Tuesday, March 19, 2013

This is Embarrassing

Okay, I'm having a great deal of trouble getting my mind around this. Really. This is even off the scale for reality TV. . .

In watching a youtube video I stumbled across the the promo for a show on ABC called Splash. Apparently the object of the show is for people, vaguely famous people apparently, to fall into pools of water. At first I laughed, but then it made me kind of quiet, and then it just made me sad.

Here's from the site:

"This ABC Series will show Celebrities perform complicated dives from various heights into an olympic size pool. Each contestant will be assisted by professional diving instructors during the show. The dives will be from heights as high as 10 meters with increasing levels of complexity, including somersaults, backflips, and other combinations."

Ahhh. Its just sad. The day of Cool is past, long, long past . . . .

4 comments:

Anthony Simeone said...

Sad, sad indeed. I was over reality TV after I finished watching the first season of Survivor, years ago. But now, based on shows like this coming around, the genre should die. Seriously, they're starting to really reach for concepts. It's time for it to go away. The stuff they're coming up with is so, so lame. Amish Mafia? Gypsy girls? High diving D-list celebrities? Trailer park people? Bye bye.

DesignZombie said...

I just saw an ad about this on YouTube and thought the same thing. The thing I did not understand was: why did Youtube think I would enjoy that advertisement? (since it was linked to another video)

Spiralbound said...

I abandoned watching TV about a year or two before the first Survivor show started, thus my experience in TV-watching pre-dates the rise of the incredibly misnomer'd "reality TV". Since then I've very occasionally watched the odd show and have consistently seen the style of reality TV take over other genres of show as well. IMHO, pretty much everything on TV is varying degrees of crap with very few exceptions.

The sitcom has nearly disappeared, dramas are now just prime time soap operas with bigger budgets, crime shows simply have no limits to how low they'll stoop to grab your attention, so called "news" shows are more focused on parading a circus of travesty than factual reporting. Even supposed highbrow scientific shows are dumbed down pseudo-science sensationalistic dramas with an apparent target audience of adults who've suffered extreme head trauma, rendering them with the intellect of a 12 year old and the critical judgement of a 4 year old.

Sadly, this format is working for network after network. This doesn't say much for society in general. Frankly, by comparison to the drek that currently fills most TV programming, a show about (sorta famous) people learning to perform complicated aquatic acrobatics is a step UP. Note, this is not an endorsement as it is ONLY better by comparison - I'd rather read a book! ;-)

Troll Lord said...

Anthony, agreed they lost me on the reality tv, but i hung around for some clever shows like Rules of Engagement, and Big Bang. But little else. Not non-network tv has scored much better: Walking Dead, Justified.

Design, yeah, why did that appear on vids I watch? That makes me even more sad! haha

Spiral, very little in the news cycle is worth watching, if anything. The science shows are ripe with political messaging and as you said, not good science. And reality tv is anything but. Now drop 10 idiots in the ocean with a knife, a canteen and a can of beans and see how long they survive and I might watch that (no boat mind you). And strangely when i first read your post I thought you said "EAT a book" instead of read. And sadly I thought to myself "Yeah I would rather eat a book than watch these shows!" haha

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