Famous Last Words

You know that Reality TV is in - when you find reality shows even on cartoon channels; when the quickest way of raking in those millions is by going public (not an offering of your fledgling tech startup but an offering of yourselves on a reality show); when your boss at work starts sporting a Donald Trump hairdo and keeps saying, ”This is yooge!”; when kids refuse to take baths because they are playing Survivor; when your friend insists that you refer to his engagement party as the Final Rose Ceremony; when Chinese restaurants start offering Fear Factor specials; when your roommate living on a graduate student stipend dreams of doing a ‘Jai Millionaire’… OK, let’s not get personal but you get the point.

The latest bestseller, “How to Make a Reality Show for Dummies”, says that the creator of a successful reality show has to perform three very important tasks. First, get a video camera. Second, lock up a set of contestants in a house or an island. Third, have a weekly elimination ceremony. While the book has detailed notes on how to perform the first two tasks (like, eBay is a good place to find a cheap video camera; and when you lock up the contestants, basically make sure that you’ve sealed all their escape routes), it is surprisingly brief and vague on the third.

The elimination ceremony, I think, is what makes or breaks a reality show. A good elimination ceremony should be elaborate (so that it can be frequently interrupted by advertisements that cost more than the GDP of a few banana republics) and should also employ some symbolic gestures - like not giving a rose in ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’, extinguishing torches in 'Survivor', consigning their voodoo dolls to fires in ‘The Real Gilligan’s Island’, tearing up and burning their million dollar checks in ‘For Love or Money’ and turning off the lights of their refrigerators in ‘The Biggest Loser’. In the ‘Biggest Loser’ show, obese contestants try to resist the Temptation Refrigerator and work out to lose weight. Each week a contestant with the minimum weight loss is eliminated from the Loser Lodge. And in a dramatic climax when the host discloses, “Sorry, you are not the biggest loser”, and turns off the light of his refrigerator, the hapless contestant breaks down crying inconsolably at his misfortune.

More than the symbolic gestures, again I think, it is the final punch-lines, the unforgettable last words that set the tone for a climactic elimination ceremony. Nobody does it better than The Donald in his show ‘The Apprentice’ when he pouts decisively, does the cobra with his palm, bares his fangs and hisses, “You are fired!” to a petrified candidate. One show that became famous solely because of the host’s last words is ‘The Weakest Link’. When the host had finished asking questions (Whose village is missing an idiot?) she would bark with palpable repugnance, “You-are-the-weakest-link, goodbye!”, and force the contestant to take the walk of shame.

Not all hosts have the presence or the pizzazz to carry out a dramatic elimination ceremony. Some are just informative like the host of the show ‘The Amazing Race’. With his trademark deadpan expression, he simply informs the final team in a monotone, “Sorry, you are the last team to arrive”. And equally pedestrian is the ‘Survivor’ host’s pronouncement after the tally of votes, “The tribal council has spoken. You are banished from the island”. Some hosts are plain unlucky because they don’t have much of a role in the elimination ceremony. The host of 'Bachelor' gets his token moment to sneak in a mere, “Bachelor, ladies, this is the final rose”. And after the elimination he gets another chance to put in a very polite and sober, “Ladies, take a moment to say your goodbyes”. Some shows get the candidates to eliminate themselves or each other, like the celebrities in the “I’m a Celebrity, Get me Outta Here” show. And sometimes even though the candidates have the choice to get creative, like the guys from ‘Elimidate’, after each round of wanton public indecency they utter a predictable, “All of you are fine ladies. We had a good time. But the name of the game is Elimidate and so I have to eliminate one of my dates”.

The observant reader might have noticed that clearly I don’t watch all these shows and have simply googled around for some dirt. The inobservant reader needs to stop watching that reality show and start paying more attention. Anyway, I did watch a promo of the new reality show ‘The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search’ that made me suspect that America was running out of ideas. The promo showed fifteen women, all wet ’n’ wild, each of them baring yards of a well sculpted midriff and each of them willing to do anything to be on the cover page. “I’m ready to play hardball”, revealed a particularly mean looking vixen. A caption appeared on the screen that read, “Time Magazine asks - Is this the sound of claws being sharpened”, promising viewers at least one round of clawing and mewing. And just when I started thinking that this show cannot not be a hit, the voice over continued in a baritone, “Who will be on the cover page of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and who will hear the dreaded, You-Are-Being (dramatic pause) Dropped”. “You are being dropped”? I tell you, this show isn’t going to last.