes, they’ve put them in a possibly exciting new location that’s actually man-made. And yes, this is one of those seasons where they don’t get any of their belongings, only the clothes on their backs. But still, a majority of this cast is just seemingly sinking into the background. Casting is the key to these shows; it makes or breaks them. When Survivor has the right cast, it can become must see TV, but so far this one isn’t doing it for me. But, if they continue getting rid of my most hated castaway every week like they did this week, I may just be tempted to stick around. But I’ll watch anyways, for a while.

Over on the CW this past Tuesday, my favorite televised “social experiment”, as they love to call it, started up again, Beauty and the Geek. This season, there appear to be some really good geeks and beauties. There are also some more aggravating ones (Too perky Jasmin and annoying LARPer Dave come to mind, who, coincidentally, are paired together. Here’s hoping for an early exit). But I’m most concerned about this season’s twist, the inclusion of one male beauty and one female geek. Now, I’m all for this concept, to prove that there are just as many girl geeks out there as well. But I don’t think that this co-ed twist will work for two reasons. One, a lot of the challenges were fashion or beauty related, which a male beauty is not going to necessarily work well at. So I think they may be at a kind of unfair advantage. But secondly, this show was all about how these beauties could learn that these dorky guys are actually really good people with inner beauty and all that jazz. So the inclusion of a hunk, to me, stands to block these geeks from the beauties, because, lets face it, they don’t cast these women because they aren’t superficial. But yeah, it could be interesting.

But I’m a reality TV junkie. So I’ll keep watching all of these shows. If anything of note happens, I’ll talk about it. So keep an eye out for reality shenanigans, because I know I will be.