Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: TV Shows

More creation, less repeating

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In yesterday’s post, I was complaining about the gentle competition shows that have gotten worse and worse. The problem is that most of them feel like they need to stick to the way the Great British Bake Off did it in the first few seasons. Oh, sure, there are different names for the sections in each series, but it’s pretty much the same. Here’s the basic set-up.

  1. Have a host or two who is/are cringingly awful/blandly bearable. Have two or three judges. One is the nice one. One is the critical one. One is the forgettable one.
  2. Have eight to ten contestants from all walks of life.
  3. If it’s a cooking competition, make sure it’s increasingly a niche category.
  4. Have a theme per day. Make the individual competitions adhere to the theme.
  5. (This is optional) Throw a wrench into one of the competitions, making  the contestants scramble.
  6. Have team competitions. These are my least favorite, honestly. Probably because I’m not a team player.
  7. Really strained banter among the judges and host. I understand that they can’t just sit there in silence, but really, why can’t they? Let the contestants do their thing with minimal intrusion. That is what I would prefer.
  8. Two or three different competitions. One that is shorter and one that is longer. The third can be a technical test. This is not in all of them.
  9. Each competition gets judged. Sometimes, they get ranked. Sometimes, the top two or three (and/or the bottom two or three) are identified. This is where it can get creative. For Glow Up (I have included the trailer for the first season below), they have two red chairs. The two lowest competitors in each of the first two competitions have to sit in the red chairs and are the bottom two. That can change from the first to the second competition. Then, in the third round, the two in the red chairs go against each other in one ten-minute contest (like who can do the best smoky eye). This is done on twins so the models are as close to the same as possible.
  10. Bring in a guest judge/give a prize for those who win a certain competition.
  11. Rinse, lather, and repeat over eight to ten episodes (or however many there are). Then, semi-finals and finals.


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Imitation without innovation is irritation

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I like TV shows that I call gentle competition shows. It started with the OG Great British Baking Show or whatever it was called when Mel and Sue were hosting it. I adored them because they had an obvious synergy (you can’t fake it, and they had been friends for decades), and the format was fresh and new at the time. I really loved that they would cuss or start mentioning brand names whenver a competitor was having a bad moment (melting down, crying, etc.) so that it could not be used in the show. I loved that bit of information when I read it (they were protecting the competitors), and I was so upset when they were fucked over by…the BBC? Is that who owns the show?

I hated the new people and never watched the show again. Luckily for me, the show spawned a spate of imitators, a few that were good, but most of them were middling to utter horseshit. Why? I’ll get to that in a second.

I like the gentle competition shows because they showcase creativity in a way that is competitive, but not cutthroat. I prefer when they highlight the creative art itself and not just throw around tired old jokes and try to make the task outrageous.

One of my favorite of these shows is Blown Away, which is about glass art. In the last season, though, they made a few big changes that made me lift an eyebrow. They got rid of the host who I lked a great deal and replaced him with Hunter March, who used to host Sugar Rush (another one of these shows. This probably means that game isn’t coming back).

Here’s the thing. I love Hunter March. I think he is one of the better hosts of these kind of shows, even though some of the things he says is cringy. I don’t blame him because I’m sure it’s the scriptwriters’ fault.

Side note: That is one of my big criticisms about these shows. The humor is way too forced. I don’t need slapdash and five jokes a second. I would rather they just CTFO and let the contestants do their thing in relative peace. I know that’s not good TV, but it would do more for my nerves and my brain. I also don’t understand why they often have a comedian as the host, but I have accepted that this is just the way it’ll be.

The other thing I didn’t like about the last season of Blown Away was that they placed an emphasis on making everything bigger, grander, and more explosive (metaphorically). They went more for the wow factor and less about the actual art (which I think is why they got rid of the last host). It felt rather shallow and didn’t have the same heft as it did in the previous seasons. It’s not Taylor’s fault as he’s as good as he ever is. Katherine Gray, the head judge is phenomenal. It’s just felt that the powers-that-be were more focused on the numbers rather than the show itself.


