It’s truly astounding how much value those folks on the TV can wrong out of a simple premise. They just wrapped up the fifteenth season of The Fermentist, in which twelve candidates battle it out to win a place on the board of a winery empire. All the challenges are wine-related. So if there have been fifteen seasons, about twelve episodes per season, add them up…that’s approaching two-hundred challenges, all ostensibly unique, to do with wine.
And then they go the opposite direction with Jack of All Trades, where they can just pick a trade each week and we get to watch them fail. This week it was antenna installation. In Melbourne, Jack of All Trades is currently the most watched show on TV, averaging around 3-million per episode. So at least I can see a bit of logic here, because these hapless contestants were sent to fix the television antennas only half an hour before eager fans of the show were due to sit down and watch. The pressure was on, the tears were flowing, the arguments raged, and of COURSE there was a professional TV antenna specialist on the set, as per usual. They didn’t show it after the challenge was complete- got to milk that drama as much as possible- but I’m pretty sure the professional antenna person just gave it a few tweaks and it was fine. The day was saved. Actually, looking at the position of the sun, it’s likely that the timing wasn’t quite as tight as the show wants us to believe. But then, I’ve long accepted that all reality shows are a web of lies for the sake of creating something with comparable excitement to a fictional show.
You’d think we’d be learning something from this, but the contestants were so useless that I now have zero extra knowledge of how to perform TV antenna installation on a Melbourne roof. Anyone with a lick of training is going to have to sort that one out, if I ever have that problem. Meanwhile…SO glad Harriet got kicked off. As soon as the nudged that antenna off the roof and into the skip, I knew her defiant, smug mug was toast.
-Jen