Shows with a lost cause
Saturday 14 February 2009 - Filed under Life Outside Work
To celebrate the BAFTA/Oscar season, I thought I’d do something remotely related on a personal scale: to award top four shows on TV with a lost cause. I wanted to do Top 5, which feels like a nice odd number, but couldn’t quite think of the fifth one. Anyway, here’s the ranking:
Number 4 – “Top Chef” and all other so-called competitive cooking shows: Viewers simply get nothing out of the viewing experience, not even simple recipes. These shows are best characterised by dubious judging and contestants who habitually and grudgingly utter swearwords every five seconds back in the kitchen. No nutritional value whatsoever, unfortunately.
Number 3 – “Survivor”: The best of shows on TV that teach the value of conspiracy, quietly stabbing in the back of teammates, and working one’s butt off not to gain trust or respect, but to gain “immunity”. May I suggest grown-ups should get productive in the real world and not in some tribal kindy?
Number 2 – “Heroes”: I hear those heroes with special powers collaboratively saved the world long ago, but the show must go on. Here’s how: simply invent new powers that are even darker and more destructive, season after season. There’s probably no other show currently on TV as suffocatingly evil as Heroes.
Number 1 – The top prize, sadly, has to go to Season 4 of “Prison Break”. Great theme, great actors, great screenplay, great ambience… but it’s been around for too long. Been there, done that, now the pivotal characters are made redundant with their mission reduced down to some cryptic game. If you take away survival instinct, suspense, and revenge from a great cause, you’re left with a lost cause. The reason I liked the earlier seasons of Prison Break so much was because the show elegantly illustrated how far human beings are determined to go to reclaim or protect the values they believe in. But now it’s time for Scofield and the team to retire and FOX thinks so, too. Another “showstopper” in my opinion is that Sofia Lugo, played by Danay Garcia throughout Season 3 and whom I thought was uber-hot, is not there any more. What a loss. Lost cause, indeed.
2009-02-14 » JK