COLUMN: As close to reality as it gets.
With shows like Survivor Africa, Big Brother, Love Cruise, Temptation Island, The Real World and even Road Rules, we are inundated daily with a barrage of reality.
I, however, constantly wonder how near reality they truly are. I mean, when I watch shows like Love Cruise, people are trying to hook up and destroy all at once. They hook up with one person while looking for “love” and then they try to destroy everyone else for money. This sounds like organized crime gone prime time.
But this got my mind to working. If the producers down at Fox and ABC are looking to cash in on the whole reality TV thing, why don’t they go for the true reality show? The top one on my list is Starving Students. I think this would be a true hit as it is as close to reality as you can get.
Here is the premise – the cast and crew take over a dorm floor for one semester. The contestants are chosen from the oodles of wannabes who come to the casting call. Once they are cast, their daddy’s credit card is taken away. Their savings vanish and they cannot keep their car (if they have one.)
For the next 16 weeks, their lives are taped for posterity and aired on television for entertainment. Each day we would watch them as they tried to create new and exciting cuisine with the staples of college life. Such dishes as Ramen Surprise or Mac and Cheese Mystery Casserole would be the top of the list. And to think that once the show was over, a whole cookbook of college recipes could hit the market. Oh the media tie-in and the money that would just be rolling in.
Once a week, someone would have to get voted out of the dorm. This would be done by placing a fake Tupperware bowl at the end of the hallway and one by one, the group would walk to the end and drop a name, written on the back of a used 3-by-5 card, into the bowl. The unlucky student would be put on academic probation and forced to move home with his or her parents for the duration of the semester.
We, the collective audience, would also get to be treated to the daily grind of classes, homework and even the soap opera like lives of students who are “looking for love in all the wrong places.” But what joy it would be to see the girls who hate the guys, but really like the one who is quiet and “cute.”
So what more could I want, FINALS week. Just think of the ratings. The trailers would be something like, “Who will be the last one standing? Hours of blood and sweat cannot prepare them for the inevitable. Tune in as test week commences and may the gods have mercy on their souls.”
The winner of course would have to be someone cute and vivacious and who scored high on the final tests. She probably was the one who made the most alliances with both the players and the teachers, because that is how reality TV works.
Of course the second season would have to spice things up even more. Perhaps a bigger university, or throw in some people who are hired by the producers to keep the students up late at night, get them to drink copious amounts of adult beverages or even draw them away from the safety of their dorm and make them fall into the spiral of love and treachery. Professors from hell could be added to bring the game to a new level as well.
The winner could receive their degree and a cash prize and be done with school. The losers on the other hand would be consigned to eight years of school and student loans to pay for the entire experience. Plus they would not want to show their faces at any normal university so they would either slip into obscurity at some small technical school in Liberal, Neb., or they would end up on MTV as a host of Spring Break or something.
In the end, reality TV only offers an escapist look at what is true and real. I guess I will just tune in everyday and see what is really going on in life.
Justin Berry is the Features Editor of The Utah Statesman. Comments can be sent to features@statesman.usu.edu