{"id":29739,"date":"2012-08-21T12:10:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T17:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29739"},"modified":"2012-08-21T10:00:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T15:00:18","slug":"reality-tv-bites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29739","title":{"rendered":"Reality TV Bites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I try not to watch a lot of TV. \u00a0I&#8217;ve got other things to do.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ll cop to it; I&#8217;ve whiled away the odd idle hour watching a few things on TV.<\/p>\n<p>And while nobody asked me, I&#8217;ve got a few observations.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Operation Repo<\/strong>: \u00a0I&#8217;ve known for a while that the show was scripted, and not remotely &#8220;reality&#8221;. \u00a0But the latest round of plot lines make me wonder if they&#8217;re not hoping to be picked up by Lifetime TV.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hard Core Pawn<\/strong>: I don&#8217;t think I saw more than an episode or two of &#8220;Pawn Stars&#8221;, the grandaddy of the &#8220;how much is all this crap worth?&#8221; genre. \u00a0It never really grabbed me much. \u00a0But I like the Detroit-based &#8220;HCP&#8221;, if only because, scripted or not (and it&#8217;s just gotta be scripted), I can so totally relate to Les Gold&#8217;s quiet slow burn with his endlessly-feuding children. \u00a0It&#8217;s given me the<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hotel Hell<\/strong>: \u00a0<em><\/em>If you were waiting for a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsey,\u00a0<em>Hotel Hell<\/em> is the show for you. \u00a0I, however, was not waiting for that Chef Ramsey.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Top Shots<\/strong>: \u00a0Not even sure if the show is on the air anymore. \u00a0But watching it, I noticed first that the plot, format and pacing were exactly the same as <em>Project Runway<\/em>,\u00a0only with marksmanship instead of fashion. \u00a0Then I noticed the used exactly the same incidental music \u00a0&#8211; between segments, to foreshadow things,\u00a0<em>everythin<\/em>g<em>.\u00a0<\/em>It is, from a production standpoint, literally\u00a0<em>Project Runway\u00a0<\/em>with guns!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Master Chef:\u00a0<\/strong><em>Master Chef\u00a0<\/em>covers the waterfront, from the sublime to the ridiculous. \u00a0Ridiculous: the spectacle of the two non-Ramsey judges (<del>Hector Alizondo<\/del> Joe Bastianich and <del>Flounder from <em>Animal House<\/em><\/del>\u00a0Graham Elliot) audibly wincing as they sing the praises of Wal-Mart steak, apparently prodded by a rolled up and sharpened wad of product-placement checks. \u00a0 On the sublime upside, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox.com\/masterchef\/bios\/contestants\/becky-reams\">Becky Reams<\/a><em>\u00a0<\/em>is the new Casey Thompson.<\/li>\n<li><strong>LIzard Lick Towing<\/strong>: On the one hand, coming up with new &#8220;home-spun&#8221; lines for Ronnie Shirley (&#8220;that lady was greasier than an undercooked burger in a fat guy&#8217;s underwear on a hot day&#8221;) has got to be keeping some good writers in work. \u00a0On the other hand, I give Amy Shirley another season of bodybuilding before she turns into Skeletor.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Combat Pawn<\/strong>: \u00a0They&#8217;ve done the impossible: taken one of my favorite subjects (firearms) and a reality-TV subject I&#8221;m slowly warming up to (pawn shop dramedy) and added excruciating tedium!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That shoudl do it for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I try not to watch a lot of TV. \u00a0I&#8217;ve got other things to do. But I&#8217;ll cop to it; I&#8217;ve whiled away the odd idle hour watching a few things on TV. And while nobody asked me, I&#8217;ve got a few observations. Operation Repo: \u00a0I&#8217;ve known for a while that the show was scripted, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29739"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29741,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29739\/revisions\/29741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}