And as I was discussing in the original article (though to greater detail - but we'll have this discussion at a later date), reality television is largely the story of a kind of ultimately flawed contradiction of genre, the duplicity between documentary and game-show. It's now being challenged by the true game-shows, but it is still, in itself, also a kind of this. Reality TV originally presented itself as a revolution of factual television, but it eventually chose instead to revolutionise game-shows, and increasingly, the documentary elements were abandoned (particularly the case with Big Brother) for the thrill of competition, the nasty, desperate race to the winning line (and we can see this, even on the softer end of the BB spectrum, with the eventual development of Friday Night Live). Gretel Killeen hasn't been hosting a "fascinating window to society" - she's been hosting a sadistic game-show. What happens when you put a group of everyday people together in a house they cannot leave for three months? Reality. What happens when you put a group of everyday people in a house, with one (mammoth) prize at the end of a series of evictions? A game-show happens. They're not subjects of social introspection - they're contestants. And they play dirty, of course, taking the game-show dynamic to a whole other - somewhat unpleasant - level. They get more than a little desperate, and the fascinating window to society becomes more an ode to Melrose Place than... well... a fascinating window. And sure, these shows could have steered the evolution of the format away from this aspect (ample opportunity, in fact, that we may finally soon see brought back into the mix, now that storm clouds hang above the nasty and/or scandalous elements of reality TV); but there was a hunger to be triggered - a most unbecoming pleasure in the empty soul of this society - that translated into an excitement, that translated into an addiction, that translated into ratings, that translated into money. Throw in the recent trend towards the Reality Television Scandal™ (nurtured by the increasing environment of sadism, and ultimately inseparable from the over-all tone of the format), and voila! I give to you the short history of reality television. It may have started, all those years ago, leaning more to the factual television realm than it does, today; but today, reality television is a game-show, and generally speaking, a cruel one. In the end, it's what has fucked it up (but that's another article, for the reasons behind the back-fire are complicated and - sadly - not as simple as people reclaiming a kind of morality), and partly why the buzz of competition, for the audience, has now locked onto the (decidedly less cruel) standard game-show format. A lot of people are finally questioning and rejecting the cruelty - why Big Brother has been left with a (much smaller than it originally was) core demographic that are the Australian equivalent to a Jerry Springer audience.

But Ten just doesn't seem to get it; or, perhaps, they've simply thrown larger aspirations to the wind and have decided to capitalise on being the (smaller) product, exclusively tailored to the bottom of the white-trash barrel (where the network has recently headed, away from the more general 18-35 box it has always been seen to have sewn up). Because mid-way through writing my article, last night, on came an advert for Ten's latest pitch to win the prime-time audience. A few years ago, Ten pulled itself from the ashes, and it did it with reality television. But it's not 2002, anymore, and the format and the pitch needs a serious remix. The Idol team pulled it off; but here we are, with Ten's response (and, therefore, acknowledgment of its new power) to the game-show revival (a revival it ironically helped pioneer, in a strange way, with it's crafting of the reality mothership based on a game-show dynamic), and what does it do? It twists a trivia game-show with the recent reality TV approach. But if inside this format, there's not enough scope to attain the Reality Television Scandal™, what, essentially, are we left with? Just a shadow of the unpleasantness of reality television, wrapped up in a vague trivia package as if it's engrossing interplay; and in actual fact, it's trite, laughably contrived, and not a great deal of fun.

 

In the promo ad, there are middle-aged "everyday" people, standing at the game-show platform, where - presumably - trivia questions are being asked and answered. But I can't be sure, because the ad features not a single question, not one alluding to anything that constitutes a game-show. Instead of answering questions, the contestants are turning to each other, spitting out insults that remind one of primary school. One man scoffs at a fellow contestant's bald head, and a female player chastises the other's age, accusing her of having dementia. It's absolutely vile. But welcome to The Con Test. Ten has delivered it's all-new game show. And - naturallement - it's centered around the cruelty of reality television, with a touch of poker (someone at Ten has quite clearly decided to cash in on the recent - Bond-ignited - poker craze, a craze that should last... oh... about ten more seconds). Game-show meets cruel reality TV meets poker! Oh, what a Clever™ idea!

Sadly, it's an idea that will end up shelved with that dating show meets wedding doco meets reality TV idea, and that late-night talk show meets satire meets computer animation idea. Ten tries to master the post-modern pastiche come marketing gem, once again. And it has failed. Once again.

