Reality Bites

I am a certified couch potato… so if I am not reading a book you can definitely find me glued to the boob tube. Aside from the usual fare of action, drama, sitcoms, David Letterman antics from Late Show, news from CNN, and music from MTV. You will most likely find me watching reality game shows. I am such a couch potato and addicted to reality game shows that I even watch the lamest of reality shows like Beauty and the Geeks, Project Runway, and America’s Next Top Model. I even go to forums to rant and banter about my favorites and most hated participants. I spend time searching information in the net and even read blogs on end about my favorite shows. I have to admit it satisfies my intrinsic sense of curiosity and certain level of voyeurism. It is very interesting to watch how people react to situations when they are put into some sort of fish bowl slash pressure cooker. I could even imagine myself doing the same thing when put in similar situations. Although I watch these shows purely because of the entertainment value I get from it I can not deny that I do learn something from it as well. Like what I said earlier I tend to imagine myself in the shoes of these hapless participants and would probably commit the same mistakes. Hopefully I will learn from their mistakes so that when I am put in a difficult situation I will bungle less than necessary.

Having said all these you can’t blame me if I am extremely excited these days. The big guns of reality game shows have started their season last week. There are even two local franchise reality game shows currently being shown in the archipelago.

Let me first begin with the two local shows, Pinoy Dream Academy of Endemol and ABS-CBN and Philippine Idol of Fremantle and ABC 5. I am an ardent believer of the Filipino’s musicality and artistry. I think the Philippines have an unlimited resource of talented, artistic, and creative people. That’s why having these additional talent slash reality shows is always a big welcome to showcase the vast musical talent we have. Pinoy Dream Academy (PDA) is similar to Big Brother which is another reality game show from Endemol’s. All the aspiring participants also known as the scholars are housed in one dormitory cum academy and are being monitored 24/7. A viewer can even subscribe to the 24/7 telecast inside the academy and dormitory. Needless to say the scholars are under the scrutiny of the public from the time they woke up to the time they are deep in slumber. The selection process was pretty extensive in scope. There was not only a nationwide audition conducted for the search but there were also some selected major cities abroad where there is a large Filipino community where auditions were held. I think this was done to give the show a “global” flavor. The 20 scholars will be trained to become better performers. They will undergo physical fitness training, vocal/music training, dance lessons, and “performance training”. Each week will culminate with a recital. During the recital or gala show there are invited jurors from the entertainment industry. These jurors will make a shortlist of four scholars who have not performed well during the gala show. These scholars are then nominated for expulsion. After a week, one scholar will be expelled from this list. The other 3 scholars that will be saved are chosen either by the public audience thru the highest text votes, by the mentors assessment, and by their peer‘s selection. During the first expulsion last Sunday the scholar expelled was Gemma Fritsgerald a 20 year old native of Australia.
The headmaster of the academy is the Ateneo educated and Australia based member of the APO Hiking Society Jim Paredes, the vocal coach/musical master is Moy Ortiz , the dance master is Maribeth Bichara, the fitness coach is Gretchen Malalad.

Most of the scholars are in their late teens and early 20’s. At the first week of their internship the scholars are having a pretty easy life inside the academy. I was a bit disappointed because the trust of the show delved too much with the personal lives of the scholars and not on their potentials as a performing artist. I think this is also the reason why most of the people in the local entertainment industry are “stars” and not artists. More often than not the focus of attention is the personal life of the person and not their artistic talent. However, on the third week of their stay in the academy the mentors became more strict. The mentors became more quick to reprimand the slackers. I particularly enjoyed watching one of the added “mentor” at the third week of the competition. This particular mentor teaches grammar, diction, etc. He divided his class between the “global” scholars, which are basically half breeds or pinoys born abroad. These kids hardly speak Pilipino, and the goal of the mentor is for them to learn speak Pilipino without the annoying foreign accent. The “natives” on the other hand are taught to speak English with the correct diction. The teacher is quite strict and downright forward with his comments and pretty quick to nip in the bud any signs of noise or inattentiveness.

I have high hopes for this reality game show because I am hoping that the show will really harness the potentials of these very young aspiring artists. Hopefully there will be less emphasis on budding romances. I hope ABS-CBN will finally quit the extremely outdated formula of pairing up pretty young things for a love team.

The next show on my list is the long awaited Philippine Idol, I am not pretty sure if this should also be categorized under reality game show, but since Emmy puts it under this category so there it is. I thought all along that this was just another talent show, but what the heck I am a huge fan of the American version whichever category it falls and am extremely excited with the local version. The auditions were held nationwide Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. There were even some kids who came from different parts of the globe just to audition for the Philippine Idol. There was even this kid who came straight from the prestigious Julliard school of Music but unfortunately did not make the semi-finals cut. During the initial auditions alone I can not help but marvel at the immense wealth of musical talent our country have.

The local version of Randy, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell were Francis Magalona, Pilita Corales, and Ryan Cayabyab. The master of ceremonies is Ryan Agoncillo. This week the
final twelve contestants were completed and some of my early favorites did not make it though. However, the final twelve are still a good bunch. One thing I noticed during the semi-final round was some of the contestants were either close to tears or crying unabashedly when interviewed by Ryan after they have performed to ask people to vote for them. I don’t know if this is because Filipinos are very emotional or either very poor and see stardom as their only ticket out of poverty. Unfortunately, most of the contestants who made the final cut were from De La Salle and Ateneo. This Saturday is the first performance night of the final twelve and I can’t wait to be knocked off my seat with the immense talent I am about to witness.

Last Saturday I saw Survivor Cook Islands. I was excited to see how the new social experiment would pan out. As many of you may know by now the 20 contestants were divided into 4 groups base on ethnicity. The Caucasians belong to the Raro tribe , the Latinos form the Aitu tribe, the African Americans are the Hikki tribe, and the great Asian Americans are the Puka tribe. The Puka tribe won the first immunity challenge and I am not surprised. I figure they’ll end up winning one challenge after another. I truly believe that Asians are the smartest people in the world. The only problem with Asians is that we are a very gentle folks and most people tend to take advantage of our kindness and gentleness.

I am very impressed with the Koreans in the game, especially Yul Kwon he obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University and Juris Doctor Degree from Yale University. Definitely I am also rooting for the two Pinoys in this game, Jenny and Brad. Actually as long as an Asian won this Survivor series I will be very happy.

The next reality game show currently showing on the local TV network is my all time favorite The Amazing Race. This show never fails to stir my interest. Although I am a couch potato I am a closet globetrotter wannabe. I find traveling very interesting. However, I lack the financial resources necessary to fulfill this dream. Hence, I have to satisfy myself for the time being with watching The Amazing Race. This reality game show is very exciting, the fast pace and diversity of contestants, events, cultures that you get to see in the boob tube is the closest thing to the excitement that I figure I will get when I get to travel myself. Usually early on in the show I already know the teams to root for. I usually root for the elderly couple, parent and offspring team, and the funny gay couple. However, this season there is no elderly couple and no parent and offspring team. The gay couple in this season don’t seem funny or outrageous enough so for the time being I have decided to root for the Asian team.