Survivor: Technology Edition

Survivor is my one reality show addiction — I've been watching since its inception back in 2000 and 17 seasons later I'm still hooked. It's like comfort food, you know what you're going to get.

The PVR has been a great boon in allowing me to keep up with the show — I just set it and forget it, watching when I have time. Such was the case this past weekend when the season finale of Survivor: Gabon aired on Sunday. Except it got delayed by a football game and the recording is tied to the time slot and not to the program itself (why, I have no idea), so we missed half of the show.

Sigh. OK, we figured, we'll just watch it on demand. Rogers has been promoting that, so we'll pony up the $0.99 and get our fix. Ooop, after 24 hours, its still not available.

Sigh. OK, we'll go to the Survivor site and watch a grainy, streaming video version. Oh, wait, CBS is blocking Canadians from viewing any of their videos. Fine, off to Global, Survivor's simulcasting partner in Canada. Hmm, they don't even have the episode, just a promo video.

Sigh. OK, off to Hulu, surely they will have it online. Oh, wait, it's another site that geo-blocks Canadians. What are we, terrorists? Let's work this out, networks! When you sell a show to a foreign broadcaster, don't make the online rights a separate deal — insist on bundling them together. And if you can block Canadians, surely you can tag them so you only serve up Canadian advertising.

Sigh. OK, it looks like Rogers has gotten it together add added the finale to the on demand lineup, but oh no, the service is down and it won't play.

Sigh. Finally, it plays and we watch the finale 72-hours later, which is a letdown as I'd already seen who the winner was all over the interweb about 70-hours earlier.

I'll concede that a few years ago of you missed an episode, you we're mostly out of luck unless a friend had taped and saved it, so things have improved, but it seems the networks still have a ways to go before TV is truly personal.

More Real Than Reality

Survivor was on last night and I felt like checking if it was a rerun. Not even two months after Yul was crowned Sole Survivor another group of castaways are bickering on a beach in Fiji.

When did this happen? Last season there was a huge build-up over what turned out to be a non-controversial separation of the races. This season, nothing. I admit I haven’t been keeping close tabs, but the first I heard of it was Tuesday.

It’s too soon – it feels like I just watched the finale and now there’s more of the same old, same old. If you don't want to make the show appear formulaic, don’t run them back-to-back. Just ask Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Anyway, all of the contestants started together on the same beach instead of the four different tribes from last season. I figured keeping them together would allow for the tall poppies to rise and get cut down, but evil mastermind Mark Burnett had other plans. After supplying the castaways with tool and supplies to build a solid shelter and supplying them with food, on day three they were split in two teams for an immunity challenge. The winning team was allowed to keep the fancy beach digs while the losers were sent to a new location with next to nothing – shades of the current season of Apprentice. The ideas are running thin these days.

But that’s not the only deus ex machina on this “unscripted” reality program. Only two of the contestants actually applied to be on the show, while the rest were recruited from pubs, restaurants, MySpace and even the US Table Tennis Association website. I suppose it’s not a horrible revelation, but the manipulation of the storyline is becoming more and more obvious. Why not just bring in an improv troop, tell them their characters and let them loose? Hmm... I either need to call Burnett or Christopher Guest.

Reality Bites

Mark Burnett is a genius. When Survivor announced its 13th season this summer people were up in arms over the premise – dividing the contestants into white, black, Asian and Hispanic tribes. Critics howled racism, advertisers pulled out and executive producer Burnett was accused of putting together a cheap publicity stunt.

It was a publicity stunt for sure, but it was hardly cheap. People talked about the show, mostly negatively, but they still tuned in. And at the end of the run, the show was in the Top 20 for the season and Sunday’s finale toped the night when Yul Kwon won the title of Sole Survivor. I would have given it to Ozzie, but what can you do?

For all of the concerns that the show was trading in racist stereotypes, the issue didn’t really rear its head beyond a lot of posturing about “representin.’” The gimmick played out for a few episodes before the merge returned the show’s usual scheming and backstabbing. I’ve been watching Survivor since a fat, naked, gay Machiavellian named Hatch schemed his way to a million dollars and this season held its own with the best of them. That is impressive for any show of this longevity, let alone a reality show.

I can’t say the same for the recently concluded Amazing Race. I haven’t been watching the series, but this year decided to give it a try. While it was entertaining enough, I couldn’t help noticing how contrived the whole production was – more so than Survivor. Every time a team got a head start they were inevitably sent to some store or attraction that was closed for hours, allowing the other teams to catch up. And when a favourite team was about to be knocked off, they oh-so-luckily happened to be in a non-elimination round. (I’m looking at you, blonde beauty queens.)

But my current guilty pleasure reality show is a Canadian production called The Big Flip, airing on HGTV. Two guys attempt to renovate and resell as many Toronto homes that they can in a year. It may not sound exciting except for one thing – they keep screwing up. It’s not that they don’t do good work, but they assume everything will be simple and it keeps biting them in the ass. Homes cost too much, they sell them for too little, they tear down load bearing walls and they ruin heritage homes. I watch it purely for the schadenfreude.

Survivors Ready?

The 12th edition of Survivor, reality TV’s granddaddy, starts tonight and I’m actually looking forward to it.

I’m not entirely sure why.

I suppose part if it is the familiarity. You know how the show is going to play out and it is fun to try and figure out “the twist.” Much like watching a M. Night Shyamalan film, you know its coming and it’s not that hard to guess.

Of course watching people turn on each other and connive their way to the top while insisting they have told no lies and plunged no knives in anyone’s back makes me laugh. I’m still amazed at the faux hurt on contestant’s faces at tribal councils when they realize they got outplayed. Their only regret is they didn’t think of it first.

Says Jeff Probst: “In the first or second episode, there’s a moral dilemma for somebody who gets offered alliances by two different groups and finds themselves in the catbird seat. Ethically, [this person] is already conflicted and says, `I don’t want to betray anyone; it’s really challenging for me right now, but it’s the best position to be in.’ If you are ethically challenged, and you’re competing for a million dollars, what do you do? That question never gets old.”

Probst also said the show isn’t scripted, but we all know that isn’t exactly accurate. The survivors are carefully picked and placed together in an artificial environment where they are manipulated in Truman Show-esque manner. They are filmed the entire time and then days of footage are distilled down into under an hour of air time after producer Mark Burnett knows who wins. But other than that, it’s just like real life.

This year they are breaking up the teams into four at the beginning: old men, old women, young men, and younger women. Except they use the word “older” as a way to explain why 32 and 35-year-olds are finding themselves on those teams. Old my ass. Anyway, I suppose it’s a way to weed out a few players right off the get go, so I’m interested to see how it plays out.

So forget the Olympics, theses are the real Games.

Reality: Stranger Than You Think

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Who You Callin' Old?

With the announcement of its 12th season cast, the grandaddy of reality shows is in denial about its age. How else to explain the breakdown of the tribes for Survivor: Panama?

At the beginning of the show the 16 Gilligans will be divided into four tribes: Older Men vs. Older Women vs. Younger Men vs. Younger Women. And how seasoned do you need to be to fall into the older categories? The ripe old age of early to mid thirties. The two groups will include a 35-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman. Wow, who let the fogies out of the retirement home?

Anyway, despite the shows don't-trust-anyone-over-30 attitude, the idea of four tribes sounds interesting, forcing people to make personal alliances almost immediately. I think they should do a season where there are no tribes and every challenge is for personal immunity. Then we'd really see the long knives come out.