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Taskmaster–A Quick Look

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As someone who is probably neurospicy in varying ways, one thing that really resonates with me is the concept of hyperfocus. When I am interested in something, it consumes all my attention. For example. Elden Ring DLC is dropping tomorrow at 5 p.m. That means that I will be playing it for hours a day until I finish it with at least two characters. Let’s be real. I’ve been playing Elden Ring since it came out two years ago. I always have at least one character on the go, and I am currently doing a loose follow through playalong playthrough with the RKG lads. Loose because Rory is a better player than I am. This is just facts and I can’t do as well as he can.

Anyway. I recently got really into Fern Brady. A told me that Fern was on the show, Taskmaster. Now, the RKG Discord is British-based, and they go on about Taskmaster on the regular. For whatever reason, I thought the show was a Shark Tank-like show in which celebrities brought wild business ideas onto the show and then were judged on brinigng in said tasks.

But, no. It’s five comedians doing a bunch of wild tasks that the Taskmaster (Greg Davies) and his assistant (Little Alex Horne) set out for them. I watched Fern Brady’s season (14) before going back and starting from the beginning. Which was a jolt, I’ll tell you that much.

Side note: Before I started watching, I saw an episode of a show that Fern Brady was hosting (told you I was apt to hyperfocus) about food and weird combinations of different foods. What A Combo it was called, I believe. The episode I watched was within the last year had Tim Key on it. Coincidentally, he was on the first season of Taskmaster. When I started watching it, I was hyped because he was on it. He was so chill and mellow on What A Combo–I was looking forward to him being on the show.

Instead, he was hyper and a cheater, all the time with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He cheated and then lied about it, and what’s more, showed no remorse over lying about it. I really didn’t like him on the show, much to my dismay. I was viciously happy when all his machinations did not work.

Here’s the thing. Season 14 was 10 episodes and very smooth. Season 1 had 6 episodes and was rough (as was to be expected). Season 2 was more like the first series, obviously, and what was lowkey annoying me throughout the different series was how all the tasks were skewed towards white cishet British men. It was to be expected, obviously, but it was annoying, nonetheless.


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Not blown away by Blown Away Season 4

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As I have written about before, I am a big fan of the genre of TV shows I call ‘cozy competitions’, such as Sugar Rush, the original The Great British Bake Off (with  Mel and Sue), and Crazy Delicious. I don’t like the ones that are designed to make the contestants look mean or hate each other. I liked the first three seasons of Blown Away, a Netflix original about glass blowers. The host, Nick Uhas, was one of the least-cringeworthy out there (I have had a contiunal issue with the shows that they hire comedians as the emcees and have them say very insipid and sometimes wince-inducing lines).

Netflix sent me the notice for the fourth season, and I frowned as I watched the intro to the first episode (which is also the trailer, apparently. I have included it below). The voice was not the same as before, but I recognized it. It turned out to be Hunter March, who was the host for Sugar Rush. Which might possibly be my favorite of the shows–but he did have a few really bad lines he had to say on the show. His teeth are so white. So. White. But he’s a handsome lad, and from some pics of him I saw on his FB when I Googled all this just now, he has abs for day.

The trailer had a vibe to it I didn’t like. One thing I liked about the show wsa that it was very technical, but also low-key. This trailer had that PUMP IT UP! feel to it that I did not appreciate. The word epic was uttered. I don’t want epic. I want the work to speak for itself. I liked the show because it was nerdy and geeked out about blowing glass. I know nothing about glass-blowing, but I could appreciate a good geek-out.

Plus, and this is something that I will always notie about the show I’m watching–the contestants were much more homogeneous than before. In prenvious seasons, there were Asian people, queer people, nonbinary people, and other visible minorities. In this season, there was one black guy. That was it. It felt like a deliberate choice, by the way. The decision to make it less diverse.

In the first few episodes, there was so much harping on how everything was going to be EXTREME!!!! This was the biggest season ever!!!!! And, yes, there was a heavy emphasis on size. The prize was the biggest ever, too, and every day, there was a really good prize given away to the first place winner (of the day).

