Whisperings from Whispered Pearls

There are certain reality shows I like and continue to watch, mostly Survivor and The Bachelor. I like them because they provide what really only podcasts provide in the media landscape: truth.

From the first moment when Sue Hawk gave the blistering speech to Richard Hatch on the first season of Survivor ten years ago, TV was changed forever. And hopefully, those who make TV realized that while scripted shows are wonderful, it is the scent of the real that people really hunger for.

Some shows: Survivor, The Amazing Race and sometimes The Bachelor, seem to adhere to “let’s leave it real” as their esthetic. The problem with these shows, and adding “writers” to them, is that then you are manipulating reality, diluting what was already pure. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that makes me not want to watch them anymore.

Last season, The Bachelorette had a particularly heinous twist (obviously some producer came from The Amazing Race or some similar show) where the bachelors were running obstacle courses and crap to get to the one woman to date. It was absolutely horrible. I hope they never repeat it. It was a big misstep.

Another (and yes, we have a trend now) is manipulating the ending. And I’m so pissed off about it, I have to write about it.

Let’s revisit, shall we? In that very same Bachelorette edition, there was a guy named Ed that we didn’t see very much of. Certainly didn’t see Gillian (the Bachelorette) falling for him in any way whatsoever. There was big drama when suddenly he was “called back” by his work. In other words, it was his job or his new girl (potentially).

Even then, I thought: come on now. You know ABC vets these people six ways from Sunday, and they have to sign papers which state: during the next (six or eight) weeks, I have enough free time to pursue this thing till the end. Certainly. It was so in EVERY PREVIOUS Bachelor/Bachelorette version.

But apparently some (obviously male) producer decided that wasn’t dramatic enough. We couldn’t just see Gillian falling in love with Ed (which, btw, we didn’t). We had to have this big reveal. He leaves. Shocker! He can’t live without her, he comes back. She takes him back. (Which comes from out of nowhere.) And another contestant whom we had seen her falling in love with, Reid, gets bounced. And HE comes back, heart in hand, to actually propose. But no, unbeknownst to us, she had somewhere along the way (not in the edited and shown version of the show) fallen in love with this Ed guy.

Dear God, put a woman on this thing!

What we want to see (speaking for the women out there) is some poor schmuck (male or female) gradually falling more in love with someone among the candidates. So that at the end, when they propose, we can all go: “Awwww” because that’s how it’s supposed to be. That is what fell into place right before our eyes. We are lucky to have seen it. They are happy to have it. Swoon.

Like Tricia and Ryan. Though we didn’t really understand it, it was obvious she liked him. That was beautiful. (And they are still married.) Is that so hard to put together? Come on, producers!

No, apparently they like this “finalist towards the end suddenly gets called away by his/her job, then comes back because she/he is too in love.” Yawn. I know it’s a scripted manipulation. You know how I know? Oh, other than they did it frikkin LAST SEASON TOO? I’m currently watching The Bachelor episode where he is frolicking with his chosen final three. AND THEY CUT TO ALI, the girl who had the job angst on the last episode, in her apartment. CUT TO HER. Being all angsty. “I can’t stop thinking about Jake.” Make me throw up.

Oh, lemme guess. She comes back, disrupts the final rose ceremony and he bounces someone else to keep her. Maybe he’ll end up marrying her, like Gillian did with Ed last season.

For me, from this moment on, this is no longer fun. Any more than being manipulated in real life is fun. No thanks, Bachelor. I hate this.

I admit it. I’m a girl, and I’m addicted to The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

It was one of the reality shows that hooked me from the very beginning, with its attempts at classy romance. Lush locales, pretty clothes, elegant people. I loved it.

I’ve watched nearly all the seasons of both shows (all episodes). Didn’t care for the Navy guy (who chose no one in the end) or the blond guy (I think second season.) Other than that, I was pretty much there. I’ve seen their twists and turns, but by and large, it was predictable. And we LIKED THAT.

It’s fairly simple, really. Classy women wanna see a classy woman (or man) choose another classy man (or woman), and take them on elegant dates. Simple formula. It works. Don’t mess with it.

That is one thing that reality shows should have learned from the first season of Survivor, and we know from Twitter. Leave people to themselves, and they’ll surprise the heck out of you. Just thinking of that speech of Sue’s from the final Tribal Council gives me chills now.

The Bachelor series has been fairly free from controversy. Other than the guy picking the girl, then dumping her last season, and re-picking the previous girl, in front of a national audience, there wasn’t a whole lotta drama. (Don’t worry about the dumped Melissa. She went from tears on The Bachelor, to finalist in Dancing with the Stars, to a cushy gig with ABC News.)

People thought that whole thing was fake. To me, it seemed very very real.

This season, though… We have a wonderful new Bachelorette, another dumpee from last season’s Bachelor. By and large, she seems pretty straightforward and smart. Except for this whole nonsense with Wes. The Twitterverse is also starting to talk about how this was a producer manipulation, and not real. “Cause how could she be that stupid?”

For those of you not hanging by your TV every week, here is the basic gist. Wes is a musician. With a band. His deal for going on the show is to promote his music. He doesn’t give a crap about the girl. In fact, he has a girlfriend back at home in Austin, TX.

Now, what’s really fishy about this right from the start is that you know the producers vette the crap out of every contestant. Checking and rechecking and rechecking again so that no craziness shows up when they least expect it.

Either the producers are really losing their touch this season, or they planned all this. My roommate even thinks that Wes isn’t a “guy,” that he’s actually an actor. Because what we we’re seeing is Wes, trash talking the girl (Jillian) to his buddies in the guys’ house, then being all nice to her and telling her there was no problem. It’s brought up MORE THAN ONCE, the reveal actually spans three episodes.

