Survivor Heroes Vs. Villains: "Slay Everyone, Trust No One" - Martin Brown
Survivor invented the structure of reality show competitions, but its dramatic structure differs greatly from most of its progeny. The shows that come close to matching Survivor in quality or watchability—Project Runway, Top Chef, The Amazing Race, some episodes of The Apprentice—tend to show their competitors actively competing 95% of the time. Usually, when you tune in to one of those shows, you see people making dresses, cooking, racing or completing a task. The competition provides the show’s dramatic arc. Survivor is subtly different. Since most of the competition simply involves living with strangers on a deserted island, that’s exactly what comprises most of what you see. Challenges and tribal council provide the show’s dramatic arc, but they only provide about a third of the footage. Most of what you see on Survivor are vignettes of people living together on an island, and the strength of any given episode is contingent on the strength of those vignettes.
The other thing is that there’s no way for producers to have a clear idea of who’ll make it far and who won’t, the way there is with just about every other reality competition. Going in to those other shows, there’s a pretty clear idea of who the strong designers, chefs, racers and business-people are. With Survivor, there’s absolutely no way to predict how the social dynamics will play out. So a season is usually only as strong as its weakest cast member. More often than not, the weakest cast member will go far in the competition. Survivor has been saddled numerous times with a cipher making, say, the final four, and they’ve gotten no footage to be able to characterize them.
Or take last season, which received a lot of attention because of Russell—a Texas millionaire who burned his tribemates’ socks and dumped out their water on the first night, lied about being in Hurricane Katrina, and ran the show up until the final two (when he lost the vote, presumably because everyone knew he already had money.) The problem with the season is that there were absolutely no other compelling characters, so the producers hung the entire season on Russell’s shoulders. They thought they had one of their best seasons—or at least Jeff Probst did. I thought it was one of their weakest. Russell played an amazing game, but the show should be about the social dynamics of the group, and those were lacking. Take Russell out of it, and last season would’ve been Survivor’s worst.
But when you pick Russell up and put him in the middle of a strong group of competitors like those on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, he becomes immensely more compelling. The premiere episode was probably the best first episode in Survivor history. Two of the reasons for that are that there’s an incredible cast, cherry-picked from the previous 19 seasons, and that most of them came to play. When I decided to cover Heroes vs. Villains for TV of the Weak, I obviously hoped it would be great, but my predictions gave away that I secretly thought it might turn out like Survivor: All Stars, when most of the cast showed up just to be on TV again, and some of the weakest characters went the farthest. One of the most heartening things to happen in the first episode was that I was proven wrong.
90% of the cast of Heroes vs. Villains have distinct and interesting personalities, and most of them are bringing them to bear in their game play. There was already a good amount of strategizing right off the bat, some factions forming in each of the tribes, and a multitude of ways that the dynamics could play out. Plus, the gameplay lead to a good number of personality-driven moments—like heroes poised to play like villains, and the villains all thinking of themselves as heroes. This is the show operating at its best, and the result was a series of unfailingly strong vignettes that carried the full 2 hour episode: Coach and Jerri’s adorable/repulsive show-mance; Tom’s disbelieving stare as he discovered four wild chickens at his camp; Rupert’s failure to make fire with the help of flint, contrasted with Boston Rob’s success making fire by rubbing two sticks together.
Even the opening challenge exceeded expectations. In it, two teams of two race to dig up a hidden sandbag buried in the sand, and carry it back to the team’s mat. In the first match-up (well, the first according to the edit), Stephanie dislocates her shoulder, and we get to watch medical pop it back into place. Then, Rupurt breaks his toe in three places. In another match-up, Sandra unhooks Sugar’s bra. Not to be undone, she slips out of it and runs topless with the sandbag back to her team’s mat. Now, Probst talked about all of that in various places before the episode aired. What he didn’t mention was the best moment of the challenge: When Coach drags Colby, who is clutching onto the sandbag, all the way down the course to his mat, and gets his team the point.
The person ultimately voted out was incredibly satisfying, as well. For one thing, she admittedly hadn’t come to play—which would have made her dull to watch over the season. Yet, she managed to provide at least a handful of memorable moments for the show, even in her brief time on the island—like trying to cuddle with one of her tribe-mates, getting rejected, and then following him around camp anyway. If Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains can keep up that kind of quality with each episode—fascinating challenges, compelling vignettes, and a satisfying end—it’ll be a truly incredible season.
