So. One thing that came up in yesterday’s exciting “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” experiment was a show currently airing in the US called Escape Routes. It’s a reality show currently being shown on NBC on Saturday nights and not many people are watching it.
Well I watched episode one last night (I think it might have just finished, it’s a six week “thing” and episode six was last Saturday) and actually it’s alright. Six pairs travel to six different cities and do tasks set by Rossi Morreale and “social media sensation” (it says here) iJustine. One of which is an urban challenge, one is an interactive challenge, one is an escape challenge (Which doesn’t mean escaping from anything, it basically means ‘not in the city’). Points are awarded from 0-100 in 20 point increments depending on where the teams place in each challenge. Highest score at the end of the series wins $100,000 and a Ford Escape (do you see what they’ve done here?).
It’s basically an excuse for lots of product placement in the guise of a reality gameshow, but whilst this could be awful the challenges in episode one are quite good fun – the first one was a real life version of Zynga’s Hanging With Friends (it’s hangman for iPhone) with losers being ziplined 100ft down a building. The escape challenge involved real life dogfighting in actual real planes, albeit with lasers rather than missiles.
The interactive challenge forms a central focus of the show and well, it’s a bit gimmicky. That week there was a streamed talent show and viewers who had watched it online could vote for their favourite. But the contestants are encouraged to use social media to get as many people on their “team” as possible during the week, so it’s not a talent contest as much as a popularity contest. I get the feeling this might be a recurring idea, and as you can win a Ford Escape by backing the winning team I get the feeling there’s going to be a bit of a spiral element here. It is a pity that one of the central tenets seems the least interesting bit.
The show is mainly about the challenges although they added a little bit of interpersonal drama towards the end, although it felt very edited and manufactured to make it look like more of a sleight than I suspect it was. Overall it’s not a bad show, but there’s little here that makes it must see and no killer hook the whole thing is based around.
Here’s the site, all the episodes so far are up but you’ll probably need some sort of proxy or VPN to watch them if you’re outside the US.