Trials of Desi TV #2
I understand how reality shows work. I really do. And yet, I continue to watch some of desi tv’s absolute bottom-of-barrel stuff-- MTV reality shows. Namely, Roadies and India’s Next Top Model. (Ok, occasionally Splitsvilla too, but without any investment.) INTM, on its 4th season now, is my one real hate-watch. I don’t deploy this term lightly. I actually do enjoy watching most of my shady things and not “ironically haha.” But there’s a lot of self-loathing involved with INTM.
The contestants are terrible and improve little over time. I dislike every single judge and mentor (I suppose I’m indifferent about Daboo Ratnani, but he has the presence and personality of flat, tepid soda, so he makes absolutely no difference.) And I rarely agree with the judgments. The makeover episodes are stunningly bad. They invariably pick weirdass photos as the models’ ‘best pictures.’ The clothes they model are butt-ugly 8 out of 10 times. All this is to say, I have no idea why I watch this show with no redeeming factors that I can think of.
But watch I do, and in this season, we’ve just said goodbye to Tamanna, who took up 85% of camera-commentary time by just being a relentless, vicious bitch to every single other contestant there. I get how this goes, which is why I prefaced this post the way I did. But I’ve rarely seen anything like Tamanna’s nonstop assholery even as she’s an incredibly incompetent model. Not even Princess Parina of last season. Like Parina, Tamanna’s gone just in time for the finale so MTV wrung as many eyeballs as possible out of her drama without making the whole thing even more of a farce than it is. (Urvi better win this shit.)
Can’t wait for Tamanna to pop up on Splitsvilla.
Also, with all the low-hanging fruit you can dunk on Priyanka Chopra with, can’t believe The Cut (of all publications) went with that bizarre, incoherent, poorly-written, rambling nonsense. She has such terrible politics and displays it constantly. And your chosen angle is that in the Nickyanka relationship, Priyanka is the ‘scammer’ and Nick the ‘scamee’? LMAO
Also also, as one friend eloquently put it, Rohit Shetty really out here establishing his own extended universe! We’re going to be answerable to future generations for more things than I can count and this is definitely one of them.
