Real Games
Part of what has been fascinating about "reality" TV
over the past year is how fast it is making cliches.
What seemed fresh only a year ago with Survivor
is now being repeated in various ways. On the one
hand, this is disappointing because, once again, the
networks are transforming anything remotely
interesting into pre-packaged fodder. But on the other
hand, we have the opportunity to watch the process in
action. Most TV has been cliched for so long that it
really can be intriguing to watch the networks destroy
something new.
Stumbling over each other to repeat the success of
Survivor, both NBC and CBS have premiered their
new reality game shows on the same night. NBC's
LOST takes six strangers, groups them into
three teams of two, leaves them with only a cameraman
for each team and very little money, and sets them on
a race to figure out where they are and how to get
back to the Statue of Liberty. CBS reverses the
logistics, but ends up with something very similar.
On The Amazing Race, eleven teams of two start
in New York and weave their way across the globe.
Their goal is to complete challenges and avoid
elimination -- two elements that NBC's LOST
does without. Perhaps taking a cue from
Survivor, both shows use "foreign" countries as
playgrounds for their U.S.- native contestants.
LOST is more creative in this enterprise.
Although it is a game, the show leaves the contest to
the participants. Once NBC drops them in the desert,
they're left alone to see what will happen. Of course,
we know that producers are an international "911" call
away, should anything go terribly wrong, but for the
most part, the contestants are left to their own
devices. Yes, the cash prize drives the show, but it
also leaves open the possibility for unscripted
interactions. Unfortunately, the producers can't leave
well enough alone. Whenever we start to take an
interest in how one team is trying to get to the next
town without being able to speak the native tongue, a
narrator (Al Trautwig) comes on to tell us that that's
what they're doing. We're never allowed just to sit
and watch, because the show compresses what could have
been a full season's journey into three episodes. To
be honest, what disappointed me most was finding out
where the contestants were dropped in the first half
of the first episode. For a show called LOST,
they got found pretty quickly.
The Amazing Race is much more like the reality
TV we're used to. Each episode is filled with
challenges so that nothing too spontaneous can happen.
This makes the show less interesting on a conceptual
basis than LOST, because it becomes little more
than The Price Is Right, set in the great
outdoors with bungee cords. But, unlike LOST,
the producers of The Amazing Race seem to know
what they're doing, delivering three or four good
challenges each week. They want to make sure that
"amazement" and excitement abound, in the same way
that lighting and music help to make The Price Is
Right more exciting. To that end, The Amazing
Race is packed with the cliches that work; it has
more bickering, more drama, more comedy, more
everything, than LOST.
As the networks search for the next cliche that'll
work, failures can often be much more interesting than
successes. While everyone watched Richard Hatch scheme
his way to $1 million, the boring cooperation in the
Big Brother house offered a fascinating
critique of the genre. Producers certainly didn't plan
it that way (and have made sure that nothing of the
sort happens again, by revamping the second season
into an indoors Survivor). But their initial
failure to incite dramatic conflict made it abundantly
clear that this is what these shows are really after.
In the same way, The Amazing Race is the
slicker production here and seems destined for higher
ratings. Even so, I'll stick with LOST, despite
its flaws, to see what I can learn.
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