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Cha$e and Estate of Panic: Was SciFi Seized by the IRS?
Sean Robinson 11/19/08, 12:52 | 
7 | SciFi has a couple of new reality shows, Cha$e and Estate of Panic, that I watched last night. They are dingy and shoddy to the point that I can only assume that the network has been taken over by the government and placed on an austerity budget.
The producers of Estate of Panic realised that they needed a host for their show, to play the role of some sort of rich person who has left bills of various denominations lying around his decrepit estate - even in his plastic tanks of worms and crabs, his snake-filled basement and his room that looked a lot like a tv set with fake looking cracks in the fake looking walls and features a roof that slowly lowers until it is about two feet above the floor.
They went to a post London alley and shouted: "WE NEED THE FEYEST, MOST OVERACTING JUNKIE HERE AND WE ARE WILLING TO PAY ALMOST £10K TO FIND HIM." Lo and behold, they got their man.
I started watching the show halfway through and the first segment I saw featured five contestants running around a fern filled garden and fountain at night, with live electrical wires hanging throughout in a web that constantly shocked the contestants as they rooted around picking up matted up dollar bills and stuffing them in their underwear. The contestants had an unlimited amount of time to grab cash but the last one to leave the area and run into the mansion was eliminated, as was the contestant who returned with the least amount of lucre.
The contestant dump their money, balled up bills wet with muck and grime, onto a silver (likely tin) platter held by a snooty looking actor playing a butler, while the show's host sat, going for angry as the show's concept was that this was his money that was being taken by these interlopers. He wore a velvet jacket to indicate he was rich and also that he owned the falling apart mansion.
They had another segment like this, eliminating a couple more people (there is, like Cha$e to be discussed below, a new set of contestants each episode), and then a dull finale where the winner was chained by his leg to the center of a room with deposit boxes lining the walls. In some of the boxes there was cash, in others useless knick-knacks like cheap hardcover books, in others tools that could possibly help the man escape and in others snakes and crabs. The last of which were tossed with such abandon that I have to assume that the the show was filmed in Malta, away from the auspices of the ASPCA.
The last contestant managed to pry the wooden block nailed to the floor that his chain was attached to with a crowbar that was found in a box, but it looked like a strong tug would have done it. I think that they even chintzed on the nails.
His final winnings amounted to less than $30 000, with which he said that he would support his son.
With all the money wasted on Estate of Panic, Cha$e clearly had to cut back. The game is basically tag, played with a random group of people who had responded to a Craigslist ad and had nothing better to do during the weekend who made up the contestants and six aerobics instructors dressed in cheap black suits, sunglasses and bluetooth head-sets - the Hunters.
The Hunters' job was to catch and tag the contestants and to build excitement, they had been told to act like robots. This means that they slowly walked around with straight arms, only turning at right angles and scanning their heads slowly around for the contestants. Their robotness was also affirmed by occasional shots from what was ostensibly their view, overlayed with a chryon that said "SCANNING..." in green. They were also individually introduced with a static shot of them next to relevant stats as below:
Hunter Icy (only women got a name de game-show, the male hunters had to do with generic Hunter Grant appellations)
Speciality: Fast Running (other specialities included Agility, Endurance and Sprinting, which is different from Fast Running by dint of intention, maybe?)
Height: 6'8"
Weight: 400 lbs (they were GIANTS!)
BMI: 28.4 (they really did list BMI because, presumably, science)
More and more Hunters were released as the show went on, to unsuccessfully up the tension. It never seemed hard for them to find the contestants because, while a contestant may hid behind a garbage can, they was a camera-operator standing right next to them in full view. Also, the contestants were clearly told that they had to keep up a patter of useless blather detailing every thought going through their head as they hid and the mics in use apparently required them to speak loudly and clearly while they did so.
The contestants had to complete various challenges, such as stacking some barrels in a certain order or riding a stationary bike for a half-mile. Their reward for doing so were special items that could be used on the Hunters to prevent them from tagging the item-users. The items used this episode were, in order: a lightly altered flash-light that, when used, forced a Hunter to literally turn around 180 degrees and slowly walk in the opposite direction for an indeterminate amount of time; ugly sunglasses that made Hunters have to pretend that the contestants were invisible for two minutes when worn and; what looked like an air-horn and called a "sonic stunner", which made all the Hunters in the vicinity have to stand in place for two minutes.
Additionally, each contestant got a blackberry which let the contestants know updates from the host and allowed them to call each other to coordinate their strategies. At one point, all of them were told that the first one to call into the host could leave the game for $3K. A Boston plumber succeeded, likely putting in decades of calling into radio stations experience, to lazily announce that three grand was all he needed.
The blackberry's also were part of the most hilarious conceit of the show, out of hundred of contestants. When the host, a small man of indeterminate race, had an update for the contestants - the release of a new Hunter, a new challenge or something else of that ilk - the show cut to a shot of someone (presumably a contestant) holding their phone out in front of the camera and a video of the host talking was chroma-keyed over the blackberry screen to give the illusion of an incredibly futuristic scenario whereupon video could be shown on a camera!
Another astounding bit of cheapness was in the location the show was filmed at. Unwilling to spring for sets, the contestants wandered around an industrial park near the docks. Unwilling to spring for a cop car or pylons, the streets were not closed during filming. A nerd, a young, black guy and a yogi would be hiding behind a parked Suburban, surrounded by a couple cameramen. Suddenly, a man sweating under the sun in a cheap black suit is walking stiffly and sweeping his head back and forth mechanically. Suddenly he deigns to notice the commotion of the three huddling idiots, all of whom are yelling at the cameras and each other, and runs at them. The three behind the truck scatter in every direction, the fat, bearded yogi in one direction and the black guy and the nerd in another. The black-suited man ignores the hippie, can't keep up with the black guy and chases after the nerd, who pulls out a flashlight. The black suited man stops running and walks away, slowly. What do you think is going on as you drive past on your way to work?
The show concluded, eventually, and a winner - an investment banker who had spent the entire episode hiding in an empty warehouse - emerged. He got $25 000 for his efforts and announced he was buying a new house.
We assumed he was actually a Filipino dump-rat, who was saving for new corrugated tin for a roof.
The games and challenges involved in these two shows were at the level of a radio morning show and the money awarded was akin to a lower tier day time game show.
The problem is that the prime-time television is an entirely different scale. The size of the audience, the competitive environment of the television landscape and the visceral nature of reality television filming all demand that there be something at stake. The most successful reality shows have all been aware of this: putting up massive amounts of money that force contestants to put themselves through incredible ordeals, holding out the possibility of international stardom for winners or even just taking contestants to a wide variety of unique and impressive settings.
SciFi is putting on a product equivalent of the last Expos teams: second and third rate players on a shabby field in a falling apart stadium in front of tiny crowds.
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Also: (Hymen Wreck) 11/21/08, 02:02 |
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