Hosts
Reality show hosts can either be an integral part of the show or they can be an incidental part of the show. Few would argue that Jeff Probst does not have some major influences on Survivor. At tribal council’s he knows how to draw out contestants and conversations that will set the strategizing and paranoia wild. TJ Lavin contributes to The Challenge by shaming contestants who don’t try hard enough or who just give up during challenges and eliminations. (My favorite reality TV host of all time would have to be Cat Deeley, on So You Think You Can Dance. She not only puts up with some terrible puns, she is not afraid to get dirty–putting her arms around a sweaty contestant–or stand up to the judges–even going so far as telling Nigel he was completely wrong once. Plus she always looks glamorous.)
Luke Tipple, who also hosted CW’s Capture this summer, is the host of Opposite Worlds. While I liked him on Capture, I do not think the hosting is working here. The show is overusing him and not letting the action and the contestants speak for themselves. We spend as much time watching Tipple tell us what is going on as we did watching it. Hopefully this will die down as the show continues, but so far, this is one of the show’s big negatives.
Challenges
One of the best things about these reality shows are the challenges. I always watch contestants compete with a mixture of “Could I do that?” and “I want to do that!” running through my mind. The challenges on Opposite Worlds felt a little basic and not as exciting as they could be. Take the elimination challenge–contestants had to climb over a pyramid, slide into the water, swim under a couple of floating barriers, go around a pole, go back under the barriers, up over the pyramid, and press a button. Then they had to do it again and again, with whichever contestant managed to hit the button the most times winning.
If this had been Survivor, each trip would have been to recover several puzzle pieces which would then need to be put together to win. If it had been The Challenge, the pyramid would have been three times as high, the barriers would have been at varying heights, and there would have been several more sections, rather than repeating the same actions over and over again. Opposite Worlds needs to find a way to spice up the challenges and make them more visually exciting. They need to be different, not feel like they could have been part of a TV challenge back in the 80’s.
The Problem
What I am seeing these days as networks try to break into the competition-based reality world is that they focus most heavily on the twist or gimmick. They want to feel different and exciting. But gimmick over structure and execution is going to hurt shows in the long run, once the novelty of whatever new thing it is trying has worn off. Opposite Worlds has a big gimmick: two teams dealing with very different worlds are forced to compete. As a viewer, it is frustrating to see one team so arbitrarily put at a disadvantage. In Survivor, when one team is at a severe disadvantage, it is because the team is too lazy, too argumentative, too incompetent, too weak to figure out how to make themselves a good camp or work together to earn rewards in challenges. The teams start off ostensibly even and the separation in success and loss is a direct result of their efforts, not as a handicap implemented before anyone had a chance to demonstrate their abilities.
Why not have both teams start in the past or the future and then compete to move into or remain in the better lifestyle? (That way there is no advantage starting out.) Why not make sure all the rules are simple enough that we don’t need to spend 50% of an episode trying to explain it to the audience? (Less of this Decided, Protected Ones, Punished, Rewarded business.) Why not let the contestants be the focus of the show and let us get to know them better?
Opposite Worlds has an interesting idea behind it, but the execution is preventing it from becoming the truly entertaining hour of television it has the potential to be.
Verdict: Meh. There are better competition shows out there.
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