Lost: "The Substitute" - Zeb L. West
I have to say it’s a stroke of genius casting Locke as the nemesis in this final season. As one of the two powerhouse actors on the show, Terry O’Quinn is the best man for the job. But the real genius is in solving the storytelling problem of having the audience connect with a villain who has remained faceless for most of the story. The Lost writers are earning their Emmy by having a long-delayed character take on the aspect of someone who is (conveniently) already familiar to the audience! Which is a relief, because how many folks rolled their eyes when new characters were introduced in the season’s first episode? (I’m lookin’ at you Dogen and Lennon!) Jeez Lost! You’re supposed to be tying up loose ends, not introducing new subplots!
It’s also a stroke of genius casting Peg Bundy (Katey Sagal) as Locke’s love interest. While she may have been a little one-dimensional on Married With Children, she’s a great equal to Locke on Lost, and helps reveal a lot of his vulnerable aspects. Even though they can only truly be happy in the parallel universe where the survivors flew right past the island, it’s nice to see paralyzed Locke with a cougar who loves him warts and all.
At this point, I have many questions about balance. It was all well and good when blondes were with blondes and brunettes with brunettes, but what happens now that Jack is being held responsible for removing Sawyer’s love from the equation? Is it now necessary for Sawyer to take away the only thing Jack loves? (Kate, I guess… I mean, he could have done it on the pier...) If Sawyer were to try and kill Kate, would we then have a new set of rivals to replace Jacob/Nemesis? (I don’t really see how Kate could die, but this outcome would definitely support the blondes vs. brunettes undercurrent.
Other episode highlights:
· Bloody stigmata Jesus-boy whom Richard cannot see, but Locke and Sawyer can.
· A wild-eyed Richard Alpert, who Lock has been storing in a tarp, is running loose around the island, desparate to issue breathless warnings.
· Candiates have been nominated to take over Jacob’s job of protecting the island.
· Locke faceplants gloriously onto his lawn.
· Sawyer swigging Dharma whisky and listening to Raw Power on vinyl.
Although I might complain just as vehemently if exposition were dumped mercilessly into every conversation, I find myself often asking ‘Why didn’t that conversation just continue?’ For instance, Ilana is explaining to Ben why the anti-Locke can’t change shapes anymore. But instead of Ben getting down to business and being like ‘hold up a sec’, they sort of act like the conversation just ended, leaving the viewer with the question ‘why didn’t you just ask a couple more questions and get some vital information?!’ A simple question like ‘how the fuck do you know that, Ilana?’ would go a long way! And heck, it could even be followed up with a healthy ‘while we’re at it, wtf else do you know about the ‘rules’ of this crazy-ass island? While I don’t condone an expository infodump of every Lost mystery, I hope that the writers can find more clever ways to have these conversations end. It strains credibility for anyone on the island not to stop and challenge anyone who seems to know ‘the rules’ the moment they encounter someone with authority.
CONTEST UPDATE: Great submissions for the contest! Just to clarify the rules (read as ‘make them up as I go along’) I will be judging whether a Lost prediction is worthy of being considered. Anything implied by what I’ve written myself, or what has been made obvious already through fan sites, will be disqualified. If you see any bogus predictions, please feel free to call them out and I will weigh the evidence presented.
The Bad Girls Club: "The Puppet Master" - Tucker Stone
There was a considerable amount of effort expended in turning the most recent hour of footage into a regular episode of The Bad Girls Club, but don't be fooled: one thing happened, a fight, and that's it. Sure, there was a bit of humorous subplotting involving Annie & Kate, who stayed home sick while the rest of the cast went to Santa Barbara on a drunken road trip, and there was enough of a flashback-ing narrative to pretend the episode was about an early season fight between Kendra & Natalie, but at its core, the only thing the producers had to offer was a fight.
It was a pretty good one.
Having left the show for now, Flo's absence leaves the girls excited to put a new foot forward, to head out, to drink, to fuck, to party. Choosing to make said party a road trip, in minor hope that this will level Natalie's "I run LA" advantage, the girls have chosen Santa Barbara, and they plan to make a day of it. Due to Kate's bout with the swine flu and Annie's concerns for her own health--she has a cold--they stay behind, and throughout the episode, the cameras cut back to show them bickering. (Both girls have long given up on attempting to be friends, but their bickering rarely goes behind snide remarks, passive aggression and behind-the-back faces.) Prior to the Santa Barbara trip, Natalie and Kendra make a trip to "the hair store", where Kendra spends nearly five hundred dollars getting a new weave. (Natalie has been disgusted with the state of Kendra's recent hair choices.) After a minute or two of heavily edited footage involving Kendra & Natalie making time with a few of Natalie's sub-pro athletic friends, the trip finally begins.
