John Walker's Electronic House

Hey Paula – Bravo

Following celebrities with cameras is hit and miss. You can get great hits like Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D List. And you can get
unwatchable horror. And sometimes you get great horror.

Having seen a clip from the show on YouTube, I knew it had to be watched. With fingers interlaced over my eyes. I don’t care about her at all, neither her career or her private life. But I do find watching someone go insane on camera to be hugely entertaining. The mentally ill are sometimes funny. Paula Abdul certainly is.

Bravo are especially cruel with this, getting Paula to narrate the show herself on tape. So we get to watch her, clearly off her face, barely able to speak or stand up, and then have her calmly narrate that she was very tired and hadn’t eaten. When she spazzes out because her assistants brought the wrong colour shoes to wear on the plane, we get to see her explaining how important it is for her equipment to be correct. Her complete lack of shame or awareness of her appalling behaviour doubles up the horror.

When she accepts her award at a VH1 fashion show, she can barely speak, rambling insanely, while her publicist tells us how incredibly strong she is. The next day, due to do interviews for Fox affiliates, she’s apparently “not slept”. By the time she’s halfway through the interviews, she’s gone completely mad, babbling about dancing and shouting at random. When asked where she is, she replies on air, with no air of confusion, “I don’t know.” Her team frantically explain to the camera how she is missing sleep, while she can barely sit on a chair.

By episode 3 the team finally realises that perhaps their little diva isn’t just overly sleepy, what with the entire American media pointing it out to them. Then we get to see her production team trying to fix it. Meanwhile Paula continues to narrate with no sense of reality. She’s due to receive the woman of the year award from somewhere, but she can’t enjoy it because the “accusation of me being drunk and drugged up on television has made me seriously sad and maddened.”

It should be so horrifying it’s unenjoyable. However, I’m a sick enough puppy to find plenty to enjoy here. Not least of all her declaration that,

“I’m tired of people not treating me like the gift that I am.”

Deeply peculiar news story, following on from the debacle I mentioned would get bigger and stupider back in March. Channel 4 are being forced to investigate claims that Bear Grylls’ Man Vs Wild is faked. Something I mentioned a couple of days back.

I had no idea it was also shown on Channel 4 – normally Discovery crossovers go to the Beeb. Apparently called “Born Survivor” in this isle, the list of complaints an alleged crew member took to the Sunday Times are nothing more than the information that’s been in the public domain for a long time, and listed on the Wikipedia page about the show.

Channel 4 are responding by saying they’ll investigate, but also making the rather silly claim: “The programme explicitly does not claim that presenter Bear Grylls’ experience is one of unaided solo survival.” Except of course, it explicitly does, with each episode beginning with Grylls’ announcement that, “I won’t have much with me. Just a knife, a water bottle, and a flint to make fire. A camera crew will follow me every step of the way.” In a couple of later episodes he points out that the crew will not become involved unless he’s in danger of death.

The point remains, it doesn’t matter. Of course it’s not real – it cannot be. It’s simply impossible, unless all his remarkable feats are also possible while carrying expensive and heavy camera equipment, along with all the necessary spare tapes and dozens of replacement batteries. And of course, if that were the case, they should flipping well be filming the camera guy, and not pussy Grylls and his empty pockets.

What’s most frustrating is the lack of effort by anyone in this “news” story. That no one at either the Sunday Times or the BBC bothered to read the Wiki entry before pontificating is humiliating. What’s even more annoying is that they never will, and the story will only ever have begun here.

Hey though – you got the exclusive here, newshounds.

That’s proper survival, rather than survivor.

The best channel currently broadcasting has to be Discovery US. With Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Man Vs. Wild and Survivorman, they’ve struck upon an excellent format for something midway between reality, documentary and entertainment. The latter two are the focus here, as they go head to head in their most difficult task yet: suriviving being written about on my blog for seven minutes.

Both shows feature a survivalist showing you how to not become instantly dead when stranged in dangerous conditions. The major difference is the filming – Survivorman has star Les Stroud do all his own camera work (apparently), while the far better named Bear Grylls takes a two-person crew with him on his adventures. And both are deeply problematic.

