So with both American Idol and The Office over for the season, I decided that I needed something else to watch on TV and seeing as how it’s supposed to be based around making movies – something that I’ve always found to be quite interesting – I’ve opted to give FOX’s latest reality show, On the Lot a try. Between Mark Burnett (creator of Survivor and The Apprentice) and Steven Spielberg, I thought that it might be something similar to what I really enjoyed from Project Greenlight, but so far that’s not exactly what we’ve gotten…
Whereas Project Greenlight started with introducing the winner of the contest (or at least fairly close) and then spent the bulk of the series actually producing a feature-length film, On the Lot builds us up to that point and shows us the competition itself, or at least it tries to, that is. So far I really haven’t been all that impressed simply because it seems like there are too many people to keep track of at this point, even though Sara inferred that most of the other reality shows like American Idol and Survivor and The Apprentice start off with a lot of people, too. The only other turn off at this point would be that the judges chosen, well, don’t really seem all that qualified on the grand scheme of things other than they’re all folks that haven’t really had a whole lot of work as of late. I mean, don’t get me wrong – all were great for whatever they did, whether it be in producing the Rush Hour flicks or entertaining geeks ’round the world in a golden bikini, but maybe I just had my hopes set too high thinking that Spielberg himself might be a judge or something.
Oh yeah, and also … America is a bunch of idiots because the three voted off of this last week’s show weren’t even close to who I would’ve seen voted off! My choices would’ve gone a little something like:
Top 3 Contestants of the Week:
1. Danger Zone (by Zach Lipovsky)
2. Check Out (by Shira-Lee Shalit)
3. Deliver Me (by Carolina Zorilla De San Martin)
(…because all three were actually funny and didn’t resort to urine and barf jokes…)
Bottom 3 That Should’ve Been Sent Home:
1. Wack Alley Cab (by Kenny Luby) – because it just didn’t make any sense
2. Ghetta Room (by Jason Epperson) – because going by the director’s explanation, the movie just didn’t work. He tried to get around the controversy that the main character was mentally retarded by saying that he was just a nerd, but I was a nerd in high school and we didn’t act like that! The last thing that nerds want is more attention, so the story actually made more sense – crude as it might have been – to have the character be retarded instead.
3. To Screw in a Light Bulb (by Jessica Brillhart) – again, because it didn’t make any sense and just felt more like a cheap knock on men
And there were even some others that could’ve just as easily been substituted in the bottom three, depending on whether you want to judge on their subject matter or simply not following the directions, but I ultimately was not pleased at all with who got sent home because I strongly felt that my number 1 & 2 choices should’ve been clear as day. It kind of makes you wonder what kind of audience is watching the show, really, but I’ll still keep watching at least for a few more episodes to see how things pan out. Whether I’ll have NetFlix’d the other season of Project Greenlight and will have switched to that by the end of the month, it’s still hard to say…