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Since the inception of reality television, the industry has been constantly hustling to up the scale of entertainment. Iconic moments like ‘what is this behaviour Pooja’ on Bigg Boss to Maheep Kapoor using binoculars to spy on her Juhu Neighbourhood in Bollywood Wives, never fail to shock the audience. Despite being undeniably entertaining, reality television however drops the ball several times. As viewers of this ‘leave your brains at home’ content, there are several moments when you want the makers to take a minute, breathe and just stop!
1. Stop teasing your audience with a fight that didn’t happen
Since the trailer release of any new season in reality television, there is always this one moment with dramatic soap opera music that hints at a major fight. The clip includes freeze frames of people’s offended or shocked expressions and leaves the audience eager to know, what went
down? The worst, simply the worst feeling, is when this overhyped fight turns out to be nothing at all. There never actually was a fight, just a video editor with too many special effects in hand. For moments like these we just have one thing to say, stop. Instead, promote things that actually happened.
2. Stop milking peoples trauma
Please picture this for a second. You are watching a talent show, with multiple participants competing for one title. The judges are a mix of strict and soft, they share their balanced scores and encourage sportsmanship. These judges also have a tough time deciding the winner, since the performances were simply great. Alas, a winner is declared, leaving you surprised and happy with the results. Are you missing anything from this show? Anything at all? You may think your answer is ‘no’ but you are unfortunately wrong. This completion is missing the ten
minute long segment where the makers force the participants to share in dramatic detail about their life’s traumas. The entire segment ends with a couple of shots of famous personalities also tearing up and sharing polite words of encouragement. Our question to the makers is simply, do the participants win if they appear more tortured? If not, then please stop.
3. Stop going off-camera
The whole point of filming a show is to reveal the content recorded. It genuinely does not make much sense when people during the show say they will talk about things off camera only. For example, moments where the stars are announcing some exciting news and saying everything except what the news actually is, because suddenly that has become ‘confidential information’ is just plain, frustrating. Similarly, if one judge passes a shrewd comment about the other and they walk off the stage, and the show just cuts to them pleasantly sitting next to each and continuing as if nothing at all happened is extremely weird.
4.Stop making your script and PR suggestions so obvious
As the audience, if there was the idea of a wedding introduced in the first episode then we are safe to assume the episodes will build up to it. Similarly if you do not want someone to show up at an event and they do, with a grand and dramatic entrance, we know there was a cue. But these are expected layouts of any show. What really needs to stop, is jumping to random neutral conversations with meticulously phrased sentences on topics that are controversial. If you support the LGBTQAI+ community or are a feminist only while talking in front of the camera after a viral misshapen, then sorry to inform you, but you are not fooling anybody.
5. Stop trying to be ‘normal’ or ‘relatable’
The whole point of a reality television show is to present a life different from your own. The audience is very clear on what they signed up for when they streamed your show and that expectation is far from ‘relatable content’. Our problems essentially are poles apart, and no
matter what you say, you will not be able to expect complete blind compassion when you speak about hardships which for many are just mere inconveniences. In the real-reality, travel problems have nothing to do with your car not matching your look, working-hard is completely unrelated to being born with a silver spoon and financial trouble is not reflected when you stop affording couture.
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