Reality TV

I generally hate reality TV....doesn't matter if it's American or German.  Maybe one show out of twenty....does some good fake reality stuff....and I can appreciate it for either entertainment or for the story it tells.

This week....I sat one night and watched Kabel Eins with it's show Stellungwechsel: Job Bekannt.  It was a lousy two hour piece.

Basically, it's this idea that the network guys had....taking some pool lifeguards from some town in Germany, and swapping them with two ocean lifeguards from Brazil.  I could sense from initial moments....this just wouldn't work.  It was a ten-day experiment of sorts......that was supposed to be a soap opera of sorts.

From Brazil came Gutavo and Talan ("Joe" and "Little Joe" as far as I was concerned).  Young Brazilian guys....comedians to some degree.  They lucked out....were treated five-star by their German pool management folks, and that side of the story was more of a comedy than anything else.

At one point, I would have just turned the two guys loose on Germany and made an entire series about the two Brazilian guys and their charm offensive on German women....from age eighteen to seventy.

The other side of this story was was Gabi (the 51-year old female German life guard) and her junior partner David (27 years old).

It's safe to say that Gabi was like some hardcore do-it-by-the-book lifeguard and more concerned with controlling horseplay around a German pool.  Putting her down in Brazil on some beach with rough seas and danger lurking every minute.....just didn't work.

This David-kid?  Well....first, it was obvious that he was gay, and he was peppy about his ear rings, tongue-ring, and hair.  David didn't fit well with the Brazil lifeguard "general" (the best description of this guy would have been Rambo-in-Brazil-on-caffeine).

The two Germans just fell into a pit of woe and frustration.  You felt sorry for them.  You felt sorry for the viewers.  You felt sorry for the Brazilians stuck with this mess to run for ten days.

In the end....everyone hugged.....packed up and left for home.  I sat there.....shaking my head.  Sadly, for this evening....being in the midst of political-run-up for the election....there's just nothing on German TV.  My other choices were Brokeback Mountain on one channel, CSI-Vegas, Two and a Half Men on one network, some banking documentary trying to blame the banking crisis of 2008 for the 1,500th time on someone besides the Germans, and some nature documentary about deer in Europe.

I try to avoid blasting German TV.  At least there's around thirty-odd channels....which is a heck of a lot better than the 1980s when there were six channels.  The problem is....like American cable options....even if you had two hundred channels....it's mostly lousy choices.  Sadly, it might actually make me go back and read Huck Finn for the fifth time, or read up on Irish poets of the 1600's.