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Docu-soapFebruary 19, 2009 I don't get reality TV. Literally I don't get it, because I don't have a TV, and probably that's why I don't get the concept -- people's reality is so inadequate that they have to get their reality from TV? Maybe if I watched enough reality TV I would get it, but I'm so caught up in my own real reality that I don't have time or the inclination to get a TV. If this puts me in the same camp with people who don't want their opinions messed up with facts, so be it. I don't get reality TV. The front page of the new Martha's Vineyard Times carries a story headed "Vineyard docu-soap planned." The creators, 25/7 Productions, are based in Los Angeles. This is the outfit behind NBC's The Biggest Loser and TLC's A Model Life. The president of 25/7, David Broome, calls it a "soft-scripted docu-soap," combining elements of reality TV and narrative drama to tell the stories of a bunch of college students and recent graduates spending the summer on Martha's Vineyard. Broome sweeps on: "We're looking to kind of capture a time in people's lives. The Vineyard is where people go to summer, coming off of college. There's a kind of dividing line -- the people that are going there to work and figure things out for their future, and people who are there to have fun in the sun and not have to work, because they have the financial means where they don't have to worry about summer jobs. The interaction between the two groups is actually really appealing." I'm sure it is. I also wonder where "the locals" are in all this, and suspect that the whole thing could be set in, say, Colorado in snow season or Florida during spring break. Apparently there's a 2004 graduate of M.V. Regional High School on the casting team. She's supposed to help guarantee authenticity. Broome again: "It's really critical to do this very genuine and very authentic. We don't want anyone to look at this and say, 'That would never happen here.' We want them to be like, 'That's exactly what life is like on the Vineyard in the summertime.'" Of course I'm flashing back to the first Clinton visit to Martha's Vineyard: all those reporters and writers swarming unsupervised around the island during the many, many hours that the Clintons were hiding out near South Beach, filing stories and talking to cameras. "That's exactly what life is like on the Vineyard in the summertime"? Yeah, right. Someone wake me up when they figure out what life is really like on the Vineyard in the summertime.
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