Temptation Island

With all the hyped-up reality TV programming currently on the air, basically every major network is coming up with new reality shows. This has got to be the absolute bottom. Temptation Island is a show about a group of people who go to a deserted island (where else?) with a significant other, and strippers try to woo the guy away from his girlfreind.

It is the stupidest premise for a reality show, and THAT is saying something, considering all reality TV shows are garbage. In the fact that people watch couples get torn apart from they're loved ones by strippers while people watch it on TV for entertainment really makes you think about where the human race is heading.

Four couples test their devotion to each other by being parted for several weeks on separate parts of an island whilst being wooed by men and women.

The first series had me hooked for episode one! It's so funny. And it's so much better than Survivor! Of all the reality TV shows, this one is by far the trashiest, corniest, stupidest and ultimately, the best.

I don't watch TV. Because it plain bores me. Legal dramas are the only shows with a slight bit of intelligence to them, but other than that - 65 channels and nothing on. Actually I lost my TV-watching habits years ago and I don't even own a TV-set anymore.

I was visiting home and my mom (figure that!) told me to watch this new show called "Temptation Island". I was familiar with the concept of reality television - during my TV-watching days I used to be a fan of the only, true & original "MTV's The Real World", the show that started it all. But the small bits and pieces I had seen of all the newer "reality" shows ("Big Brother", "Survivor" etc) didn't create any interest in me.

Well - from the moment I sat down in front of "Temptation Island", I was hooked. Sure, they made mistakes - Taheed and Ytossie being the most glaring one. Sure, they played the couples against each other at times to create extra tension, which wasn't very nice. And sure, they used false statements when advertising the show - actually there were no strippers or "professional seducers" on the island. All the singles were above average attractive and thus successful, but by far not "strippers and seducers" as advertised. The supposed presence of those by the way seems to be the main complaint of the first reviewer here - its obvious that the person hasn't even watched the show.

Inspite of those small mistakes, I found the relationships, guilt, doubts, tears, laughter, revenge, lust, forgivness, despair, everything that happened on the island an absolutely mesmerizing package. As I did not own a TV-set myself, I had to make it a point not to miss a single episode and watched the show whereever I could.

The show's over - and once again, I don't watch any TV. But with Temptation Island 2 on the way, this will most probably change yet again:)

They say that all great societies reach a point from where they can go no higher and that one can only go down from there. It happened to the Romans, it happened to the Brits and I believe it's beginning to happen to us.

I think our current fascination with lurid and pointless shows such as this one is symptomatic of the excesses with which we lead our lives. At the risk of sounding like the ultimate pessimist, I can only see us descending into a society of apathetic, uninformed individuals. I believe we've already entered that phase.

Your moment of enlightenment.

This appalling show is just the latest escalation in the entertainment industry's attempts to keep you from living a meaningful life of your own. It all probably started with those terrible Fox "reality" shows like "When Animals Attack" and "When Teenagers Go Postal."

This is all just an extension of what Roman satirist Juvenal meant when he said "the people long eagerly for two things: bread and circuses." Sounds like popcorn and movies. People are distracted so they don't know what's really wrong in society. As long as people are content, all they want is entertainment. And watching the suffering of other people sure is entertaining, isn't it?

In the free market economy we have here in America there are a multitude of industries that survive by making people dependent on them and their products. By far the most menacing is the entertainment industry.

By claiming to portray "real life" like in this show, it implies two things: 1)you have to watch TV to see real life, and 2) we (the industry)know what real life is better than you do...so trust us and keep watching! And be sure to purchase the products advertised on this show! (Especially those violent video games and movies we market to your kids, because kids are sooooo vulnerable to advertising). The last thing the industry wants is for people to find other things to do, like reading a book or improving their education.

I remember after the "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" debacle that Fox announced it would no longer do shows like that due to the negative press. Then "Survivor" came along. Now Fox has announced that because of Survivor's success the rules have changed, and they have to put on crap like "Temptation Island" to compete.

What bothers me is that 18 million people watched the first episode. That's about 1 in 15 people at your office who were probably standing around the water cooler the next day talking about the show. Everything in the entertainment industry is about one-upmanship. I heard "Friends" was going to introduce a lesbian love interest for one of the characters just to lure viewers back to that show!

As much as I hate to say it, this show is just the tip of a gigantic iceberg. Unfortunately there are enough shallow, stupid people in this country to make sure these kind of shows succeed. Sooner or later we are going to get things that are raunchier than this. Some day the networks will want to drop all the restrictions against language and nudity, because they can only go so far with the current format. After all, they can't do a show called "Who Wants to Get Raped Anally for $2 Million"...can they?