Friday, August 22, 2008

T - 40: No Escape from Reality

The show Alan Sugar was on is the UK version of The Apprentice. It says something about Linda and me that A) we watch the show religiously and B) we are quite adamant that Sugar is vastly superior to Donald Trump, who started the series in the US.

We hope for the worst for the villain-like contestants, and like wrestling fans cheer if they get their just rewards at the end of a show and fret if they somehow squirm off the hook and one of the good guys gets the flick.

In fact, the good guys on this show aren't all that likeable. They're the aggressive, self-centered sales and marketing types from Britain who, in real life, we have worked with too much and don't like at all. But, much like most political elections, you end up picking the best of a bad lot, and once you do that you end up cheering them on as if they were wearing your family's crest on the back of their jacket.

Actually, The Apprentice is a bit of a variation for us. I think you will notice a trend among our other favorite shows.

We love Masterchef, the BBC cooking reality show. We won't miss an episode of Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsey's cooking reality show. We are addicted to Top Chef, the US cooking reality show. Probably no surprise to know that, when it was airing, we were pretty well hooked on The Next Food Network Star, a cooking reality show.

We didn't care all that much for Kitchen Criminals, another British cooking reality show, but we watched it faithfully anyhow. By the end, we were really hoping that Laura, the lapdancer from Liverpool, would impress the judges and change her life from working the tables, so to speak, to running the kitchen. Alas, Harj, the doctor, beat her on the day. We're pretty sure it was Laura's salmon ravioli that did her in.

Which really goes to show how crazy it is to be watching these shows and convincing yourself that one contestant is a much better cook than another. They call them reality shows, but the truth is the audience can't really taste the food. The fact that we decide one is better than another must surely be a testament to either the cleverness of the TV producers or the complete gullibility of their audience. Apparently, the proof of the pudding is in the viewing.

Mind you, this probably makes it seem that all we do is watch cooking reality shows and the odd episode of The Apprentice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Next Tuesday we're down to six girls on America's Next Top Model. I think the tall model is a lock to win it all.

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