Note : This is Part 2 of a series, Part 1 is here.
Roadies has become one of the most popular reality shows on Indian television, and with good reason. I think it’s because they were so raw and real and un-tweaked. They don’t have the artifice or the artificial judges, or the make-overs, or the artificial build-ups. Folks on the show didn’t exude that artificialness that too much scripting brings. There is in-built humor and lots of tomfoolery, but that’s pretty natural since it’s the cast and crew being who they are. And people love genuine stuff ( hint-hint : it’s a reality show)
However with this season (Season 6 – Hell down under), there has been a change. It hasn’t been as engrossing as previous seasons, and it appears that Roadies might be losing it’s shine. The show has, in it’s need to be newer and better and bigger, veered from being mostly un-tweaked to constantly needing prodding – either in the form of some very convoluted mind machinations or in the super-new avatars of Raghu (and his twin Rajiv) as the new bad men of television. And it doesn’t do anyone any good.
The longest running reality show on MTV, and a relative hit at that, it is being milked dry – you have the Season itself, you have the Awards, and then you have the Roadies Cheat Code. And now you actually have Raghu advertising Roadies merchandise at Archies Galleries. New advertisements feature current or ex-roadies in action either in the show itself or at the auditions.
The Roadies Auditions have always been an essential part of the Season, and very entertaining to watch. You have the youth of the city, and it might be a metro like Delhi or Bombay, turn up to try and become Roadies. It is fascinating to watch these humongous amounts of people vying to impress the Audition judges – as though Roadies was the ultimate dream.
MTV does a fairly thorough job – they have questionnaires, group discussions, and face-to-face interviews. And they hand-pick an interesting bunch of people. Now with past seasons, the participants have been characters (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) but they have also had ability or some outstandingly “good” quality. They seem to have had that caliber. They made the grade.
With the previous two seasons, I notice that the caliber level is going down. The participants get picked chiefly because they are “characters” rather than worthy competitors. With Season 5, when Ashutosh won, his competitiors were mostly big-city kids who lacked the tact and the basic level-headedness that Ashutosh had. Still the “positive” characters numbered more than the “negative” ones. And the negative characters got eliminated one-by-one. And the decent ones stayed on. And then Ashutosh won. Everyone happy – see ?
With the recently ended season (Season 6), Nauman won. And while he was a relatively worthy contender and deserved to win, this season the negative characters outnumbered the positive ones. Not only did they fail when it cam to matters of physical ability (notice how this set of Roadies did badly on many tasks) they also lacked spirit – that rah-rahing roaring of I-can-do-ness that would be expected from participants of this kind of a show.
Next : Dissecting Roadies Season 6
