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

Reality TV has never been bigger. From the now famous Survivor and Big Boss (both the desi and the British versions where Shilpa Shetty made big news) to the talent shows like American Idol and “Britain’s got talent” all rely on the elimination principle. Here’s a bunch of willing participants subject to certain tasks, and very certain judgement – by a set of official judges or their own select set of peers, or it could even be the aam junta (hence the popularity of the call in/text/vote for me phenomena). Many versions of these have trickled down to Indian television also. Thus you have the Indian version of “Big Boss”, “Indian Idol” and MTV Roadies, not to mention the hundreds of inferior cousins that this trend has spawned.

It’s basic emotions here, because people are people – they react. And apparently watching people react is pretty interesting, because these shows have high ratings. As such these shows are many, and each episode is dragged out for maximum effect. They are also sometimes tweaked to get the drama going. So you have the planned walk-off, or the stylized protest – something patently false being presented as “reality”. However, and besides all that, you want the show to be “strong” i.e.; viewers feel for it, because that is when they will watch it. And you want the “good” people to win, else it may not be a show people want to watch anymore.

I follow MTV Roadies with great interest, since as mentioned before, it is fairly good for the soul to watch people being stupid at 18, having passed aforementioned age myself. Not that stupidity ceases to affect one now – no indeed, it can and does cross all racial, cultural and age barriers – but still. And right from Season 1, it seemed like this Show had it all right. A great set of characters – yeah, they might not think things through, but teenagers and folks in their early twentys do tend to have a lot more energy and earnestness. And a reasonably zany director in Raghu, who’s gotten kookier with time, but more on that later. And a fair-minded anchor. Ranvijay won the first season, and got picked up by MTV as the Roadies anchor. He looks like he’s got his head screwed on right, besides being athletic and a Roadie winner himself.

So the motley crew and the participants hit the road, travel across the country doing pretty interesting physical/mental/creative tasks. And it gets you hooked you know, because of the people. Some of them are nice and some of them are not so nice. They have their own quirks, and they react differently to different situations – it could be a stressful task, a fight, or just plain speaking your mind. And through the journey, and the passing of the days and the episodes, you come to know them quite well. And you know whom you back.

Thus you have: a following.

And then you have : popularity.

Note : This is Part 1 of a series, Part 2 here.