I was disappointed that Hunter March was the new host for two reasons. One, I liked Nick and thought he did well on the show. Not to say that Hunter wouldn’t because as I said, he had hosted my favorite show in this genre. But that was the other reason I was disappointed–this probably meant no more Sugar Rush. I mean, there was no sign it was coming back, and it’s been three-and-a-half years, but I was holding out hope.


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When to say it’s done

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For the past two posts, I have been talking about the game, Cook, Serve, Forever by David Galindo. There are three games in this series. Cook, Serve, Delicious!; Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!; and, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!. The first game was released in 2012, and the series has only gained in popularity since. My personal favorite is the second by a hair over the first, and the third is my least favorite. It’s not a bad game by far, but I just like the second game the best.

I will say that the third game got me through the beginning of the pandemic when it was released in Early Access. I spent many, many hours happily pounding away at my keyboard in order to make my orders. The fact that the last act of the game completely fell apart is a shame, but it doens’t erase the fact that it’s a highly-addictive game for the first two-thirds of it.

But the second game was my favorite because you could design restaurants. It was pretty basic, but it was fun. I was not able to 100% that game, but that’s ok. Begrudgingly. I played that game months after getting out of the hospital because I wanted the plat. I was physically unable to get it, but I got really close.

Here’s the thing. Series can go on for way too long. I noticed when I used to read  mystery series that they got worse as they went on (in general). The problem is that you can’t stray too far from the formula because that’s why people are reading the books. But then that gets stale in a hurry. I used to read Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. She set them in real time, starting in the 1980s, so even when we got to book V is for Vengeance, which was released in 2011, the technology was still from the ’80s.

When I first started reading the series, there was nothing else like it. It was fresh and exciting to me, especially since it starred a female private detective. Kinsey Millhone was a tough, no-nonsense, take no prisoners kind of gal who had terrible taste in men. And she cut her own hair. She made sure to say that in every book, which signified part of the problem.

It was fresh and exciting for roughly ten books. M is for Malice was the best of the series, but then it went downhill from there. By the time I got to W is for Wasted, I could barely read the books any longer. I felt like I had to because I had gotten that far, but I wasn’t enjoying it. She died before she could write the final one, so the series ended with Y is for Yesterday. I feel like I need to read X (no is for) and Y is for Yesterday, but I haven’t thus far.


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Fashion and fat-phobia go hand-in-hand

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In my post yesterday, I wrote my review about the second season of Next in Fashion, a Netflix show. I have more to say about it, apparently. It’s been lurking in the back of my mind, waiting to have its day. The further I get from watching it, the more it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think it’s because they tried so hard to be diverse and to say that everyone is welcomed  in the industry when it’s simply not true. It has never been, but I get that it’s nearly impossible to see outside your particular framework.

Or, as is often the case, the people who can see the issues have no power to change or improve the situation. there may be people at the entry level who realize what bullshit it is, but they can’t do anything about it. In addition, there are millions of hungry young people who are eager to be in the industry. They are willing to be exploited and abused. If any one individual isn’t, then they will get pushed out of the industry.

Side note: Another reason I don’t like fashion is because there is s much rigidity in the gender roles. There are men and there are women, and enevr the twain shall meet. On the show, it was considered daring to have clothing that people of any gender could wear. Or making a skirt for a man. I mean, come on. Putting a skirt on a dude is almost quaint at this point.

I was annoyed that in at least one of the briefs there was the edict to make an outfit for a woman and an outfit for a man. Yes, I know, that’s the way the industry has always been. That’s not next in fashion, is it? It’s just a little precious to me that they were saynig they were tyring to find something fashion-forward and daring when they can’t even get out of the binary and get past the fatphobia.

I know it’s asking too much. The industry is steeped with sexism and fatphobia. It’s not going to change any time soon. But, can they at least join us in this millennium? I don’t get the stubborn insistence that they have to design clothing for women who look like 12-year-old boys. Tall 12-year-old boys. No boobs, no hips, no ass. Thighs not touching, and, yeah, I’m going to say it, anorexic. It seems like the guys are getting thinner, too, which was not the direction I wanted this to go in. Equality to me means allowing every the opportunity to expand–literally. It’s really hard for me to have any interest in an industry that is actively telling women they need to be so much less.


