Coming to a TV near you: Lost - Survivor with Scripts

A plane crashes on a deserted island (or is it?). Forty-six people survive. Make a TV show about it.

With only one doctor who made it through the plane crash, a very young and spunky spinal surgeon – and that’s only the first point of departure from reality (television) – this show has more medical miracles than a Born-Again Healing-Hands-of-God revival meeting. I don’t want to give anything away to those who haven’t seen it yet…but the empty wheelchair belongs to a crash survivor who mysteriously regains the ability to walk. He then helps the junkie go through withdrawal with minimal discomfort and an overly simplistic psychological strategy. Then super Doc talks the asthmatic through an attack with the heartening words ‘just breathe’. I’m sure millions of other asthma sufferers would love his magical healing powers nearby when they have an attack. Now I don’t know a lot about asthma, but I’m pretty sure that if they could ‘just breathe’ THEY WOULD! And it doesn’t stop there. There’s loads more to come including an impending birth – that ought to be good.

As the weeks go by, each survivor’s story is revealed giving us perhaps one of the most interesting plane loads of people ever to travel together. So far I haven’t seen the types you actually see on aeroplanes – the excessive number of ‘suits’ who can’t live without mobile phones, laptops and the Financial Review, and have limited practical skills; a selection of scruffy backpacker types from all nations who fancy themselves as intrepid, fearless travellers but are really just tourists who travel on the cheap; frazzled families travelling with fractious children; and not forgetting the boring non-stop talker who knows a bit about everything and SFA about anything. And the stuff they managed to get on the plane! With worldwide increased airport security and extremely strict import/export regulations somehow there's more contraband on this flight than a drug-laden cargo ship. So far I've seen an axe, a set of hunting knives, an aloe vera plant, and cocaine. It seems survival is much easier if you have lots of handy stuff on the aircraft. But not too much or there won't be any need for scenes of clever improvisation a la MacGyver.

Considering this was a flight out of Sydney (I’m supposing from the clues they’ve left in subsequent episodes, since I missed the first one) Australians are few and far between, so far I’ve only seen one. Maybe ordinary travellers didn’t make it through the plane crash and therefore don’t make it to television – just like they wouldn’t make it through the selection process for Survivor. Or maybe, once you put a story on television (scripting the dull, boring and plain stupid bits out of what would otherwise be reality TV) everyone’s story becomes interesting. I wonder how many interesting stories there are out my window? Perhaps if I stopped watching so much television I might find out. But Lost joins the ranks of my 'traffic-accident' TV and I just can't seem to switch it off, I'm transfixed by one unlikely event after another rolling across the screen. Reality TV this ain't.

Coming to a TV near you: The Swan

This week's TV review: The Swan

Apparently, no woman is her ‘true’ self until she’s undergone 10 or so plastic surgeries all at the same time, spent three months isolated from her family (spouse, children – everyone), been put through a fitness training routine to rival the military, and learned all that she needs to know about make-up and grooming in order to reveal her inner ‘swan’. Like trying not to stare at a traffic accident, once I realise I’m watching it, I find it difficult to pull my eyes away. All the time my mind is reeling – WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING!!!

Potential swans are holed up in a fancy hotel for three months with no mirrors or reflective surfaces available. They are operated on to correct all their most pronounced ‘faults’, then they undergo recovery and begin an intensive exercise and grooming regime. There is psychological counselling provided as well, but I’ve not watched it long enough to discover if its purpose is to fix the broken inner person, to help them get through the stress and emotional discomfort of undergoing this barbaric process, or whether it’s to provide some gritty revelation for the television audience. I suspect its that latter, after all if they were to try and fix the broken inner person, that repaired being just might decide this gig is a sham and quit before filming is over. Once the swans make it to the dramatic ‘reveal’ at the end when we and they see themselves in their reconfigured form for the first time (a reveal which takes about three preliminary ad breaks to get to, by the way), one of them is chosen to go on to the (gag!) final pageant. Yes, it’s all topped off with that most 1950s-style display of womanhood, the beauty pageant.