Man Vs. Wild

BEAR GRYLLS. That’s the name of a hero. Or a gay porn star. But Bear is a hero, and his private life is his own. Far more dramatic than the Survivorman it’s clearly mimicking, Bear is helicoptered in to the middle of a volcano, or parachutes to an Arctic glacier. He then has only three days to find a road or town, and only his wits, a knife, some flint, and a production team to help him.

Bear’s ex-British Forces, ex-Foriegn Legion, ex-Justice League action hero status is contrasted by his youthful appearance and lack of shouty behaviour. BUT, he does jump 15 feet and then tuck and roll. Awesome! Which is where the programme starts to fall apart. With at least one camera and one sound guy, when you see Bear stuck in a ravine, having dangerously swum underwater only to emerge in a dead-end gorge, it’s extremely cool to see him just about manage to climb his way out, defying falling to his death. Leaving you wondering rather whether he just left the others behind to die, and picked up a new crew. It becomes increasingly ridiculous when he takes impossibly dangerous routes, climbing down sheer faces of rock and then swimming across alligator-infested rivers, as the crew films him disappearing. There’s no choice left but to realise it’s faked. There’s no doubt Bear is achieving these dangerous feats, but there’s very little likelihood that any of them were necessary.

Highlights are definitely his hunting. You’ll see Bear suddenly leap to the side and down, and stand up holding a water buffalo. Well, close. But a turtle, and indeed a tree frog. And remember, with the tree frog, “You have to make sure the first bite kills it, or it will wriggle all the way down.” The turtle you kill by stabbing it in the neck with your knife, then just roast it in its shell. And who cannot love seeing a man parachute into the rainforest, get caught in the trees, absail the 60ft down only to discover he’s got 50ft of rope, and then cut himself down and fall?

It seems that the show is well researched, with crews checking the areas out for a couple of weeks before Bear goes out there. It’s all common sense, of course. You don’t want the presenter dropping dead midway thorugh the series. But at the same time, it’s hard to relax and enjoy it, constantly conscious that you’re being deceived.

Survivorman

Les Stroud isn’t really all that heroic a name. This is going back a bit, to 2004, but it’s come to attention again thanks to Man Vs. Wild basically stealing its format. Stroud gets a lot of kudos for filming his own endeavours, and thus adding a lot more credibility to the reality of his situation. Whether in the Canadian woods or the Arizonian desert, his gentle approach shows him doing the very basics to stay alive, starting fires, building camps, and, well, starting another fire. Peculiarly food doesn’t seem important at all, appearing to last on some cashew nuts, beef jerky and two snails for seven days. The realism kicks in with the claim that if he doesn’t make it to civilisation within seven days, the producers will swoop in with helicopters to look for him.

Most strange is his apparant inexperience. He seems to be genuinely bewildered about what to do, hurting himself building the most simple traps, and there’s little logic to his attempts to survive. Day 1 in the Canadian woods is spent building a shelter, with day 2 then spent, um, doing apparently nothing at all, skipping straight to the evening. Clearly there’s a lot of trouble taking seven days of footage and editing it to 45 minutes, but the selected moments seem to accentuate boredom, rather than death defying skill.

A big problem is the contrast between Les The Survivalist, and Les The Narrator. Gently chatting to the cameras he drags around, he mentions that he’s a bit hungry. Then in his voice over he near-shouts, “Time is running out. I HAVE to find some food soon to fight off STARVATION!” The false drama mocks the calmness of the programme.

It contains the gross-out we need, like chomping down a live (tiny) scorpion. But then somewhat loses its cool by having him burst out laughing and saying, “I can’t believe I just did that.” It’s also a little odd that he claims to take no equipment with him, and yet produce things like pliers from his pocket. Um.

