An old article that throws light on a topic we frequently discussed. I stole it from the BachBoard.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53032-2004Aug9.htm
So, what of season 5 was real? Hmmm. :)
Off to bed on that note,
Leeny Lou
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Thanks for posting that Leen. I am not surprised at all. As far as what was real I think we can all agree we felt we saw a love story. How much of that was manipulated to make us feel that way I don't know.
ReplyDeleteHi Leen, hi HCM,hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI will echo my thanks, Leen, for posting that. It was an interesting article.
I think I never for a minute doubted that the contestants, while not having a script to read off, do in fact get lots of direction from the producers and directors of this show.
For example, I think that once they've sized up the contestants, the producers begin to create on-screen characters for them. David was clearly meant to be the angry, crude, unhinged guy. Wes was meant to be the slick musician with groupies (or, at least, a girlfriend). Jake's inherent intensity was.. well, intensified onscreen. I am still puzzled, though as to why they gave Ed, the F1 such a bad edit.
Having said that, I think that the dialogue we hear and the body language we see is spontaneous. The producers may ask the contestants to talk about something in particular, but how they approach the topic is of their own making. Of course, this can still be (and is) controlled by the producers who splice and edit to make things appear a certain way.
The love stories, most specifically the chemistry between Jill and Reid, are the real part of this show. I think that the producers would be shooting themselves in the foot if they made the show 100% contrived. Even the most gullible viewers would spot that a mile away and stop watching. But all the background stories, the conflict, the drama, the rumours, the innuendos, are mostly made up for our entertainment.
And when you think about it, this hackneyed formula seems to work. Just look at how much message board energy was spent discussing Wes alone! People tune in to see conflict and scandal just as much as love.
More out of curiousity than anything else, I also DVR'd Fleiss' other similar new show "More To Love", which deals with the same topic as "The Bachelor(ette)", only with larger-sized contestants.
I finally got around to watching it late last night. Has anyone else seen it? The main contestant seems like a warm and genuine guy. I was impressed by a lot of the women there: they were beautiful and accomplished and very comfortable with their size.
Some, however, were not, so you had the archetypal fat girl who has had her self-esteem crushed by a society which values sylphlike silhouettes. The tears were flowing pretty freely from these previously rejected girls, as they dolled themselves up to meet a man who, for once, was going to compliment them on their size.
I don't know how many of you watched the pilot episode of this show and I won't go on about it if you have no interest in it. I only brought it up because it was interesting to compare the Fleiss formula from one show to another. There were so many similarities in the format of the two shows.
Part 2 follows.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteIn the newer show, there were 'promise rings' instead of roses, and plus-sized model Emme played Chris Harrison's role, albeit slightly stiffly and obviously read from a prompter ("Ladies, this will be the final ring"). I guess Chris Harrison has had a while to 'perfect his art'.
Another example of the Fleissian formula was his getting one woman to jump into the pool (fully -clothed, so no "Brian - hung like a light switch - antics!)
As expected, it didn't have the desired effect, only serving to make her look rather ridiculous. I can only imagine Fleiss' minions milling around the group, trying to find one adventurous and rather misguided soul to cannon-ball in cocktail attire.
So I think that Jake was convinced to 'save' Jillian from Wes. I think Dave was provoked by the producers offscreen and then filmed at his worst. I think Wes was either too puffed-up with his own celebrity status or too stupid to realize that his verbal diarrhea would be edited to his detriment. I think Reid came through witty and charming as he really is but that Fleiss decided to play up his indecisiveness, once the show wrapped. That is why he elected to show us Reid's father telling him to "go for it" and also why we got to see all his little 'neurotic bits'. An explanation of sorts as to why he couldn't say the 'L word' to Jillian directly, even though he appeared to have no problems saying it to just the cameraman.
I just don't understand Ed's edit: the suggestions of erectile disfunction (rather obviously rectified later with the cheesy volcano eruption), even the comments such as calling Wes "that country-singing turd". I think there is a nastiness lurking in Ed. Look at the way his father made sarcastic comments, belittling his mother for loving to play cards. The way Ed smirked at Wes' comment that he was going to go home and have lots of sex, and this during a rose ceremony where Jillian was clearly distraught. Consider Ed telling Jillian that she was a genius for keeping him around. Arrogance, sarcasm, calculating competitiveness, coupled with puerile humour (jenga farts and karaoke drunkenness) and an artificial way about him (poor eye contact, secretive life, perhaps, stilted declarations of love) put Ed so far below Reid's refreshingly real and charming wit and self-deprecation that I find myself wondering how Jillian made such a big error in judgement.
