I survived ABC, kind of

Last night I watched two amazing hours of television. I haven’t been that riveted and that vocal since season 1 of Tila Tequila: Shot at Love (I did not watch the finale last night, but I did read the recap – I applaud the producers).

Show 1: I Survived a Japanese Game Show
Contestants are divided into two teams, the Yellow Penguins and the Green Monkeys. They go on an “actual” Japanese game show and compete. Each show, each team nominates a weakest link member, and those two face off in an Elimination Challenge. Last night’s elimination challenge was called “Go for it! Postman Taro!” (がんばれ！郵便太郎！) One contestant walked against a wind machine and delivered packages while the other contestant threw beach toys, bags of fake garbage, newspapers, etc. The most popular were those blow-up whales you can sit on in the pool.

Meanwhile, the audience is made up of 20-30 year old Japanese people who bang drums, scream, and laugh like they were shot every time an American falls. Seriously, every mess-up by an American cuts immediately to some Japanese guy who is going to dislocate his jaw if he doesn’t scale back his hilarity.

We also see clips of them at “home” where they have a Japanese woman to take care of them (thank god, I’d worry about their foraging skills otherwise). We get comments like,
“Is this turkey or chicken?”
“It’s fish chips.”
“What’s a fish shaving? How do you even shave a fish?”
Since they don’t go on to explain what fish shavings are, they must assume we know. But this scene would just piss off anyone who actually knew (like reliving JET orientation over and over), and wouldn’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t been to Japan, so who are they targeting? People who’ve been to Japan for 3 days and talked to someone in a club who had “totally great English, what is everyone whining about?”

At first this show seems demeaning to Japanese culture (“what’s wackier than Japan?!”) but then it seems horribly demeaning to Americans (“What’s clumsier than an American?!”), but now it just seems demeaning to ABC and Toho studios. Whoops!

Show 2: The Outsiders, Primetime (more detail)
This show has the blow-the-lid-off journalist who nods a lot and looks extremely concerned. Last night he talked about people who keep monkeys, not as pets, but as surrogate children. Yes, children. The most understandable woman explains that she’s way too busy to take care of a child, but she really, really wanted one, so she got a monkey. Another woman explains that monkeys are great because they never grow up – they’re always like 2-year olds.

The problem is that monkeys have a much greater capacity for violence than most 2-year olds – they have more skills, is what I mean – and eventually just about every monkey will attack its owner. Then they get abandoned, or killed, or sent to this monkey rehab place where they run around and act violent with other monkeys, in a totally natural monkey way. The weird thing? I found most of the monkeys really ugly, like not cute at all, and my roommate agreed. And the too-busy-for-a-kid woman? Now she’s adopting a child from China; way to go with the low-maintenance solutions.

Their second segment was about the fattest man in the world, Manuel Uribe, who has clocked in at over 1,200lbs. But he’s losing weight now, which is great. Unfortunately he’s still bedridden. But he has a girlfriend! Cue the journalist, “Is there really someone for everyone?” Well... Do I feel bad about my singleness now that I know I’m losing to a bedridden, horrifically obese man? No, not at all. His girlfriend says he’s a “divine person,” and I just don’t think we’d hit it off.

The last segment had something about people who obsess about other people’s tragedies and put grisly photos on the web, I didn’t watch.