But again the problems come about with the filming. Why does Stroud need two cameras with him, when the over-produced Man Vs. Wild manages with only one? He’s remarkably diligent when setting up his shots, arranging two angles on whatever he’s doing so they can be cut between. And thus making it feel very much like there’s no urgency to his survival. It gains so much by demonstrating the honesty of his isolation, and then loses it all when you see him having successfully traversed a river, throwing his stick into the water, and then disappearing into the woods beyond. Are you leaving that camera behind, Les? And what about the seven other times this happened this episode? What’s going on?

The seeming dishonesty is far worse here since it goes to such lengths to claim otherwise.

Conclusion

It’s tempting to give the props to Survivorman for portraying a much more genuine sense of survival, and a much more practical programme for learning anything from. But the win has to go to Man Vs. Wild. Sliding down sheets of ice, leaping off cliffs, picking up alligators – who cares how fake it is? What he’s doing is so incredibly cool, and so educationally useless (despite the show’s premise being to “show you how to survive”). In the end, the crew being there can make it seem more tense. His panic as he tells the crew to “GET DOWN!”, or “CLIMB A TREE!” as monsters come close is thrilling. Also he climbs 30ft trees with no branches just using a shoelace. And he’s called BEAR GRYLLS.

The similarities between Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen are astonishing. I’ve no idea which came first, but it’s very clear which is better. Both begin with a group of contestants, mostly working chefs, with a few wild card amateurs with culinary skills. And both have them compete in individual and team challenges, with an elimination each episode. The similarities continue. Both shows are filmed in the very same way, intercutting frantic preparation scenes with narrative private interviews. And both use the same cheat here, having the contestants clearly pretending to be describing the action as if in the middle of it, but obviously long after. (In the case of Top Chef, it’s obviously days later, while Hell’s Kitchen feels much more authentic, with sobbing, etc). These are astonishingly vacuous, having each moment reiterated by one of the competitors blankly stating exactly what you just saw. They’ll be told they have to cook something of a particular colour, and then it will cut to Chef X saying, “We were told we’d have to cook something of a particular colour. I was really excited/nervous/vacant about this.” Each has two challenges per episode, the first being a short, particular task, the second being preparing meals for customers. And finally, in the final showdown, both programmes have the last two chefs pick a team of sous chefs made up of the most recently eliminated competitors. That’s a lot to have in common. So what separates them?

Top Chef – Bravo

It’s remarkable that of the two near-identical formats, it’s the Bravo show that feels far less classy than Fox’s swear-fest. This might be to do with the grotesque product placement. Each episode is bloated with advertising, from the endlessly repeated “Kenmore kitchen” in which they cook, along with the suppliers of the equipment, right down to the manufacturor of the tubs they store the food in. Challenges are called “The Nestle Chocolate Challenge”, or even something to do with Kraft bottles of squeezy sauces. All of which is completely at odds with the level of cuisine the programme demands. Season 2 tried to address this for the first half of the series, weakly requiring reinventions of childhood classics, or cooking for children, but ultimately judging them on their ability to create something edible despite the supermarket ingredients they were forced to use. The chefs’ disgust with having to cook with chavvy crap really can’t be ideal for the paying advertisers.

Perhaps the biggest fault, and this really stands out in light of Hell’s Kichen’s far more intense nightly service, is the lack of importance behind the elimination challenges. Cooking a meal with fewer than 500 calories for some fat kids isn’t really going to highlight the highest calibre of culinary power. Asking them to prepare food for a fetish club is just tabloid. These contestants aren’t learning anything, with the programme’s main judge refusing to help with the cooking in any way. It’s about what you already know, meaning it’s fairly obvious from the start which four or five will make it to the end: the ones who are already very good.

It’s still fun to watch the judges hating all the food, and the carefully picked group of fifteen characters are designed to create friction. But ultimately the futility of progress makes the whole thing feel hollow. Top Chef, please pack your knives and go.

Hell’s Kitchen – Fox

Based on the UK version of the same programme, Gordon Ramsey’s show is by far the more cruel. But far, far better. And this is primarily due to the prize. Top Chef awards the winner a new kitchen, $100,000, and a feature in a magazine. Hell’s Kitchen gives them a high paid job as head chef in a big Las Vegas restaurant. The winner has to be really good, and at the start none of the contestants are anywhere close. That pressure on Ramsey makes for a much more compelling viewing.