The girls begin drinking early, wandering the streets of Santa Barbara and finding themselves the target of catcalls from various passersby, many of whom are enjoying the opportunity to vocalize their negative feelings about reality show stars. The girls eventually begin their first of what will become more than a few extended hide-outs in bars, sequences where they drink, grope each other, and dance alone. At no point throughout the episode are the four--Natalie, Kendra, Lexie or Amber--seen extensively interacting with non-employees, and the camera fails to conceal the withering looks of judgment thrown in their direction by everyone surrounding them. For whatever reason, Santa Barbarians do not share the tolerance for reality television that extends across Los Angeles, and they make no attempt to hide it.
Seed One: You're A Real Fine Woman When You Back That Thing Up
Kendra's make-up brush is in the bag she's sharing with Natalie, but when Natalie discovers that Kendra is going to loan the brush to Amber & Lexie, she becomes strangely disgusted, and her refusal--based on the mistaken assumption that Kendra is loaning the other girls Natalie's personal make-up brush--sends the girls outside of the bar, where a lopsided argument begins. At first, Kendra is attempting to argue for why friends should loan each other make-up brushes, but upon realizing that Natalie's reactions are built around a "my thing, not theirs" reaction, she becomes confused. It's not Natalie's make-up brush, it's hers, and there's no argument to be had. When Natalie finally understands the miscommunication, she stubbornly refuses to apologize or calm down. The two end up pushing each other, and the girls are scolded a bit by a security guard.
(At this point, the heavy hand of production makes an appearance, mixing this security guard moment with the police intrusion that made last week's previews--Natalie is taken aside by police officers to get a ticket for violating open container regulations, but based off the background architecture, this happens somewhere other than the bar the security guard was at. Later in the episode, after the cop sequence described below in Seed Two, the girls are seen leaving the bar before the open container violation stuff occurs, making this episode the most clumsily edited the show has ever had.)
Seed Two: These Pigs Want To Blow My House Down
You can't drink in the street, and when you do, and the cops are right there, they're probably going to give you a ticket, especially if you flaunt it in their face. Natalie likes to tempt fate, so she ends up embroiled in one Life's Most Revealing Moments. Safely put, Natalie is in that group of people who responds to police officers with what she probably imagines to be some kind of homage to Joan Crawford, because nothing puts a cop in his or her place like trying to irritate and belittle one's way out of a ticket. After the initial "you can't give me a ticket" boilerplate, she goes full Wire Hangers, telling the cops that their little tickets aren't a big deal, "even if it's for a million dollars", and after handing over her driver's license, she orders them to compliment her on "the nice picture." (If it's not obvious, Natalie is also rolling her eyes and sighing the entire time.) In another Up Yours to Oxygen, all of the police officers and onlookers have refused to sign waivers, so Natalie ends up being the only person with an unblurred face, and the cameras have been ordered down the street. Under some kind of mistaken sense of loyalty, Kendra decides its time to "stand up for her friend", so she goes over to the circle of cops, screeching at them regarding "intent" and how they should "back off". There's a lot of yelling back and forth--Lexie and Amber keep crossing back and forth down the street, telling Kendra to "come back over here", and the cops eventually grow weary with telling Kendra to go away and be quiet. Natalie seems completely irritated with Kendra's behavior as well, and when the cops finally give up and grab Kendra and threaten to arrest her if she doesn't walk away, the whole scene puts a candle in the farcical birthday cake it has become. There's no measure with which to describe the discomfort inherent in looking at steadicam footage of a young black woman being manhandled by muscular white police officers with blurred faces, but, even with the scattershot editing approach, the producers seem keenly aware of the situation they're in: they've provided minutes of footage to showcase Kendra's drunkenness, there's plenty of audio where the police are heard calmly telling her to "walk away" or "wait over there" as well as yelling "come and get your friend before she gets in trouble". The footage of Kendra's arms pinned behind her remains a complicated piece of imagery, but it's been made impossible to label her as a true victim. In the end, the complexity vanishes--Natalie gets her ticket, Kendra realizes she doesn't want to get in that much trouble "sticking up" for an ungrateful, angry pseudo-friend, and the girls move on.
Seed Three: Don't Everybody Like The Smell of Gasoline?