 

But to be fair, the idea isn't really that awful. Neither was the idea for Yasmin and Tench. It's more in the execution and development of these ideas (the ideas that come from the ideas, in a way), where Ten repeatedly fails and hammers one more nail into an impending coffin of a network that had only recently grown in strength. It's blowing it. How many high-gloss over-hyped duds can a network deliver before it really damages itself? Not many. If Big Brother fails to adequately remix itself, this year (redemption, anyone?), and Ten loses the grand daddy of it all (and the reason why it initially rose from the late 90's ashes), then the only thing "seriously" about Ten will be how seriously unstuck the network has become - foremost, because sponsors and advertisers will be reluctant to board a new idea, because Ten's "exciting" new ideas are no longer bankable; but so too, because it has lost an audience who are a little smarter than the network seems to think, in an era where - hello - a large percentage of people have become increasingly intellectual and morally driven (thankyou, September 11 and the Iraq war) - something that has polarised a demographic and created a gap that admittedly is difficult to bridge, for these products. Half of the contemporary mainstream demographic have just become nastier trash (and I'm sure many of them won't mind this show), but so too has the nasty trash now become offensive to the other half - at very least, pointless (and they're not going to find anything of interest in this).

 

So where does The Con Test go wrong?

Foremost, there are simply too many ingredients. It tries to pack way too much into such a short space, and it all ends up feeling grossly unfocused and difficult to latch onto as a viewer. One idea that just doesn't - cannot - translate into such a short time slot, is the notion that in order to pull a large audience, instead of finding something everyone will like, a show can simply be fragmented into different components that offer different ideas to different target markets. The Con Test offers too many things to too many people, and ironically will isolate most of those markets. You can create a straight-forward duplicity and get away with it (if it's done well), but in this case, we find ourselves at the (valid) cliche, "more is less". The Con Test juggles far too many balls. Let's see how it dropped every single one of them.

Firstly, let us turn to the choice of Andrew G as host. Ironically, in my last article, I finally found a reason to like Andrew G (not that I've ever hated him, particularly, but you know, it's Andrew G, and I don't dig the world he dwells in). And I do have a soft spot for the G-man, in a strange way (and no, before you presume - it's a soft spot, not a hard spot). So I kinda hate saying this, but I'm not sure if Ten is quite right in it's apparent banking on G as one of the new prominent figures of pop culture TV. He does save Idol in some ways (along with his co-host), but in this instance, he's effectively up against Andrew O' Keefe. Even if The Con Test isn't directly up against the new O' Keefe star-vehicle, The Rich List (as far as time-slot goes), in order to win an audience over, it has to effectively "beat" this extremely strong contender in their minds. They are ultimately compared in assessment. And O'Keefe is absolute gold, as far as I'm concerned; he's really bankable, right now. Granted, the O 'Keefe thing could end up getting old, sooner than it would suit, because his character is so extreme - however effective, for the moment - I think he'll eventually be trapped in it; and with just the one extreme character, it will ultimately all wear thin. But, for now, he's gold. And Andrew G, God bless him, just doesn't cut it, in comparison (and G may very well handle the smaller rehearsed dialogue of Idol, but boy, does he make you feel that autocue in his moment to shine - something that seems simply too far beyond his capacity as TV presenter). The Rich List is very likely to sky-rocket Andrew O ' Keefe into a new league (who is miles beyond the need for an autocue, and erases all awareness of anything instructed to him through an ear-piece). But aside from his presenter-skills (because, granted, autocue reading is a difficult enough skill that can be polished with practice), Andrew G has been handed a dud for a star vehicle, and I doubt it's about to take him anywhere. He's now already slotted in for a Neighbours appearance that looks positively painful, but it's ultimately going to be a hollow investment.

And so, to the actual content. One of the nastier elements of entertainment in reality TV - the enjoyment of deception - has made it's way, with a mesmorising pointlessness, into the trivia game-show. This is one of the "themes" of The Con Test (quite logically, the actual conning), and it has been attempted to be integrated into the actual game. Fair enough; but the show's opening sequence was a bizarre attempt to flog the horse, and boy, did it succeed (and by that, I mean, fail). Having nothing to do with the eventual game, we are introduced to the contestants, reality style, as they introduce themselves to each other, and (borrowing so heavily from the reality genre) even say a host of completely overblown references to their appearance being some great "challenge" of their life, etc, fucking etc. I wondered if this show consisted of the same group of contestants every week with a progressive elimination - but no. No, these were just contestants in a half-hour trivia show, and yet they carried on like they were entering the Big Brother house, or weighing in on Biggest Loser.

