{"id":83,"date":"2009-05-18T08:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T08:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2009\/05\/tweaking-reality-mtv-style-part-2.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:30:52","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:30:52","slug":"tweaking-reality-mtv-style-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2009\/05\/tweaking-reality-mtv-style-part-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Tweaking reality, MTV style – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note : This is Part 2 of a series, Part 1 is <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.
<\/em>
Roadies has become one of the most popular reality shows on Indian television, and with good reason. I think it\u2019s because they were so raw and real and un-tweaked. They don\u2019t have the artifice or the artificial judges, or the make-overs, or the artificial build-ups. Folks on the show didn\u2019t exude that artificialness that too much scripting brings. There is in-built humor and lots of tomfoolery, but that\u2019s pretty natural since it\u2019s the cast and crew being who they are. And people love genuine stuff ( hint-hint : it\u2019s a reality show)<\/p>\n

However with this season (Season 6 \u2013 Hell down under), there has been a change. It hasn\u2019t been as engrossing as previous seasons, and it appears that Roadies might be losing it\u2019s shine. The show has, in it\u2019s need to be newer and better and bigger, veered from being mostly un-tweaked to constantly needing prodding \u2013 either in the form of some very convoluted mind machinations or in the super-new avatars of Raghu (and his twin Rajiv) as the new bad men of television. And it doesn\u2019t do anyone any good.<\/p>\n

The longest running reality show on MTV, and a relative hit at that, it is being milked dry \u2013 you have the Season itself, you have the Awards, and then you have the Roadies Cheat Code. And now you actually have Raghu advertising Roadies merchandise at Archies Galleries. New advertisements feature current or ex-roadies in action either in the show itself or at the auditions.<\/p>\n

The Roadies Auditions<\/a> have always been an essential part of the Season, and very entertaining to watch. You have the youth of the city, and it might be a metro like Delhi or Bombay, turn up to try and become Roadies. It is fascinating to watch these humongous amounts of people vying to impress the Audition judges \u2013 as though Roadies was the ultimate dream.<\/p>\n

MTV does a fairly thorough job \u2013 they have questionnaires, group discussions, and face-to-face interviews. And they hand-pick an interesting bunch of people. Now with past seasons, the participants have been characters (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) but they have also had ability or some outstandingly \u201cgood\u201d quality. They seem to have had that caliber. They made the grade.<\/p>\n

With the previous two seasons, I notice that the caliber level is going down. The participants get picked chiefly because they are \u201ccharacters\u201d rather than worthy competitors. With Season 5<\/a>, when Ashutosh won, his competitiors were mostly big-city kids who lacked the tact and the basic level-headedness that Ashutosh had. Still the \u201cpositive\u201d characters numbered more than the \u201cnegative\u201d ones. And the negative characters got eliminated one-by-one. And the decent ones stayed on. And then Ashutosh won. Everyone happy \u2013 see ?<\/p>\n

With the recently ended season (Season 6), Nauman won. And while he was a relatively worthy contender and deserved to win, this season the negative characters outnumbered the positive ones. Not only did they fail when it cam to matters of physical ability (notice how this set of Roadies did badly on many tasks) they also lacked spirit \u2013 that rah-rahing roaring of I-can-do-ness that would be expected from participants of this kind of a show.<\/p>\n

Next : Dissecting Roadies Season 6<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note : This is Part 2 of a series, Part 1 is here.Roadies has become one of the most popular reality shows on Indian television, and with good reason. I think it\u2019s because they were so raw and real and un-tweaked. They don\u2019t have the artifice or the artificial judges, or the make-overs, or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,50,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-series","category-tv"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Note : This is Part 2 of a series, Part 1 is here.Roadies has become one of the most popular reality shows on Indian television, and with good reason. I think it\u2019s because they were so raw and real and un-tweaked. They don\u2019t have the artifice or the artificial judges, or the make-overs, or the…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}