It is a piece of
cake.
Watching the first season of The Surreal Life (which aired in the States in 2003), you're struck by how quaint and innocent it all is.
In
the years since, we've had far more exploitative and trashy
celebrity-based television. It's almost refreshing to go back to where
it all began, in a way. But in another way, it also means things are
pretty boring.
It feels like you should be able to predict
what is going to happen, but the huge blowup that you're expecting
never comes. In fact, if you were writing this as a scripted show,
you'd have to build-in more tension and fights than there actually are.
Of course, ironically, these high-concept 'reality’ shows
actually are semi-scripted so the challenge for the writers is really
to see how mundane they can make it without making people turn off,
which is why they have built in some pseudo-conflicts; all of which
gets easily resolved moments later.
In the history of Surreal Life seasons, this is the least memorable, the one with the training wheels on.
Basically, it's the pilot season and has none of the craziness of the
later ones (Season 3 indirectly spawned fourteen spinoff shows and
sequels for its wackiness).
Corey Feldman is probably the main
protagonist of this particular show. The child star that never grew up
is the driving force of this season and also its biggest jackass.
Feldman decides early-on that he's going to get married in the season
finale.
His bride to be? The first fan Feldman ever dated.
He
also says he is the most down-to-earth celebrity you will ever meet.
Note to Corey: if you refer to yourself as a celebrity, you are not
down-to-earth.
Because there is no 'winner' on a show like this, it has really no direction. It's a good thing there are only seven episodes.
Ultimately, DVD is not the proper medium for a show like The Surreal Life.
It's not something you're going to want to put on and watch again and
again. It's so disposable it almost disappears when you press it to
DVD. Without the ad breaks and channel flipping during the boring bits,
Surreal Life becomes just what, in all fairness, it never claimed it wasn't : trash TV.
And that's fine, but The Surreal Life's crime isn't that it is trash; it's that it is not even good trash.
It's not the car crash you slow down to watch; it's the car broken down on the freeway holding you up. And who needs that, man? DVD EXTRAS with Sean Lynch
As is the case with most of these E! reality TV show releases, the
extras don't really come in the form of "Extras" that DVD lovers have
come to know and love from TV series.
Let's face it, the show itself is one giant deleted scene.
So,
the "Bonus" episodes can either be considered as "something special",
or simply - just another episode from the series which has been renamed.
It really depends on your perception of reality... TV.
Conclusion:
Movie 60% Extras: N/A
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