The way the participants are introduced to the audience sets up the notion that they are doing this because they sorely need a boost to their self-esteem and they way they look is a severe hindrance to a successful life. Surely there are other ways to boost a person’s self-esteem…or perhaps that’s not really the aim here? Perhaps it’s a massive advertising campaign by the plastic surgery ‘industry’, perhaps it’s purely to make the rest of us feel truly inadequate, and thus we will rush out to book surgeries and order complete makeovers instead of boosting our intelligence quotient, getting rich and exercising our political power. Whatever the intention, it’s a vile piece of television with the underlying message that women must look good, no matter what the price (financial or emotional). And just to hammer the message home, when new participants who are struggling to mend after massive surgery while on a low calorie diet and participating in vigorous exercise finally have their breakdown moment, as they all inevitably do, they bring in a previous swan just to hammer home the message that success won’t follow this process unless you complete it. Previous swans have ‘had their lives changed’. No doubt simply being on telly was part of it, but many have changed their careers and surprise, surprise, become models of varying sorts. The world, it seems, is just crying out for more models. I know I could do with one around the house – they make great umbrella stands.

America, You're Fat!

Here’s a joke for you: How does a portly Aussie raise their self-esteem? Move to America.

I’ve never seen so many pot-bellies, wobbling asses and gigantic hip-jowls in all my life. They really do have an enormous obesity problem here. And everyone wants to blame fast-food. Yeah, that’s a huge part of the problem, but so is their regular food. It has been so hard to find plain, unadulterated, no-additive, no supplements, non-enhanced, fresh food. And when you do, it is of course, the most expensive item on the grocery shelf.

Australian’s who have lived here warned me about the bread. Said it was too sweet and it put them off their Vegemite sandwiches. When we were in LA we noticed the same taste coming at us no matter what we ate. We called it the Taste of America. After a couple of months of shopping and label reading, it has become obvious what the problem is. High fructose corn syrup. It’s in everything. Usually along with extra sugar in some other form. Even things that are supposed to be savoury. That’s why the bread is sweet and won’t stay crisp when you toast it.

No wonder there’s a huge diabetes epidemic here. As my Grandad used to say, as we liberally applied white, refined sugar to our Rice Bubbles and milk (it was the 1970s), “Don’t have too much sugar, or you’ll get diabetes.” I used to think diabetes was for old folk (his elder sister had it) and his warnings were irrelevant and a little overzealous for a four and a six year old. But looking around, I’m beginning to wonder whether a few more people ought to have been listening to Grandad.

The upside to all this is that fat bodies are accommodated at the clothing stores, and I can find almost anything in my size (and much, much bigger). Their health issue leads to my shopping nirvana.

Election 2004

Two great races on the same day. The Melbourne Cup and the U.S. Presidential Election. I know which one I’d rather be watching. But the outcome of the other one has implications for the entire world, not just a few punters in Victoria. I wish I could vote here. In fact, I wish the world could vote in an election whose result affects us all.

We can only hope that common sense prevails and the majority of the American people (and their weird Electoral Collage system that can override the will of the people) make the correct choice for their future and ours.

The longer I’m here and the more I’ve seen of this election process, the more I despair of America ever coming to grips with a realistic perspective of their importance in the world as a whole. The current administration seems to operate with a 1950s mind-set reminiscent of the Cold War era. There’s “Us” (the US) and “them” – the rest of the world and the enemies within. And wherever they look, America sees its enemies as it suits them to do so. At the moment, GW and his neoconservative mates, Rumsfeld, Cheny, et al have fixated on Iraq as the problem. Never mind North Korea or any other nation who, since America’s pre-emptive war on Iraq, has decided to arm themselves in case they’re attacked by this military superpower that is being run by maniacal war barons, fighting in the name of freedom and democracy.

And here’s the irony (which, by the way, Americans do not get). This flag-bearer for democracy who, they would have us believe, invented and perfected this particular form of Government (umm… what was that about the Greeks?) are barely capable of running a free and fair election themselves. It’s an organisational debacle. People are marshalled to the wrong polling places by partisan volunteer polling staff, voter registrations are disallowed because they’re on the wrong sort of paper, and no-one can be certain they’re even on the electoral roll. There are a bevy of lawyers from each side ready to contest every single dodgy result posted. By dodgy, I mean a result that doesn’t go their way.

I can’t imagine there’ll be a clear cut result tonight, but I hope there is. And I hope a new President is elected who has a clue about foreign policy. Not that that will change the all-American ethos of self-interest by any great measure, but it’s the best hope the rest of us have.