heymae

The Colony…Or Why I Would Never Make It On A Reality Show

17
Aug 2009

Tonight Ian and I watched this new reality show on the Discovery Channel called The Colony. Well, really Ian was watching it and I was rolling around on the living room floor trying to find some way to pop my back, but the show was on at the same time so I got the basic gist of it. Basically, the show sets up a mock global catastrophe and then tests to see how a group of regular citizens would rebuild society. They have to find shelter, food, water, and protect themselves from all sorts of different scenarios. Now, keep in mind this regular group of citizens included an electrical genius, a martial artist, and the token naked, balding old guy. On a side note, does every reality show have to have an old guy that gets naked? Is it really necessary? As a society, is that something we enjoy in our reality TV? I really think its time we take a stand and let the networks know that this is not something we find appealing.

So this group is faced with all sorts of “real” scenarios. Random people keep showing up at the shelter banging on the walls at night, which of course causes everyone to jump out of bed and freak out. Now, this is where I realized I would never make it on a reality show. If that was me, I would simply tell everyone to calm the heck down. WE ARE ON A REALITY SHOW. What are the people banging on the walls really going to do? Go back to bed. Everyone is also very concerned about running out of food and water. Well, If it was me I would simply follow the camera men. They must be eating and drinking somewhere. There was also a whole situation involving figuring out how to get electricity so that could see in case there was an emergency at night. Now, obviously we had no problem seeing when the camera men were filming you at night the night before, so I am guessing we are not talking about solid darkness here. At some point things always start to get really hard on the people involved, there is a lot of crying and screaming and complaining. Well, guess what? You can go home. The world did not really get blown up by a nuclear attack. You are in a warehouse right outside Los Angeles. The second things started to get hard, or they ran out of Spaghettios I would say see ya! I would just ask one of the camera men to borrow his cell phone and call a cab.

Now, that being said, I did actually enjoy the show. It is an interesting thing to think about. Are any of us prepared for the type of global catastrophes this show is trying to create? It really does make me think. Do I have enough cans of Spaghettio’s on hand to survive if there was a real crisis?