2022 Quarantine Chronicles
Cheers to a New Year and R.I.P Betty White
Throughout the COVID pandemic I have successfully and safely been able to avoid it, until now. 7 days into this new year I have been forced to quarantined - obviously to monitor any symptoms and make sure everything is safe, but no one ever says how boring quarantine is. It’s similar to lockdown but worse…at least during lockdown you could hang out with your family members and go to the grocery store! With quarantine I wear my mask in common spaces and FaceTime my roommates when I’m bored haha. But alas, it’s not all bad, I’ve gotten to binge-watch a bunch of foreign reality shows. If you’re curious about what I’ve seen and my opinions please continue to read.
Singles Inferno
This was a cute Korean dating show where singles spend 9 days on an island - spend time with each other and eventually find love. It was really endearing to see people from another society act around each other - Western culture is very, how you say, vulgar, and many of the contestants on the show approached their relationships with more care and intentionality? Not sure how to phrase it but there were still the tropes of player, sweet girl, very determined won’t-back-down type but the way it played out is much different from Western culture. There wasn’t as much blatant physical intimacy and people had time to sit and talk which was refreshing to see. I would say it was similar in setup as Too Hot Too Handle but the energy it was giving was like The Great British Bake-off . It was still exciting to watch everything unfold episode after episode but it was definitely much more calm.
Love Never Lies
This SPAINish reality show is very Western, full of drama, crying, yelling - ALL OF IT. I’m not sure if I enjoyed watching this show, I mean yes the drama was there but it was just too much. The premise of the show is that disgruntled couples come on the show in a last ditch effort to reconcile their relationship or break up. The added twist is that there is a piece of retinal scanning technology that is able to tell if you’re lying or not and there is shared pot of prize money that increases and decreases based on how truthful the contestants are.
First of all, these couples had fundamental issues with their relationships and chose to air them out on TV which is so brave. But if you need to fix your relationship please go to a therapist not a reality tv show! The root of the show was that they separate the couples and put temptations in front of them, many indulged which led to the drama but it just seemed liked everyone on the show was a hypocrite so it was annoying to watch by the end of it.
Insiders
Another SPAINish show but this was SO interesting to watch. This was truly like nothing I’d ever seen - not that I’m an avid watcher of reality TV. So this show starts out with all the contestants thinking that they’re in the final stages of being casted on this show but they’ve already started the game and have no idea. So aside from the secret filming of the contestants, each time that you think you know the game they hit you with a curveball and then another! The root of this show is psychological warfare, honestly the produces of this show know how to create tension. With methodical planning of situations that aren’t based in reality they are able to turn the contestants against each other and with the rules constantly changing it creates more uncertainty throughout the series. I loved watching it and I’m interested to see how they continue.
