12/14/04

12/14/04 The Rebel Billionaire, Fox
NYPD Blue, ABC

The Rebel Billionaire, Fox

The Rebel Billionaire is Richard Branson. The show is Fox’s answer to NBC’s The Apprentice, starring Donald Trump. I assume they’re competing to work for Branson, but they either glossed over the prize or mentioned it very quickly in the opening.

Branson’s show has a bunch of things going for it. He’s a lot richer than The Donald, has much better hair, smiles more easily, has more interesting clothes, an easy way about him, and a counter-culture patina. Then again, it shouldn’t be hard to look better than a blustery blowhard who names everything after himself. And, as per Branson’s style, the show traipses around the planet.

Then again, Branson wanted to do this show and his hair didn’t earn the money. He must have some of the same demons driving him. At the core, The Rebel Billionaire is very similar to The Apprentice. Striving business types get split up into teams to complete tasks. How they do determines whether they stay or go. The funny thing about the shows is that when the boss fails they’re in the hot seat. If only this happened in real life.

Fox’s twist on the NBC format is that the losing team leader of any task goes into an elimination challenge with a team member of his or her own choosing. The two people compete at another task, though the winner of this task doesn’t necessarily stay. Branson gets to decide.

In this episode, the people have been flown to Morocco for their latest task. Branson chooses one team leader. She chooses her rival; the two pick teams, and are then told they have 24 hours to decorate a luxury room at the hotel he’s building.

For the most part, these shows feature sides of people I wouldn’t want to associate with, and if I did, I don’t think I’d like (they could always be different off-camera and in the scenes cut). Not that this is an obstacle in watching the show. If the show can create something interesting, I’m happy to drink of its waters. In general, the characters have absurdly inflated egos, terrible people skills, limited intelligence and demonstrate bad judgment most of the time. I don’t think the limited intelligence is particularly important—most of us aren’t too smart--though it stands out because of the ego issue. And all of us live by bad judgment, though somehow we muddle through. As always with “reality” shows, it’s a given that the producers stacked the deck so the kind of drama they want probably gets played out. I don’t know if these people represent typical business strivers or atypical. Certainly types were picked so we could find people to love and loathe, but the conventional business wisdom that they spout is only true because people like them repeat it and live it.

One guy in particular, Steve, will stab anyone in the back. He’s sure this is how the game is played, so he plays it with abandon. His main rival in the episode is his team leader Candida. She’s not particularly pleasant, either, and the show plays up her mistakes. Lucky for us, she has a meltdown doing the task and fails completely. She chooses him for a rival in the elimination round. And, surprisingly, wins. Branson has to choose between the two, and boots him, because Branson doesn’t like Steve’s dark side. A victory of sorts. Not that I enjoyed it.


NYPD Blue, ABC

Blue is going to fade to black shortly, after 11 seasons. This last year was supposed to be blockbuster after blockbuster.

Yawn.

I remember seeing a few episodes in the early seasons. There was some comedy, some righteousness, some good works done between the lines, and a little awkward sexual appeal. The righteousness is still there, but the other stuff is gone. Sipowicz has smoke coming out of his ears basically every time he’s on camera. He lets his partner Clark do the questioning in interrogation while the camera cuts back to him fuming. We’re supposed to get a read on the suspect based on the read Sipowicz is showing the camera. And the read is always, ‘I don’t like the guy, he’s scum, am I going to have to open my can of whoop-ass now or in a few minutes?’

Sure enough, by the end of the episode, Sipowicz had slapped around a suspect but good, after conning his way into the suspect’s apartment and finding incriminating evidence. I can see where police procedurals can get boring, but it should be cause for concern that police dramas routinely include trampling of suspect rights. I’d like to believe that cops do better, but I’m at least equally concerned that show writers are lazy. Then again, they might fear that we, the viewers, would turn off the show if these cops got it wrong, if they couldn’t wrap up a case in their allotted hour.

A thing I didn’t think about with Blue, and most of the other cop shows these days is that they’re not action shows, they’re talk shows. Shot indoors, little actions happens on camera, except when someone is beaten by Sipowicz. Otherwise, it’s all about questioning.

Maybe in some ways, Blue is seen as progressive. They feature women detectives who might be pretty, but don't dress up. There's a gay office assistant tolerated, even though he's helpful. There is always a woman ADA who might want to have something going with the male detectives.

In terms of show development, the characters haven’t grown but have become more caricatured. Sipowicz is all rage, glare, and smoke. The gay office guy is hopelessly stereotypical. They got rid of the lieutenant who could go either way and replaced him with a lieutenant who is clearly a jerk. Medavoy, the fumbling detective was starting to come out as a lothario, and in this episode, he’s wearing an English dress shirt to impress a lady at lunch. Of course, his fellow detectives ridicule him and he drags his partner into a fancy men’s clothing store to get another shirt. Wait, there was comedy! After making his partner feel uncomfortable and deciding on a new shirt, he stopped everything to admire a pocket square!