It was the week of reality TV finales, or the week where I usually plunge a stake into my afflicted television and bury it in a lead-lined coffin. But this year the gods – perhaps hoping to spare me from such suffering – sent me a terrible case of gastro flu, thus missing the entire week while quarantined in my bathroom playing an exciting game we’ll call The Fart Lottery.
However, catch-up apps mean you can no longer escape television’s most pointless week by having your internal organs flee their nearest exits. I’ve thus spent the last few hours being Clockwork-Oranged by my tablet, so that we can celebrate and breathe a sigh of relief that it’s all passed: a written flush at the end of TV’s gastro.
Big Brother
BB finally came to an end, the show that combined the pervy snoopiness of a Facebook terms and conditions with all the excitement of house arrest. The final was pretty underwhelming, with the usual reality TV send-off. As soon as Ryan was announced the winner, someone tipped a bucket of glitter on the studio crowd and then the credits rolled. “Go on. Bugger off!” it seemed to suggest. As an ending it could only have seemed less celebratory had Sonia Kruger gutted a whale on stage.
With another “regular guy” winning after weeks of our screens being filled with the garish, grating, flamboyant and outspoken, you wish they could have just skipped to the end. Clothing seemed to be largely forgotten in this argument petri dish, making me wonder if I’d tuned in to an underwear catalogue’s live reimagining of Lord of the Flies. If you’re still needing your fix of BB, try Snapchatting a prisoner while a stranger shouts at you their poorly written diary. Thank goodness it’s over.
Beauty and the Geek
Beauty and the Geek has also joined the great broadcasting trash heap in the sky. Pretending for a second that I don’t know that the whole point of this show is so that we may have a good laugh at other people’s expense, even then I would struggle to explain what the possible appeal of BATG is.
Geeks get the alarmingly superficial message that they have to set fire to their wardrobe and re-augment their entire face if they’re ever to be accepted. Take that CSIRO: your nerdy knowledge is worth nothing in this world unless it’s got abs and designer stubble.
Speaking of which, where’s the BATG series where the geeks are women? Another reason I hate the show: it perpetuates the gender stereotypes of yesteryear.
The Beauties study hard only to have the final reward them with a deciding quiz about their partner’s biographical details. That’s like opening a maths test you’ve studied months for, only to to be presented with the question: “If Jenny has 30 more shells than David, and David has twice as many as Susan, what’s your friend’s favourite restaurant?” Nothing reinforces the message that beauty won’t get you everywhere like a quiz focusing on nothing more than pets and favourite colours.
Dancing with the Stars
The only final worth watching was Dancing with the Stars. It’s still not my cup of tea, but at least it is a cup of tea. (I don’t know what I’d say for Beauty and the Geek: “It’s not my forgotten trough of curdled, windswept milk?”)
I can understand the appeal: dancing requires skill, it’s often artistic, and it’s impressive to watch someone do it who’s not “a natural”, unlike Big Brother where the only qualification would be “being a natural at accidentally locking yourself in your own house”.
At nearly two hours long, it stretched a little, but at least it spent that time showing me people exercising and demonstrating a talent.
And for the final, final flush ...
As if sensing the rest of television was about to commit mass cultural seppuku, A Current Affair jumped right on board, deciding to do a special interview with pointless hair collective, One Direction.
I felt sorry for Tracy Grimshaw – One Direction looked tired and bored, their answers mumbly and broken. You’d have got more sense from a parrot that learned English by mimicking hashtags. It was as exciting as watching someone drop a sponge off a bridge – not that there could be any convincing the 1D fans (aka Directioners) of that.
