Reality challenge puts stars through the wringer

MATTEO Guidicelli in “I Dare You”

The local TV scene is so eventful these days that channel-surfing for new shows to catch has become a veritable helter-skelter indoor sport! Every week, there are at least a couple of spanking-new productions to sample, so let’s not waste time—and, on with the show.

ABS-CBN’s “I Dare You” is turning out to be the most grueling celebrity challenge on the tube these days. An early competition we watched had competing starlets and stars trying to survive a military training regimen infamous for wearing trainees down to pleading pools of protoplasm.

We cringed as we empathetically went through trainee hell with the celebrity contestants, thanking our lucky stars that we weren’t famous, so we were spared from the viciously sadistic treatment that those poor starlets and stars had to endure.

We suppose that this “punish the celebrities” motivation is part of the  show’s perverse “appeal” to viewers, so it looks like all that sadism is here to stay.

Payback time

But, we wish that the celebs wouldn’t keep complaining, plaintively and piteously, about how inhumanely they’re being treated—isn’t that precisely what they agreed to take—and take—for the perverse pleasure of viewers who hate celebrities for the privileged existence they enjoy? It’s payback time.

Another new TV show that has caught viewers’ fancy, for completely different reasons, is “Let’s Ask Pilipinas,” the new TV5 weekday quiz show hosted by Aga Muhlach. As expected, Aga makes an engaging quizmaster, and the fact that he’s losing weight is greatly appreciated by viewers who want to see him in top, taping trim.

If he continues to shed all those pounds, he could finally make his big-screen comeback as well—and give younger matinee idols a run for their rom-coms.

Viewers’ participation

On Aga’s new quiz show, the focus is on the contestants’ familiarity with how average Filipinos think, opine and behave. Viewers have a fun time empathetically “competing” on the program, as they try to second-guess what most Filipinos prefer to do in a great number of different situations.

We wonder, of course, how those “standard” attitudes and practices were evaluated and pinpointed in the first place. Were 100 “average” Filipinos surveyed on a wide range of topics? Some explanation may be in order.

For instance, just a few days ago, viewers and contestants were surprised that the answer to a question about what Filipinos make it a point to wear for good luck on New Year’s Eve was not “polka dots,” but “the color of the year”.

All told, however, despite some “unexpected” answers, the new quiz show’s reliability as a reflection of current Pinoy views and preferred practices appears to be intact.

Final observation: Aga’s ongoing battle of the bulge, which is turning out to be encouragingly successful, should motivate other overweight stars to similarly work hard to get back to “fighting” stellar trim. It’s good not just for their careers, but also for their personal well-being. Some of them are hitting middle age, with its threat of major “lifestyle” illnesses about to make their unwelcome presence felt, so the time to shed all that unhealthy “excess baggage” is now.