Although Kendra and Natalie seem to be closing on the realization that the evening has reached its obvious conclusion, Lexie and Amber are as furious as they get: they aren't finished drinking, and a brush with the law shouldn't ruin their evening and send them packing for what is described as a "three-hour car ride." So, with no forethought to why it might not be a good idea, the girls head for another bar and start speed-drinking. Within what appears to be minutes, the girls are the center of ridicule. Kendra and Natalie begin arguing, the onlookers laugh and point, Amber and Lexie try to ignore it, and the girls leave the bar--it's not made clear, but they may have been ejected. Outside, Natalie disappears down the street after a bit of shoving. The other three sit down next to one of those small patches of grass and hosta plants that urban areas throw down in an attempt to make you remember what nature looks like. Some woman nearby yells "Girls gone wild", and the unseen heckler ladles the sarcasm on the phrase with a spoon the size of Denver.
One Rainstorm Away From Mud Wrestling
When Kendra attempts to entice a bored Lexie and a drunk Amber into a Natalie shit-talk, Natalie shows back up. From now until after the fight reaches conclusion, Natalie speaks in a disturbing monotone. She says all the requisite Bad Girls things--fuck you, you're a bitch, i got a ticket--but her voice never really raises, and the calmness with which you speaks is in complete opposition with what her body does.
In other words, Kendra and Natalie beat the crap out of each other, and yet Natalie talks like a Hollywood serial killer the entire time.
Besides the viciousness of the fight, what makes this particular round of hair-pulling, kicking and slapping stand out is how many people it encompasses. Before what must be the show's largest crew member gets involved, Natalie punches Amber in the face, shoves Lexie, kicks Kendra multiple times, punches and scratches two production assistants, shoves a cameraman, and eventually kicks a van door. (That last image above? That's a crew member attempting to separate Natalie's hand from Amber's hair.) It's not the most entertaining fight the show has ever had--the involvement of so much of the film crew means that the fight isn't filmed with an eye for comprehension--but it is remarkable for its extensive cast.
The fight eventually simmers down--the producers make a point of jacking Natalie's mic up loud enough so that you can hear the gigantic man holding her repeating the phrase "That's enough"--and the girls are separated, with Amber, Kendra and Lexie being driven home by the most depressed looking production assistant ever seen on television, a young woman who looks like she would rather fuck her way through a Russian gulag than spend three hours driving Bad Girls home.
The Aftermath: Mix In The Dirt Our Brother's Blood
Sans Natalie, the girls have returned home, excitedly showing Annie & Kate their bruises and filthy, dirt covered bodies. While Kate seems incapable of enjoying something she wasn't there to see, Annie finds the entire thing hysterical, and she remarks that it's about time for "some Team A-Plus." After a bit of time--either that night, or the next morning--Amber finds Kendra crying in the shower, which she has been doing for about an hour. Why is she crying, Amber asks, using the baby voice she usually throws at her boyfriend? Because she feels used, because she feels ashamed, says Kendra. After a moment of discussion, the producers return to Natalie, in what must have been the minutes after the other girls had left for home. Having convinced the gigantic man to let her go, Natalie walks off down the street, and while we never see him, a producer is yelling at her, begging her to come back and get in the van. "Where are you going?" he yells. "Come back", he pleads. "This is ridiculous!", he cries.
Natalie flags down a car and demands the driver's cell phone. "It's an emergency" she says, "You can pull over here while I make my call", she orders.
Someone comes to get her. She disappears into the night. Her mic is disconnected.
(Next week's episode will be a clip show, involving Flo, the Ambers from last season, and a whole bunch of superfluous footage.)
-Martin Brown, Zeb L. West, Tucker Stone, 2010
LOST prediction: last season I incorrectly posited that Aaron was actually Sawyer and that he had witnessed his own birth and slept with his adopted mother. That fucking prick, Damon Lindeloff, and his cronies have decided to go with my brilliant, original, and horrifying story idea.
So this season, I'm going to make it simpler. Jacob's wall lists Kwon, but it's neither Sun nor Jin. It's their daughter Ji Yeon. Just like Walt and Aaron, Ji Yeon is a psychic (she knew to demand that her grandmother call Sun just when Sun was about to kill Ben). All those kids have mental powers. The island wants its Korean fetus back.
Posted by: Sharif | 2010.02.20 at 09:13
*have NOT decided to go...
I am so bitter about this that it is ruining my grammar.
Posted by: Sharif | 2010.02.20 at 09:14
but how about 24's Lethal Weapon homage?
Posted by: seth hurley | 2010.02.20 at 11:00
I have no respect for the way 24 whited up the Al Leong role. That's some Racefail 101.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.20 at 21:46
I thought that dude was going to tell Jack, "evly Clistmas my family watched Leetal Vepon on da teevee, it vas my favorite."
Posted by: seth hurley | 2010.02.20 at 22:37