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Next in Fashion Season 2 review

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I don’t watch much TV, but one genre I like is what I call gentle competition. They are shows with contestants, but they are helpful to each other and the shows emphasize camaraderie rather than competition. Think The Great British Baking Show (you can tell when I last watched that show) or Sugar Rush. I prefer the ones that are a season long, eliminating one person per episode, but the latter’s format of four teams per show and one winner at the end of each show is fine, too.

My bestie, K, also likes these kinds of shows. She has a stressful job and it’s her way of relaxing. We talk about them and recommend shows to each other. She told me about the bartending one, which I really liked. Drink Masters, it’s called, and it’s on Netflix. I don’t love the fact that they feel the need to hire comedians for the emcee/host and feed them tired old jokes (for all the shows), but I’ve accepted that is part of the genre. Tone Bell is the host of Drink Masters, and he’s probably my favorite of all the hosts across all the shows. He’s much more laidback than the others and has a warmth that feels authentic.

I watched the first season of Next in Fashion, another Netxflix show, despite my skepticism. I am so not a fashion person. I mean, it would not be too much to say that I am the anti-fashion person because I just don’t care what I look like. Also, because my gender is undetermined at this point, I can’t with the hyper male/female emphasis in fashion. K and I talked (outside of this show) how we both were more comfortable with androgynous people in general. I have talked at length about my current identity (agender), which is mostly because gender is not important to me. I don’t see how I need to act or dress in a certain way because of my perceived gender, and it’s really hard for me to be all GIRL POWER when it’s based on something that is hyper-feminine. I’ll get to that more in a minute.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed the first season of Next in Fashion. There are a few reasons for that. One, the chemistry between the two hosts, Tan France and Alexa Chung, was strong. They seemed like two buddies who would go out and grab a meal together, just to chat about life in general. Yes, there were cringe-indiucing humor that wasn’t funny, but they seemed to be equals. I put that out there because I want you to remember it when I get to talking about the sceond season.

Another reason I really liked the first season is because the winner (spoiler, obviously), truly was different, fresh, and something that hadn’t been seen before.


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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty–bugs and glitches, oh my!

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In yesterday’s post, I wrote about beating the first brutal boss of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Team Ninja) and feeling more upset than elated. I talked about it in the RKG Discord, and someone who is a game developer said it almost certainly was a glitch/bug rather than a deliberate choice. She was trying to be encouraging when she said not to be discouraged. Other people chimed in and said that you had to expect glitches and bugs with a triple-A release like this.

I don’t know anything about that because I normally buy big games many years after they release or get them on Game Pass. The exception is FromSoft games, obviously. Now, anyway. Ian reminded me that Elden Ring had MANY bugs on the PC port when it released.

He’s not wrong. But I didn’t have to suffer through any of them. Because of my beefy machine, I had microstuttering and one hard crash. That was it. But there were many problems for other people with lesser machines. Even with equal machines. I heard about one guy who only had invisible enemies once he got out of the tutorial. He thought it was just FromSoft. Which, bless him, he’s not wrong.

I’ve said it many times about how people think the start of Dark Souls is brilliant. “Two paths that are clearly too hard and one that is just the right amount of hard!” Yeah, if you’re a Dark Souls aficionado, that makes sense. You know that the game is hard, but it’s not supposed to be super-hard. But what does the average person know about the game? That it’s crushingly hard. I mean, the PC version (with everything) is called Prepare to Die Edition. What do you hear about the game? You’re going to die. A lot. Often. Over and over.

So what are you going to think when you run into ghosts you can’t kill? Or skellies who one-shot you? That it’s part of a game that you were told is really, really hard. The third path, by the way, is less difficult. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s appropriately hard.

So. Back to the first boss of Wo Long. People telling me that I have to expect glitches and bugs in a Triple A action adventure game are missing the point. Or the bigger picture. How the hell was I supposed to know there was a glitch of that kind? Yes, if I knew there was supposed to be a cutscene, I could look out for that glitch. But I went into the boss fight without having seen the second phase of the fight. So how the hell was I to know what was supposed to happen?


