Friday 7 October 2016

Australian Survivor 2016





I had forgotten, how easy it is to get hooked on a reality show! Most of the reality shows in Australia are those trashy, set up, Bachelor type shows, where no one really fancies anyone, throw in a couple of Bunny Boilers,
Someone hung up on their ex, and few dangerous blondes and you have got the ingredients of one of those lethal cocktails served to unwitting tourists on Kuta Beach, however the cocktail here is the joke on the viewers, who must be looking through the same dirty glasses you get at the Royal Hotel, in been not been able to spot, a show so blatantly re-shot, re-edited, it makes Kardashian robbery in Paris almost real.  

Way above all these shows, not only in production values, (almost as beautifully filmed as the BBC Apprentice) is Australian Survivor, a show that never worked in the United Kingdom, as the people were to too stupid to realize this was a game, and mistook this for something between John Fowl's “The Magus” and Club 18-30 holiday. Of course, it was trashed by the show I was on by ratings, but in reality (no pun) I would have rather been in Survivor than Big Brother.

The Island setting of Survivor, is so photogenic that a lot of airtime is spent, with beautiful shots of the coastline, crashing waves, restless seas, and far too many shots of crabs emerging from the sand, or some stone, or simply crabs walking sideways across the beach, with the back drop of nature, perhaps they (the crabs)are  most dangerous animal on the Island, apart from the contestants themselves.

The contestants, again some obvious casting, an old person, a black person, a pretty person, a semi hinged person, and a few narcissistic characters, and the typical background characters that you always know, that have something a bit special and unique about them, or let us be honest, some kind of material mental damage that has either been edited out or are following the number 1 rule in Reality TV, do as little as possible, not to be noticed, but as much as possible without drawing too much attention to yourself.

The edit of the contestants has generally been fair, as in this show, it is not about the viewers voting people out, rather than keeping them in, by watching the show in the first place. 

I cannot remember so far any singling out of anyone in particular for a poor edit, unless of course, they set themselves up for a fall in the single piece to camera interviews, where they all  have made boasts they cannot possibly substantiate, but that is the nature of the beast.

But we know these are set up and coached, don't we?

Those whom understand the genre will spot the various clues in the edit, who is going that night, but on the whole, no one has had a bad edit or can complain of the same, unlike other shows.

We are at the nuts and bolts end of the show, where the contestants are wondering if they might have over played their hands or they have made the wrong alliances without thinking of the consequences or end game, add to the mix the beauty of paranoia, and the $500,000 prize money will make the last few weeks interesting, and this is where the sleeper contestant will shine, the stronger contestants will now turn on each other, as they will be forced to vote out their perceived competition,
thus paving the way for the the sleeper to slip straight into the final, whether or not they have the popularity from the Judges, depends on whether or not they have been honest, and only one, so far has done that and that is Lee and this where lies the problem, and it is two fold, firstly as the commonality of most of these shows, the interesting characters or game players in Survivor tend to get voted out, earlier than they should, which means the person whom made you scream at on the TV, for being remarkably duplicitous has gone, which means you have to find someone else you love to hate, or in this case , this has to be all girl alliance, which will, mark my words, will implode horribly.

If you thought the fun and games have already started, think again, peoples true colors are just about to be exposed.