 

But the most absurd function of this sequence was the idea that it was the introduction of the theme of deception, and that we would enjoy watching the contestants potentially lie about who they "are" (who they are, in this instance, being simply what their profession was). This did have a separate, more sublimated, function - it was no doubt supported by some Mc Psych marketing moron who thought it seemed logical within the framework that it would be the first breaking down of the contestants. It would, if it went to plan, force an atmopshere of mistrust and uncertainty upon the proceedings that would instantly kick the actual game off on the most wicked of foots. But what was the terrible deception of this process? Some of the contestants were lying about their profession. Ooooooh, scary stuff, isn't it?

 

"So, Claudia's a teacher, and Simon's a businessman," said the ominous, naughty voice-over... "or are they?"

 

Who cares? Not me. But I was supposed to. This ridiculously dull mystery was dragged out for the audience, even throughout the actual game - drudged up again before every ad break, as if the producers didn't have enough faith in the actual content of the game to think it would tie the suspense over through five commercials.

 

But as if this was going to break the contestants down?! Is this symbolic of a wall that reality television - which this element of The Con Test borrowed so heavily from - has hit, in light of an increasing scrutiny leading to greater accountability (reality television isn't anywhere near as free as it was to exploit contestants for commercial gain)? Is it going to try to force psychological goals of the show upon the contestants, left to simply act as if it's working, when really, it isn't? "Everybody's confidence must be shaken," explained the ominous voice-over. But it wasn't really true. The Con Test is so badly designed, from a psychological perspective (so vital to a show if it chooses to use psychology for entertainment - as most modern television now involves), the end tragedy (from a marketing perspective, here, based on what they're trying to do) is that it isn't actually as evil as one might expect, because nobody on the show is in any real danger of being seriously affected by what happens on it, nor is anything that comes out of anyone's mouth even remotely sincere. It's so forced upon these people - pooling from a demographic very different to the young desperates that line up to be on Big Brother - that every step of the way, not a single one of them is taking what's going on seriously. They're actually as disconnected by the overbearing feeling of the contrived, as we are. The end result is completely unaffecting. 

 

How can this imposed mistrust and paranoia actually work on the contestants (and, therefore, us) in this environment, when they know very well that the deception is just a tacky kind that the producers have made them do, forcing them to then sit around a room looking at each other, expected to have their reality shaken by knowing that - oh no - Claudia might be a hairdresser and not a school-teacher? What on earth do they think that will seriously do?! I mean, really, there are a hell of a lot of suits at Ten who clearly can pitch nice-sounding concepts that don't make any actual sense, psychologically, if you sit down and consider them.

 

And it would be great if we could at least keep this criticism confined to merely an unnecessary opening sequence that could simply be cut from the show. But sadly, this carries over into the actual game - for deception (where it then tries to pretend it's somehow a kind of poker - though really, it isn't) is to be the basis of the reality-style nastiness. Don't forget that this element was what Ten used to market the show, and in all fairness, whilst the show is fragmented, it is this fragment that mostly saturates the exprience. Andrew G injected into his pre-opening PR, the idea that The Con Test is both trivia quest and mind-game, but that's not really true, because it's clearly trying to be one more than it is the other. And regardless, those promo ads were hardly going to rouse the interest of someone looking for the thrill of intellectual competition. So, for this show to work - even if you think that a nasty game show will win a large audience (and I don't, but let's pretend I did) - it had to sell the bitching to the ditzy teens and white trash is was pitching that bitching at. And it totally fucked it up. And in comparison to the show's verbose PR (as verbose as all these Ten PR blitz' appear, once you've compared the actual show to the promises we were given), the whole thing is almost - vaguely - amusing (albeit for all the wrong reasons). Andrew G promised us wicked mind-games and mental cunning (A-grade cruelty and strategy, in other words - the kind that titilates the BB crowd, but presented, here, to rouse also those slightly above the nastier pull of Big Brother). But "Molly's face is as red as her shirt", I'm sorry, does not consitute as a cunning mind game, and it's not even quality nastiness in the most basic form. The only mind games were those that the show tried to play with the contestants and audience, but they nearly all (with the one exception of the exploitation of the unemployed Dwayne, who crumbled every bit as easily as he was supposed to) backfired.

