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 .   .   .   .  .   .  .   .  .   .       "Jason's Voyeur TV with GUTS!"
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  . . .  .   .   . . .  . . .  . . .                by Jason


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        So speaking of all of those new voyeur TV shows (which I wasn't, but
 I am now), am I the only one who notices just how vapid, unoriginal, and
 uniformly uninteresting they are?  Judging by the ratings, I am.

        I'll admit, I tuned into the first season of Real World on a semi-
 regular basis, mostly because there was nothing else on.  I also watched the
 second season in reruns every now and then.  I EVEN used the third season as
 a catalyst for my daily catatonia therapy.  I'll even admit that it was
 fascinating and engaged the attention of that part of my psyche that is
 normally telling me set stuff on fire.  After 5 billion seasons in every
 smelly sphincter in the U.S. and the U.K., it's a little old.  Then came
 Road Rules, where a bunch of Real World-like people are crammed into a
 Winnebago and traveled around the country solving a variety of challenges
 that any second-grader could figure out.

        That was 1992.  The major networks, quick to adapt as always, have
 finally put out their first copycat.  Yes, CBS, the perennial sickly little
 brother of network TV, threw its hat into the ring of voyeur shows with
 Survivor, a show I recognized immediately as a rip-off of Road Rules.  Then
 came Big Brother, an imitation of a German show which was an imitation of
 the Real World.

        In spite of all of the hype, it's nothing new.  They have challenges
 as inane as setting up dominos, bicycling, or holding your breath.  On
 Survivor you at least have the bonus of watching the people slowly starve to
 death, but other than that, it's Road Rules with old, unsexy people.

        Oh, what I would do if I were in charge!  First, screw that voting
 people off crap!  In Big Brother, for example, I wouldn't put any food in
 the house.  After a week, I'd drop a box of donuts through a chute.  There
 will be one donut for everybody.  The twist is that one of the donuts is
 POISONED!  Can you imagine the ratings?  People will be ringing their hands,
 their eyeballs sticking to the screen, wondering who will get the POISON
 donut!  When one of them dies, his/her corpse will be the only food in the
 house... until the next box of donuts, anyway!
        
        Alternately, I can take a bunch of hardened criminals and put them in
 the house.  Naturally, we'll remove anything that can be used as a weapon,
 but if a few get killed early, big deal.  Every week, they'd vote for two of
 their fellow "housemates."  Those selected will fight to the death in the
 Combat Pit Room!  The ultimate survivor will get a pardon.  Won't THAT be
 great?

        Ok, if those seem a little stiff for you, I can at least think of a
 few more interesting things to do to shake things up for my prisoners-I
 mean, contestants.  How about taking a big box full of WOLF SPIDERS and
 dropping them on the sleeping people?  How about hiding COPPERHEADS in
 various places in the house?  How about some shenanigans with that little
 pug they just added to the house?  I can see it now: "Ladies and gentlemen,
 we've secretly infected this dog with RABIES!  Let's watch now as we
 introduce it to the house and the zaniness begins!"  I'd use a Rottweiler
 instead of a stupid pug, that's for sure.

        Survivor lends itself to less creativity.  After all, they're already
 at the mercy of nature... or at least they would be if the network hadn't
 virtually sanitized the entire island.  I would leave all of the poisonous
 berries and venomous creatures.  If there weren't enough such creatures, I'd
 add some.  I think I might use a tribe of headhunters to raid the group
 every three days to take away a member and kill him/her, posting the severed
 head on the beach for all to see.  I wonder if headhunters charge by the
 head or by the hour.  The last one to live gets to go home!

        Remember how those PETA freaks bitched about eating rats and that one
 chicken that had an eye scratch?  Well, I wonder how they would feel if we
 released a pack of ravenous wolves without warning into the Big Brother
 house?  What if we released a tiger or two on the island of the Survivors?
 I bet PETA would like that unless one of the wolves got indigestion.  Then
 they'd be bitching about the quality of the contestants.

        I missed my calling.  I really should have been a television
 executive.  Admit it!  You'd watch those shows!  You'd be logged on to the
 convict-cam 24 hours a day in hope of watching a brawl!  You'd buy Big
 Brother Brand Donuts in the hopes of getting the one in a million donut
 poisoned just like those on the show!  You'd be first in line for Jason D.
 Steele's Survivor: Death Valley Spectacular!

        Of course, maybe I'd just stock the house full of models with the
 sluttiest one winning.

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  .           anada 198                      by Jason  (c)2000 anada e'zine .
      
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