Being on Fox, Ramsey’s usual barrage of swearing is replaced by a barrage of bleeps, but with all the f- and s- sounds left in for our listening pleasure. And it’s aggressive. Each episode sees not only the competitors trying to impress Mr Grumpy, but also surviving his wrath. While Top Chef only teams the chefs up occasionally, Hell’s Kitchen keeps them permanently in two groups for the evening services, where the restaurant opens to one hundred customers. They compete to provide the better service, and later in the series, the better menu. But for the majority of evenings, the pressure of preparing fifty meals to Ramsey’s standards ends in the kitchens being closed down and half the customers leaving unfed.

But through the pressure, you see incredible change. It seems too mean, and Ramsey is clearly a stroppy dick, but it really works. There may be nicey-nice ways to achieve the same, but screw them, they’d make terrible television. And I very much doubt they’d work in the short few weeks of the show. By the end, Ramsey really has a chef he could trust with a kitchen – something that was very clearly not an option at the start.

It is, of course, equally daft. And never more irritating than when Ramsey is attempting to step outside of his two personas – furious head chef and affable chum – and become tense TV show presenter. This leads to staccato sentences delivered with grandeur, but containing only the most empty statements. And the phrase, “For the… first time… in Hell’s Kitchen…” over and over and over. And peculiarly, almost never for the first time. Calming down a bit, and recognising they have a good thing without trying to shout how good their thing is throughout, would make it a lot more tolerable.

However, the main reason it’s great is thanks to it being the only honest reality show when it comes to elimination. It’s obvious that all the shows should see the contestants leave with, “Get the fuck out of my kitchen,” but there’s only one that does.

The term “reality TV” in the UK just about begins and ends with Big Brother. Shows like Pop Idol are more traditionally considered game shows in our primitive culture. But the US has solved this with the delightful term, “unscripted TV”. The sad truth is, I’ve found myself increasingly compelled by the genre, midway between honest enjoyment and morbid fascination. I cannot watch the British equivalents – they’re so watered down and under-produced that the attraction, the ridiculous scale and overblown presentation, is entirely gone.

American Idol

I’ve never managed to go beyond the first couple of audition rounds, and that’s telling. America’s most popular show is entirely reliant on the depths of mediocrity that more normally embodies British competition. Finding pleasure is tough. Those that are of any standard are tiresome poppy crap, mimicking the tiresome poppy crap that bloats the charts. Those who are there because they’re “wacky” get far too much attention, while just sucking. The only pleasure comes from those who believe themselves in the former category, but belong in the latter. Watching the over-confidence crash and burn is excellent. But only excellent until you start to feel really dirty, revelling in the disappointment of others. Once these people have been filtered out, it just becomes a tedious karaoke show, and completely unwatchable.

Next Best Thing

Winning for its title more than anything else, this is a peculiar American Idol rip-off is a mix of a celebrity look-a-like contest and impressions. To succeed, you have to not only look like your chosen celebrity, but sound like them. Which is utterly idiotic, and hence quite fun. The coincidence of not only happening to have the same shaped head as someone famous, but the same larynx, makes a mockery of just about everything. And yet, there’s some surprisingly good talent. But again, as the format dictates, it’s only the audition rounds that count for anything. Here laughing at the hopeless feels a lot less cruel. Generally they’re people who have been told by their mates that they look like someone off the telly a few too many times, and have bought into it, resulting in some hopeless floundering on stage. But once someone’s successful, you’ve seen their act. Watching the guy who looks and sounds like Howard Stern look and sound like Howard Stern for a third time – not so much (even if his second appearance had him point out to a large audience that this was NBC directly ripping off Fox). And so it ends up being stand up vs. singing, and thus like every other show.