 

The set up of this show - the rules, the design - is just simply too complicated and dependent on the idea that it can just make these people do what the producers would like them to do. They lie when instructed, and they bitch when prompted and required to. And they did do that much, at least. But here lies the problem - you can force things from people to create the effect of reality, but the people involved - the slaughtered lambs that are the reality/gameshow contestants - have to either buy into the illusion themselves, or be completely naive to what is actually being presented (as is the case in Big Brother, and what all the trouble comes from, once they're out of the show and realise what has just happened). In The Con Test, this is not the case, and the participants don't sell the narrative for a single moment. Most are clearly nervous when bitching, and come across as understandably embarassed that they are wrapped up in such a ridiculous situation. When people are forced to be so removed from their natural involvement and reactions to an experience (hello, boys upstairs!?) you can tell. It's fine if the lying is in their own hands (as it is often the case on Big Brother, where many of them are sincerely there to create the winning persona at all costs), but these were middle-aged "everyday" people who evidenced a conscious decision of the show to model the selection off the standard gameshow (one aspect where the show deviated from the reality format - these were far removed from the general reality TV participants). 

 

And for all the huff and puff about the "bluffing", the problem is that there really isn't any choice. You are called on by Andrew G, and you "bluff" - but in this case, bluffing means simply assuring us that you're doing really well, and then insulting another contestant (and sometimes, even the contestant to be insulted was chosen by G). This is supposed to then translate into the suspense of the "fold"; but it doesn't. It can't. If you've done well in the trivia (which feels like a rushed tit-for-tat while we wait for the bitching to kick in), you know. You may not be shown the others' scores, but you get an idea of how well you've done. This is what you'll firstly consider - you're hardly going to be affected by someone telling you that you have a shiny head, as they were instructed to do. "Uh-oh, Simon told me his suit is a suit of power... I better fold!" Um... no, I don't think so. And neither do they.

 

And the ultimate dud? There were only two folds in the game (that they managed to get only because they at least chose two people with zero self-esteem - the only real chance they'll have of getting the folds they need to back up the scripting and marketing promises, and something no doubt they've already noted). Because aside from the dynamics the show so mistakenly thinks is driving the action, we find another problem of reality TV (where we are presented a premise that is quite grandly put forward as some kind of philosophical, life-changing "journey", that in the end is nothing more than a bunch of tragics trying to get their hands on money). In the end, it's about that cash prize. A big one. And however noble original intentions may, from sheer naivety, be, in the end, the money has a way of nulling all other factors (oops, there goes the "journey" of reality TV, and in the case of this game-show, the common sense of folding). The show needs those folds. They need the confidence to actually be shaken. But it's hard to shake the thought of $50,000. It's the same reason why people choose that one more suitcase in Deal Or No Deal. In the moment, you're greedy. End of story. And you're likely not to fold, because $50,000 is a lot of fucking money. The impulse towards that will always win out in most cases. Unless, of course, they assure the cast a Centrelink contestant each week with no self-esteem or general knowledge (and that's hardly going to hold up as very exciting or surprising), or a cast who are so completely stupid (and I imagine the difficulty of some of the questions - with the exceptions of the standard Ten cross-promotion questions, evidenced at least an awareness that this is one way for them to achieve the folds), they presume they're doing worse than the others, even if they're not. Because when you do fold, it's not going to be because you've been intimidated by someone laughing at your bald head - it will be because you've done so very badly in the trivia, you think you'd be an idiot not to. The struggle between greed and a sense of poor trivia performance is what will go into pressing that fold buzzer - nothing to do with being told you have a shiny head.

 

And so, in the end, the whole framework becomes a pointless, contrived exercise that fails to convince and, therefore, create even a shred of suspense. Because it relies on the bitching and lying, the trivia contest - which ironically is still what it boils down to, and most winners will win because they've answered the questions the best, not because they've successfully "bluffed" the others - fails to register (and fails to win against even the thrill of such dull shows like Temptation, and certainly has no chance against The Rich List and 1 vs 100). But because the bitching and the lying (predominantly centered around the bluffing and folding), falls flat on its face, in the end, we're left with nothing but "Was Claudia a school teacher?"

 

No, she wasn't. She was a hair-dresser. But I didn't give a shit. 