There is, of course, a chance that I am basing this judgement from the point of view of someone who has been "Fleissed" into believing what is not necessarily true. Perhaps Ed is quite different from what we've seen on tv.
I'm just not convinced, though, so I think that although the show is just short of being scripted, the reality does poke through occasionally enough for us to put two and two together.
Nadya -- can you send me an e-mail??
ReplyDeleteLeen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the post. It's a fascinating issue about how to classify the "writers" of an "unscripted" show. I'm hardly surprised either. I'm also less-than-surprised that the staff on these shows work 12 to 18 hour days for a fraction of the pay that others in the industry receive. Imagine the job of the little camera and sound crews that had to camp all night outside of hotel rooms in case someone decided to pay an unauthorized visit.
Marianna,
You never cease to amaze me. Once again, you get me to rethink a situation I assumed was put to rest. Ever since I joined the board, we've gently debated back and forth about the level of reality vs. "scriptedness" for this show. I started out assuming a pretty high level of reality. I eventually doubted everything about the show. And now I do believe I am in complete agreement with your excellent analysis. I don't think there was scripting, per se. I do agree there were all sorts of other things going on: prompting, provoking, intervention, innuendo, comments stripped of their context, independent comments strung together to create false context, etc.
I think that took real people and edited them to exaggerate real flaws and virtues. I don't think the final versions were balanced but I also don't see these versions as far removed from the truth. Each person provided the material the producers used to work with. I'm sure there was plenty of positive footage of Wes that was discarded, but I don't think any of the negative footage was falsified. So it probably was with everyone.
I don't know if people caught Reid's interview (Leen, did you post that one?). He declared that he was comfortable with how the season depicted what actually happened. This is not to say that it is gospel, but it does suggest it was not a wide departure from reality, provided we trust Reid.
You raise the big remaining question about why Ed got such a negative edit. A related question is why Jillian got a less than stellar one as well. This is very confusing given that it really hurt the reputation of ABC and the two "stars". I can only see two possibilities. One is that ABC editors and producers are very bad at what they do. But my old friend Occam's Razor suggests a simpler explanation: these two actually got more or less the best edits that the producers could give them.
Certainly, they could have left off Ed's drunken dance. And the focus on Ed's apparent dysfunction helped the ratings but ultimately hurt the show and the franchise. Perhaps the teaser made it into the previews before the FRC was filmed? I don't understand why Jillian and Ed invited the camera into their fantasy date in the first place. I cannot fathom why Jillian would talk about it afterward on camera. Even if she had not already decided on him as F1 at that point (which I don't believe for a moment), she knew that the man she thoroughly humiliated might become her fiancé a week later.
Perhaps, the footage of Ed that wasn't used made him look even worse. Imagine all the brooding, the sarcastic and insulting comments, the competitiveness that we didn't see! Reid seemed to have no respect for Ed. I think that your assessment of Ed, along with that of Luv and others, is on target.
I think that ABC made the best love story they could from the rather shoddy and unlikely material that was handed to them. In the absence of credible love story in the finale, they reverted to a much more real and satisfying, albeit tragic one. The crew and producers are probably as disappointed with the outcome as we are. If that's not the case, some of them are probably looking for new jobs right now.
You admiring fan,
Jim
Thanks for posting this article Leen. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteA friend suggested to me a few weeks ago that she felt the show was scripted. At the time I couldn't agree with her. Having seen the outcome, how they, I think, cut and spliced Wes to make him appear a total jerk, not that I was a great fan of his, I came around to her way of thinking.
Having read this article it appears that the show is scripted to a certain extent. I guess the only intangible is how the "contestants" really feel about each other.
Is it possible the producers thought that Jillian would choose Reid and therefore not give Ed a good edit. Maybe it was just to mislead us. I'm sure most of us felt that Reid would be the one.
Again, I guess this points to clever editing, obviously Jillian found something very attractive about Ed. Shame more of us couldn't see it!
My dear Jim,
ReplyDeleteIt is I who am constantly amazed by your well-reasoned and entertaining posts. And now that I see you're a writer of novels and screenplays, it all makes wonderful sense!
When and if you ever feel comfortable doing so, I'm sure we would all love to know more about your writing.
On that note, I'd like to convene our weekly meeting of the J&M Mutual Admiration Society!!
M.