BBC’s 'Make me a Dealer'

Reality television’s great. A little screen full of millions of tiny attention seeking people for you to pity and ridicule. 

So today I watched BBC’s Make me a Dealer. Calm down, it’s not about junkies teaching overly keen individuals their dirty junkie selling ways in a bus interchange on a Friday night although that would also make for a pleasant evening viewing experience.

According to the BBC, Make me a Dealer is about a man called Paul Martin, who “takes to the road as he searches the length and breadth of Britain in pursuit of a new generation of moneymaking antiques dealers”. Sounds like a snooty, boring sort of James Bond thing.

Apparently this quaint British show helps regular normals become overnight antiques sensations - experts at determining trash from not-trash - with the aim of making some cash via a little side hustle. 

Hmm…it seems to me the whole thing about knowing trash from not-trash is having extensive knowledge of your market. Like having a degree in knowing trash from non-trash.

Like having a degree if you were a doctor, for example, as an example that's not really the same at all. Let’s have a medical show like this, where they release members of the public onto other somewhat sick members of the public, and they try to treat them using Dr Google, under the watchful yet mocking gaze of medical professionals. That’s sounds fun and watchable, BBC.

Alas, probably not in their upcoming pilots sadly, so you’ll all have to play Dr Google to diagnose yourself, your neighbours, your friends, strangers and your long-suffering work colleagues without getting reality television famous. Probably for the best.

Anyway anyway anyway, the point is, if you want to be an antiques pro-fesh-i-narl, you kind of have to do a lot of groundwork to know what the goshdarnit you are doing with all those period pieces of great antiquity.

So, anyway anyway, in our show our hero Paul Martin does that elitist voiceover thing of mocking and humiliating David and Laura - tonight’s contestants - because he thinks they don’t know what they are doing. Well, David has a vague idea; Laura not so much. 

Fortunately, Laura has been humiliated before and knows exactly what’s she’s doing in that regard and she is having none of it, maintaining her sense of humour with such nuggets as “I’m going to buy a mug, not be a mug”. Yeah Paul Martin, save your toff scoffing and contemptuous ridicule for another day, mate. How very British is this show?

So lots of things happened and ad breaks blah blah and then more things and then they had to go to an auction and they keep putting their hands in the air. No, don’t put your hands in the air unless you have money to buy this useless crap. 

And then, in the end - let’s fast forward at the fastest speed possible to the end - Paul Martin comes out with, “well, I think they both got lucky”,  presumably because they made some type of profit off the stained mid 18th century mug and ugly decorative art that they bought at auction (I wasn't paying attention really). Yeah? Fancy that, Paul Martin. Turns out guessing the value of cor blimey ye old shite ain’t that hard after all.

Anyway, I’m VERY ANNOYED, because I quite liked this show.

Classes of Reality Televisual Drugs

As nauseating as all reality television programming may be, I separate them into three distinct categories for my own ease, in the way that lawmakers and law enforcers grade drugs through a class system; bad, badderer and baddest.

Class C reality programs are the least harmful of all.  But like Class C drugs, you have to be pretty dopey to engage with them, and even more dopey to want to guest star on them. The key players of Class C reality are good people (and dogs) doing good things for the benefit of the community. Customs officers, lifesavers, random breathe testing and police dogs, amongst many others.

Good eggs and canines who can save your bacon, or your luggage, at any point in your life.  The most effective means of making a guest appearance in an episode on one of these shows is to just be yourself, providing you are a drug-taking, law-breaking dickhead caught in a serious intelligence vacuum.

The only real talent these guest stars possess is that they are dense enough to want to be seen handcuffed on national television. Taking Class C drugs of the likes of anabolic steroids and minor tranquillisers may be where the problem started.  Or maybe I am being too kind and they are just morons.

Watching Class B reality is marginally more serious that watching Class C, and includes Australian Idol, Australia's Got Talent, Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules. While the guest stars of these shows may possess some hidden talent like flame throwing or horse whispering, it's still not that interesting watching someone cook a souffle, even if you were taking Class B drugs of the likes of amphetamines, codeine and cannabis.

Watching Class A reality is serious and will cause dependence and constipation. You must seek professional help as soon as the current season of Ladette to Lady is complete, because as rivetting as it is watching a bunch of skanky hoes turn into a bunch of skanky hoes who miraculously learn how to use a fork, you are effectively addicted to crystal meth, heroine, cocaine and/or esctasy.