Last Comic Standing

The last of the American Idol-styled shows I’ve been able to tolerate takes the format to stand up comedy, which is something I’m much more at home with. Rounds were set across America along with Canada, Australia and the UK. And what a deeply peculiar programme. Rather than being for purely amateurs, the contenders range from lunatics who lined up for two days before filming, to people with failed sitcoms in the 80s. I first realised something was up when Arj Barker contended in the UK round. A man I’ve seen on TV, especially Edinburgh shows, a lot. Then it became more apparent that many of the competitors were long-established stand ups, taking part purely for TV exposure. This clearly confuses the producers of the show, now in its fifth season. It’s churned out successful comics who have gone on to TV careers and so on. But it’s starting with successful comics who have had TV careers and so on. So they begin to claim that their show will find the Best Stand Up In The World – a ludicrous claim since any currently highly exposed would obviously go nowhere near a talent show. In the end, the show is destroyed by trying to do far too much in 43 minutes, with each of the early episodes featuring not only audition rounds, but the regional finals in front of an audience. This means that you get to see approximatedly twenty seconds of each act, and thus get nothing of their skills and talent.

The reason videogames are awesome.

Obviously after his operation, Dexter hasn’t been alllowed outside. This has caused rather a lot of consternation, and some very stroppy episodes, not least over his mad determination to only poo and wee outside. Despite having a litter tray, Dex has decided that it’s far too undignified, and he’d rather hold it all in all night and race out in the morning, than just pee in the tray when he wants to. Dumbass. This led to quite a battle of wills after two days with no access to the outdoors, the desperate complaining becoming more frenzied as he realised that holding it in was no longer going to be an option. Finally, he conceeded, and has been using the litter tray for the first time in months.

This hasn’t done anything to dampen the whining to get out. Now pretty much back to full health, and therefore able to jump up to anything that might aid his escape bids, the fresh wound on his belly is of no concern to him. Moreso to us. Monday was apparently the last straw for Dexter. Somehow, by Monday morning he was gone. All means of reasonable escape were shut or locked, leading to much confusion. Windows we didn’t possibly think he could use were the only available means. When he came back in mid-morning, I shut the front door, and then he went mad with the ludicrous imprisonment. The contents of the kitchen windowsill were pushed into the sink, the downstairs toilet was viciously attacked, toothbrushes and razors scattered across the floor, my shaving foam chucked down the loo. Catching him in this act led to confrontation and shouting, and his eventual sulking on a high shelf in the conservatory, where he, defeated, slept.

Last night, while I was out, apparently a repeat of the escape bids was had, with half an hour spent clawing at the kitchen window, attempting to tunnel through glass. This action suggested that his movements might not be quite as brilliantly executed as we had first thought. How can one so thick manage to complete these daring escapes? But despite this, this morning the same impossible escape has been executed.

This time it’s more mysterious. A potential route out the downstairs toilet window was left yesterday. This morning, no such easy avenues were unblocked. The conservatory was closed off completely, the downstairs windows all shut, the only open window in the house in Jonty’s study, but the door was closed. I remember playing with him in the kitchen at 2am, then going to bed. And by the morning, no sign of him. And still no sign by now.

Looking around outside, terrified that the idiot might have got out of an upstairs window and fallen to his grisly death, I noticed that the plastic bin was filled with a foot of water. (Please know now that this isn’t going anywhere hideous). Inside was a white floating orb with strange swirly patterns coming from the side of it. Like a giant poached egg. I emptied the water out into the hedge, which has apparently become impervious to liquid, repelling it all straight back onto the patio. Included in its contents (look away now, squeamish weaklings) was a decomposing squirrel. The white orb being the astonishing bulbous rotting results of its decomposition on its side. Smell: rather bad. But before I saw it was a squirrel, all I saw around the side of the bin was the end of the tail. And for one terrifying split second, I did wonder.

The squirrel is now buried to conceal the smell in the best way possible, but the water, and its millions of tiny squirming companions, still lie on the patio, my attempts to wash them away with buckets of water mocked by our newly resilient hedge. I’d suggest they’d dry up in the July sun, but, well, maybe they’ll get washed away in the July monsoons.

So no sign of Dexter, one disgustingly dead squirrel, and millions of mammal-eating beasties. What a great start to the day.