I've heard the phrase "Back with a vengeance" many times but rarely have I seen it come true so vividly as it has with the return of Raghu and Rajiv to the Roadies franchise that they fathered (they are brothers so does that make it weirder than the fact that they are of the same sex? Probably.).
MTV and the Balded Brothers have figured out a way to make things work for both sides which has led to the gruesome twosome being back in charge and thankfully keeping random MTV "Star ban gaya Chipkoo" - Cyrus, Nikhil and that other Cyrus out of the show. Anything is better than watching Nikhil try to intimidate someone. Or for that matter, watching Cyrus, or that other Cyrus try to be funny.
It does seem though that MTV gave up a lot of ground on their side of the negotiating table - going by the frantic disclaimer ticker that squeals across the screen distancing themselves from the content - rude, disrespectful, offensive comments delivered by the judges to the Roadies hopefuls in what is supposed to be a form of tough love or initiation or ragging or test.
Anyway, to return with a little less vengeance to the point of this post, I notice that R&R (this is a good label and I'm going to stick with this so you don't get distracted) have quite a lot of bile stored in them in the way they have a go at the lambs that are brought before them for their weekly ritual humiliation also known as the "Roadies Auditions".
This isn't like Roadies 6 or the ones before it, where you could tell R&R were, underneath it all, sincere and real about it. Something seems to have snapped - and this more in Raghu than in Rajiv - and they now seem to be actually enjoying what they are dishing out and there somehow a sense that they are acutally "losing it" on camera than they did before. It's revealing a mean and vicious streak that probably doesn't belong in what they are supposed to be doing.
Earlier, the confrontations (although Beat-down or Take-down would be more appropriate) used to develop organically during the process of questioning. The interviewee would say something or reveal a certain side to their personality or mental make-up that would grate R&R and that would provoke them enough to have a full-fledged go at the unsuspecting goat. Random interviewee would somehow stumble into a through process that suggested that "women belong in the kitchen" / "women shouldn't wear revealing clothes" / "women shouldn't earn more than men" and it would turn these two into blithering women's lib advocates who then tried to educate this boy on 21st century gender politics by screaming his roof brain off. The method was questionable, but their intentions probably weren't so much.
But this time around, there's something about it that just makes it seem - what's the word - programmed. The contestants are chosen because they have revealed a character flaw that will make good Roadies Audition footage. R&R know when the goat walks in what and how they are going to steer the interview and this makes it a lot more manipulative, ruthless and sociopathic in nature.
It's somehow as if R&R have said, "Ok, so this is what people enjoy most about us in our Auditions shtick, so we are really going to lay it on thick."
Sort of like, how the producers of Bindass's "Dadagiri" must have figured, lets just try and reverse engineer the DNA of Roadies and create a clone. A process they seem to have repeated with "Date Trap" (derived from Channel V's wildly fun and original show "Dare 2 Date").
It just smells synthetic and artificial and reeks of TRP hunger and desperation that is not nice to see in a show that enjoys the kind of public and youth hysteria that Roadies obviously generates - just look at the thousands who turn up every year at every city hoping to get selected.
No comments:
Post a Comment