And, bizarrely, she KEEPS him for two of those three episodes, finally getting rid of him this week.

When he’s trash talking her, he says stuff like he’s only there for his music, he doesn’t care about the girl. He just wants publicity for his band. When he takes Jillian on a hometown date, there’s Wes’ band. SURPRISE!

Now, I will say this: to the producers’ credit, they showed as little of his music as possible. Didn’t even really show his band (thankfully). They made the camera shots ALL about Jillian. Still. Wes was there.

It felt very much like Wes was manipulating Jillian, but it felt just as much that the producers were manipulating us. And it’s really never felt that way before. Not since “Johnny Fairplay” lied about his grandmother on Survivor has an audience (and show) been so manipulated and used.

Wes is in the limo, boasting about how he got to fourth place, while having a girlfriend. That’s something to boast about? That you AND YOUR FAMILY lied on national TV? That’s gonna sell records for you? And sell out your upcoming tour? Really? You think so?

I dunno. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but the people I see and interact with in social media are all about transparency and truth-telling. That’s the currency we trade on these days. So while everyone is steaming about what a colossal jerk Wes is, I think I’m a bit more mad about this season’s producers, who added all kinds of hokeyness this season: from the Amazing Race-style treasure hunt to the weird foot fetish guy to this guitar-playing Wes.

Just give us our Bachelor, straight up. No muss, no fuss, and especially no Wes. Thanks.

In reference to this article:

http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/02/28/should-traditional-media-fear-its-social-sibling/

I have this to say.

Listening to some of the voices online at the minute, it’d certainly seem that way. Yet history doesn’t bear these opinions out.
TV would kill radio.
DVD’s would kill movie ticket sales.
CD’s would kill vinyl.
The Internet would kill traditional media.
Music downloads would kill traditional retailers.

Maybe I’m looking at the wrong picture, but I still see all of the things that are meant to be dead by now. If anything, many of the doomed mediums are thriving and actually performing better than their replacements.Obviously, he isn’t seeing what I’m seeing here. Way back in the day, people used to sit around their radios and watch them. TV came along, with all its fancy pictures, that sure ended. Sure, people continued to listen to radio, but it was in a very different way than it was previously. The dominant media force became the TV.

As far as music, the only people listening to and enjoying vinyl records are the diehard collectors, who probably even have a few 78s in their collection. For that matter, CDs aren’t as prevalent with the youth of today as digital music. In case you haven’t noticed, buying online, listening on your iPod or computer, has replaced what was previously.

And last I checked, Tower Records has gone out of business. You can argue that there still are record stores around, but it’s all a question of time and priorities. The fact of the matter is that 20 years from now, everyone will be buying their music digitally, and not even think about what they have lost by not having vinyl around or brick-and-mortar record stores, for that matter.

Until recently, DVDs pretty much had put a serious dent in traditional movie ticket sales. Why go to a theatre, when you can sit at home with your friends and watch on your big screen TV, with the surround sound? People are going back now, interestingly, because of the recession, it is posited. But moviegoing has become less of a “we must do this in a theatre” proposition, and more of a “let’s get together with our friends at the theatre tonight” kind of deal.

What is succeeding in theatres is what cannot be done at home: big explosion type movies, great special effects, 3D things. Moviegoing has become quite a different thing than it was even ten years ago.

So, really, the only one left in that list is “The Internet will kill traditional media.”

Look around, my brother. For my money, newspapers are dead and dying daily. People get their news, their sports scores, their entertainment coverage, their crossword puzzles, their classified ads–everything they went to newspapers for, they now get online.

People who work at traditional media can piss and moan about how they wish this wasn’t so, and how it just “couldn’t happen.” It’s already happening. There was a story yesterday about how Hearst wants to “save newspapers” with a Kindle-like device on which people could read their daily paper. Are they kidding? Newsflash to Hearst: I already have such a device. It’s called an iPhone.

The only newspaper which seems to really embrace the changes and be adapting to it (the New York Times) is there, in an iPhone app, and I happily read it there.

Furthermore, the other item that traditional media–radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, I’m talking to ALL of you–seems to be blissfully ignoring is that people are CONSUMING information quite differently than they used to. Traditional media is busy arguing whether or not newspapers are dead, while people seek their information through Facebook and Twitter and whatever news aggregator sites they prefer. I like Digg. Radio is arguing about whether or not terrestrial radio is more viable than satellite while we are seeking out music through online stations and our iPods. TV is scratching its head about why viewership seems to be down everywhere, and doesn’t seem to notice how popular Netflix is, how many of their TV shows are being watched and sought out online.

It’s happening, people. Keep your head in the sand as long as you want to, it’s already changing all around you. And for us, the consumer, this is a good thing. Podcasts give us a breath of fresh air, where people speak truth and are free to swear if they want to. Why wouldn’t we seek that out instead?

If traditional media wants to save any vestiges of what it’s got left, it needs to quit bellyaching about whether or not it’s dying, and figure out some way to get those journalists and those radio DJs and those TV anchors onto the web, and find a viable way to pay them to do what they do so well, but do it THERE.

It’s not that we don’t want it anymore, we just want it in this new format in our time-shifted patterns, and wish to hell they’d quit staring at their vinyl records, and figure it out already.

Are you a Bachelor addict like I am? C’mere, let’s discuss it, just us girls… What really goes on behind those closed doors in those “fantasy suites”? How does true love triumph over rigid ABC censors? Tune in to the next Whispered Pearls to hear Michelle’s thoughts about the real down and dirty of “The Bachelor: London Calling.”