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Mushy in the middle

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I ilke reality shows that I call’ gentle competitions’. I’m more interested in cooperation than cutthroat competition. I watched Cutthroat Kitchen a few times, and I hated it. Not only did I hate the delibearte sabotage, but I got anxious from watching. Since I feel other people’s emotions, I don’t want to deliberately inflict myself with nasty ones, especially manufactored exaggerated ones.

That’s why I prefer the ones that are collaborative rather than competitive. Yes, ultimately, they are competing against each other, but that doesn’t mean they have to be mean. I used to twatch Chopped, but I started hating that it was so manufactured. The one twho said they were not there to make friends/came to win were nearly always out after the first competttion–second at latest. Anyone who was confident that they had done great were the next to go. In almost every foursome, there was usually one who was the heel. I think this is more an American thing, by the way. Britains are culturally more diffident and self-deprecating whereas Americans are more brash. It got to the point with Chopped where I could predict who was going to win with a roughly 85% success rate without knowing anything about cooking. Quite frankly, it got boring after a while.

This is part of the problem with these shows if they go on for a long time–they become samey. Yes, I know, that’s part of the comfort. Every episode is the same and there’s something positive about that. But, on the other hand, it can get boring if there is no innovation. This is a reason I leave groups and stop visiting websites–because there’s no evolution. When it reaches the point where I know who is going to say what in which situation, then I get bored. Granted, I am very good at reading people, but still.

It’s not their fault; truly, I know this. People don’t change on the regular. Or if they do, it’s slow and steady–not dramatic explosions. Of course people can have epiphanies and breathroughs, but that’s a rare occurrence.

Watching the fourth (and current, I think) season of Glow Up, I’m finding myself…not bored, exactly, but wanting more. The MUAs are brilliantly talent as usual, but the competitions are so safe. They talk about creativity and pushing boundaries, but they don’t do that in their own requests. And, because of the nature of these shows, there is a mush in the middle that is not palatable.


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Drink Masters: an underrated gem

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In the past few years, I’ve been gorging on what I’ve termed gentle competitions (TV shows). Of coruse, the grande dame is The Great British Baking Show, wmich I used to watch when it  was The Great British Bake Off with Sue and Mel. Once they were pushed out, I was done. I felt it was sleazy and of course Paul Hollywood stayed because that’s the kind of man he is. I lost all interest once they were gone, but that sparked my love of competitive reality shows.

Here’s the  thing, though. I don’t like the ones where people are nasty to each other or snippy behind each other’s back. I used to watch Chopped, and while I liked it in general, I started to beccome aware of the pattern that made it easy to gues swho was going to win. Not only who was going to win, but who was going to be cut after each challenge. If someone said they were confident they were going to win, they were gone. Anyone who exceptionally nasty was gone. But, on the other hand, anyone who was mildly brutish stayed. It got boring by the end, if I’m to be honest.

K and I were talking about these shows because she enjoys them, too. She mentioned that she started watching them once the pandemic hit because she  just wanted comfort and warmth. I agreed with her vigorously. With the world being what it was, there was nothing better with hunkering down and bingeing a competition show. I preferred British over American for the most part.

I have watched so many of them, and now I know what I like and what I don’t like in a show. I will note that it’s different for different situations. If I’m working on something else, then I want a show that is lowkey. That means one that has a set amount of competitors each episode and then just whittles them down a la Chopped. One of my favorites in that genre is Sugar Rush. It’s the epitome of comfort food. You can consume it without much thought, and it’ll keep you satiated for an hour or so. There is nothing brilliant about the show, but it’s just a delight to watch.

The other way to do these shows is to have a group of contestants who last for the whole season. I confess, I prefer this to the different contestants per episode format because I can actually develop opinions and feelings for the contestants.

I will also say that when I see a bunch of diverse people on the show, I’m immediately boosted. It’s become the norm, which makes me happy. It shouldn’t even be a factor, but, sadly, it still is. What do I mean when I sy diversity? POC, obviously, but also gender in the competitions considered masculine (which, sadly, are most of them. Even cooking shows are considered masculine because–patriarchy), sexual orientation, gender orientation, and even age.


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