 

Oh, and Bridgette Dewhatever. She's a terrible attempt to throw the more credible demographic a bone, and a poor excuse for the Sale of The Century submissive insignificant supporting host, acting quasi-feminist (I say the F word, there, in that absurd abstract portrait of it we find on mainstream TV), almost as if she's actually doing something. She's not. I didn't mention her. That says so very much. We have no need to mention her, again.
   

And so, in the end? Ten continues to play with psychology in it's programming, but it's direly uninformed in the psychology that rules it. Big Brother et al should be sighing with relief. Is The Con Test going to threaten Reality TV on the official reality TV station? No, I don't think so. It was interesting to note that it pulled a slightly bigger audience than Biggest Loser (so there's your statistical proof that there is currently a surge in the pull of classic game-shows over the once mammoth reality kind); but even so, this particular game-show isn't going to replace Ten's reality TV as the answer to the O'Keefe/Maguire boom, and therefore will leave the troubled genre, for the minute, as Ten's major horse. The Con Test probably looked like a nice idea on the drawing board, but it just doesn't work. They may manage to get some mediocre but acceptable ratings for a little while yet, and enough of the white-trash may roll with it long enough to save it from being remembered in that ultimate league of flops achieved by poor Yasmin (it debuted at a million - which isn't earth-shattering, but was high enough, and shows the current interest out there in game-shows) - but don't expect this to go anywhere special, or to stick around for too long. Most new, hyped shows will have strong opening ratings; it doesn't actually tell you very much, in itself, about how people enjoyed what they turned up to see (we get that, later, once people have seen it and start deciding whether to come back to it - which will evolve, over the next few weeks). As much as Mr G no doubt hopes this will be his vehicle (the poor boy is now in that frustrating moment of almost breaking through to the higher league, and Ten is in the frustrating position - as O'Keefe continues to rise - of... welll... not really having anyone else as the male network powerhouse persona), he's been handed a dud with not nearly enough kick. Part of the choice of Andrew G is no doubt that teenagers are presumably one of the target demographics, here (cause... like... you know... teenagers like bitching, you know?), but watching middle-aged tragics nervously spit out silly, contrived attempts at un-nerving stabs is hardly going to cut it with G's staple audience. Nor will the mums (who, along with the teens, give G his slightly bigger than average pull) take to something so stupid and adolescent. It won't please the market who are over the cruelty, but for those who are still looking for the kill, it fails to provide a quality slaughter. In the end, really, The Con Test tries so hard to be so many things, it ends up not realy being anything, and it totally miscalculates both the larger audience and the participants.

 

With the O' Keefe powerhouse, and the Maguire phenomenon still (however tragic he has become) holding ground, if the future wave of prime time is the game-show revival, Ten looks like drowning while the other networks stand on the crest; because apart from this, all it really has is Sandra Sully's show, which is going to look mighty old next to the new guns. At best, the most optimistic I could be about this show is as a kind of mediocre "filler", but that's not in any way what this is intended to be, or something networks spend money on. And of all things, this is Ten's attempt to enter the new game-show race. It has to at least near being as big as the big boys this show is chasing. Cause they're pretty fucking big, right now! The Rich List is pulling an average audience up around the 1.4 to 1.5 million mark, and that's the kind of bigtime reality TV seldom reaches with the ease it once did. The game-show begat the reality show, and reality killed just about every star in the TV hemisphere, for a while. But the game-show is back for revenge. And if this is Ten's answer, it's going to be up to grandpa Big Brother to pull viewers away from the rival prime time game-show powerhouse of O' Keefe and Maguire. Because The Con Test 'aint gonna do jack. 

 

Ultimately, there's little time, in the contemporary media and entertainment industry, to get anything "off the ground" (nor is there the avenues of money). And the public add to this, of course, because our attention span is now about five minutes long, and we are most demanding consumers who want to be stimulated... pronto... now. We don't forget or forgive - we know where the stimulation isn't, and we avoid it as we search for the latest quench. In other words, a show has to step out on the right foot, or it's done. Tench tried to reassess itself, tried to address the problems, re-marketed itself and bought some surprisingly forgiving press (but that was more about the power and connections of Denton - few other shows would even be given the chance), but it was too late. If you're a show that started as a big hit and then declined, you get a chance - people long for the hit of old so much, they'll at least give you a shot. But if you're new, there's just the one. Tonight, I watched The Con Test. It sucked. I'm never watching it, again.