Other Class A reality includes The Amazing Race, The Farmer Wants a Wife, Four Weddings, Dating in the Dark, Survivor, Conviction Kitchen, The Block, Please Marry my Boy.  That riduclous Big Brother started it all.  Seriously, why are any of these people on television?

And if you are inclined to watch this trash, can I suggest that - if you record an episode - you do not supply it to another person.

FBI Reality Barbie

I was watching The Amazing Race the other night, in all probability because my brain was enduring some type of psychosis that meant it couldn't unearth the remote to flick the channel to something more appealing, like 'mute' or 'off'.

One of the teams in the latest series of this fast-paced global backpacking reality game show are a pair of female FBI agents, that look and sound a lot like FBI barbie would if she were involved in law enforcement and crime prevention and could bend her fingers to clasp a glock.

While this pair behave like they have the IQ of a plastic doll - harsh, but true - I figure they must have some manner of skill or attribute working in their favour or the Bureau wouldn't have hired them. Of course, there is always affirmative action, the technique some women rely on to get to where they want to be in life. Winning on merit is, like, so passe.

In this particular episode, all teams were required to erect a fairly complicated and problematic tent structure thing, replete with approximately 80,000 tent poles and throw cushions (seriously), under the direction of a slew of completely incomprehensible instructions. It is my understanding that the more complex a task, the simpler the instruction booklet should read.  However, that's called common sense, which really has no place in the world of instruction manuals.

The all-female FBI pair floundered in their task, not because they couldn't work as a team, but because they "didn't have a male on their team who knows about tents". The words of a couple of FBI agents, not mine.  Which begs the question: when Australia allows women on the frontline - presumably when they have passed the exact same standard of tests as men to earn their place - are they just going to whinge and complain when they don't have a man around to cock their gun for them, because, you know, men know about these things?

Of course there are women in the defence forces who are capable of taking on the same amount of physical strain as the men, but they are few and far between, and they are the ones who just get on with the job without needing to qualify their effort with a gender disclaimer.

What I don't have time for is the garbage I hear from feminists; demanding equality on the one hand, yet special dispensation on the other.  I really can't stand it.  And they constantly bleat about how unfair it is that women are not allowed to do certain jobs, yet they use their gender as an excuse when they fail in the task.  I'm sorry, but I call it as I see it, and this sort of crap just pisses me off.

So You Think You Can Do Everything

Standing in the queue at Spotlight recently, I overheard a fascinatingly uninteresting conversation between two teenage girls that went something like this:

Girl 1: I want to learn how to knit.
Girl 2: What do you want to knit?
Girl 1: I just want to knit shit.
Girl 2: hahahaha. Awesome!*
Girl 1: Can you knit?
Girl 2: Yeah, but I can’t start it. My mum tried to teach me but I got bored.
Girl 1: OMG! Same! Let’s YouTube it. Something will be on there about starting a jumper.
Girl 2: Awesome!*

I take issue with every part of this teen conversation.  It seems the internet is Gen Y’s answer to everything. I suppose if you can steer yourself away from the irritating animated cartoons featuring wisecracking anthropomorphised animals, you may find what you are looking for on YouTube. But it’s just a bit too simple. I guess I can’t expect anything more from a generation that apparently cannot live without devices that must be checked every fifteen damn seconds.

Aren’t your teen years supposed to be about learning how to figure out the world all by yourself? And aren’t you supposed to endure feelings of angst in the process? Teens these days are full of angst, but rather than trying to find their feet, their angst comes from being cocky, young, impressionable and hopelessly naïve enough to think that they are going to be the one to change the world.

Like activists, they will care about the fate of the world until they reach approximately 23 years of age, when they will go work for the public service or a big business organisation that is dedicated to grinding one’s dreams into the dirt. Once there, they will spend their days with other supremely uninteresting people whose sole purpose is to gather together and make sure that nothing of note is ever accomplished. Someone should put that on YouTube.

* I am not at all weary of the misuse of the word awesome. Nope, not at ALL. A word most properly used to denote something truly breathtaking or unbelievably magnificent; it is now used to describe everything from a half-decent meal to a show of support for someone who just landed an entry-level job at McDonalds.