Colors Infinity - Too Many Cooks?

Yes, Colors Infinity is finally gracing us, complete with a semblance of a TV schedule, with actual

 ads and repeats and all that. Indian Television can now boast of having one more entertainment channel and 7 more shows we are going to ignore to watch a bunch of drawling Australians cook. Don't get me wrong, I mean Masterchef Australia is actually one of the best shows on TV right now, whether reality or otherwise. But I feel that 'My Kitchen Rules' is actually worse than Masterchef US. I could rant about that last one for a week, but I'm savoring it for a later date when I really feel like punching a wall!

Right now, back to Colors Infinity. A new channel with a good look, I think those guys have their television-loving hearts in the right place. Colors doesn't err too much in these things. Even their Hindi line-up is decent. 

Here's why I would want to watch Colors Infinity:

Good Line-up of Shows - Colors Infinity offers some really good shows. Blindspot is an awesome show. The excessively tattoed woman who can't remember who she is, but can take down three men in under 10 seconds... I mean, COME ON! And she has an FBI agent's name tattoed to her back...INtriiigggue!! Black Mirror is another show that actually deserves the adjective 'gripping'! With one-hour long episodes, each telling a different story, I kind of got an acutely Roald-Dahl vibe from the show. And I LOVE Dahl, so thumbs-up right there. Shows I wouldn't mind watching are Flash, The Big C, and Forever.

The Stage: Another singing contest reality show, The Stage is different from the rest in that it features Indian contestants singing English songs. A refreshing change from other reality shows of this kind, so far, The Stage doesn't have any of that stupid introspective inane monologues that contestants indulge in and there is no bitching (yet) of other contestants. A nice surprise is that the judges are actually fair and open with their critiquing. I completely expected them to be impressed

with every contestant who did a poor imitation of every singer from Western pop music. But it was nice to be proved wrong! When someone is all swag and no performance, they call the person out on their BS and send them to the bench. Seriously, try slipping a quick one past Vishal Dadlani! The judges are equally quick to appreciate an unassuming contestant if they have an amazing voice. More than anything, all judges unanimously insist that the contestants bring out their unique personalities to their singing, and make the song their own, instead of doing an imitation of the original artiste. The cherry on top is the pleasantly engaging Shibani Dandekar, who hosts the show with a 'Çat Deeley' vibe, but toned down tastefully for an Indian audience. Her language is impeccable, and has none of the vomit-inducing vocabulary like 'mind-blowing'and áwesome'and 'fantabulous'... blech! I have a sour taste in my mouth just saying those words! Looks like Colors Infinity has put a lot of serious thought into putting The Stage together, and it does not disappoint.

However, there's a couple of things where the channel is completely missing the point, and that's where AXN and FX are going to steal audience numbers if Colors Infinity doesn't get its act together quickly.

How Colors Infinity is Pulling the Rug out from under its feet:

The Schedule: This is why you can't put Karan and Alia in charge of real work - the scheduling of shows at Colors Infinity. Those two are just sufficiently out of touch with reality to assume that normal people have 3 hours to spare, sitting in front of the telly watching 3 episodes back to back of any show, however popular or gripping it is. Most people watching shows during the evenings are folks back from work, sometimes bringing a bit of work home, or making dinner or feeding kids or getting them to finish homework, or getting ready for bed in general. And these are not shows that you can let run in the background and go on with your work, and still keep track of the story. Believe me, I've tried it! So, the back-2-back episodes are just not working. You get hooked on the first episode and you really want to watch, but by the time the opening credits roll for the second episode, you find that there are a million things left undone around you, and you've just got to ditch this show and hope for reruns some time in the future. FAIL guys!

Yeah...I wouldn't advertise that, if I were you!

Shows that don't really work: My Kitchen Rules, as I said earlier, is a messed-up version of Australians cooking. They have taken the back-biting and sabotaging to a whole new level, by giving these inane people the right to score their opponents! Predictably, the contestants deliberately give each other low scores. Nice going guys. Real mature! iZombie, Arrow, and The Musketeers are a few other shows I happened to watch. They just didn't keep me hooked all that much, and I let them go after a couple of episodes, I'm afraid.

I confess I haven't followed Colors Infinity from start of the day to the end, and there are some shows like Chasing Life, The Player, The Last Ship (promos looked really good), The Night Shift etc. that I simply have never watched, because its just not possible to do that and continue to live like a functioning member of the human race. So this isn't a thorough review of the channel. This is just my overall impression, and comments on some glaring issues and some really good stuff I noticed.

Well, as TV channels go, this is not one of the worst, I'll say. That honor goes to MTV. That channel has been on a downward spiral for a long time now! Anyways, Colors Infinity is in its growing years, and I'm sure they are going to get better with time. I'm really looking forward to the news shows on their list - The Royals (sounds delicious!), Bates Motel (some good old psycho horror) and Nashville (I'm sure there's got to be oodles of sass in that one. Backstage with singing sensations! Oooh!) So, yay! There's not much that can go wrong from now on.

Except...

Oh, Karan? Please stop saying 'paradigm shift'! Just STOP!

Watching Real Television for the First Time EVER!

Did you have one of those childhoods that has been deprived of the most basic things that every other family on the planet seemed to have in plenty? Like ice cream, or play time, or best friends, or, like in my case, television?? Yes, I was television deprived in my childhood. I think it has had an adverse effect on me, and it affects the way I function as an adult. 

You see, when we were kids, my parents were very skeptical as to how the "idiot box" could damage their offsprings. So, they never let us watch television. When they did, it was some stupid cartoon that, I personally think, had a far worse rotting effect on the brain than something a little more real! And for the most part of my life, I watched Arabic TV programs! I totally (and only) got Arab humor, I did not understand anything that wasn't said with Arab body language or an Arabic accent, and I was actually riveted  with Arabic TV serials. In Fujairah, in the 1980s and '90s, that is all was available on TV. If you wanted to watch anything in English, you had to wait till Thursday night, when they played some English movies that were either as old as the hills, or as unfunny as Clint Eastwood! It made the wait till midnight on Thursday totally worthless. I think if my parents had just gone and booked the damn cable, we would have gotten our fix and moved on. Instead, they were busy "growing us up in the right way", and we were the most TV-deprived kids in the country! 

What was the result? When we saw cable TV in someone's house, we went CRAAAAAZZZZYYY! I think anyone who has ever come within close quarters of my siblings and I will say that when the TV is on, we are dead to the world! You could detonate a bomb beside me, and I wouldn't notice if I was watching 'Remington Steele'!! That was because I rarely saw people talking in English and being dashing, let alone Pierce Brosnan being awesome! 

I knew all the trivia, gossip, reviews, and the finer points of Hollywood shows and movies, and I knew the names of all the actors, and who they were dating at any point of time. And yet, I never really got to watch a proper English movie until I was in middle school!! My parents were creeped out when I spoke at length about some actor or movie, knowing that I could never have gotten to watch that movie or have known about that actor!! My dad used to let us watch movies like 'George of the Jungle', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Baby's Day Out' when our family friends (read boring adult friends of my parents) bought the CD or DVD. Kindly note that I saw these movies when I was in high school! And that was all we were allowed to see. One movie we could watch as many times as we wanted was 'The Sound of Music'. So, I keep saying to people that I have seen the movie more times than I can remember, and you'd think it's because I was a big fan, but now you know the real reason why? Heck, it was the ONLY thing we were allowed to watch!!! I remember my dad saying that he did not want us to watch 'Anaconda' because the snakes were too huge and scary!! Wha???

My TV-deprived childhood and teenage years turned to LIFE-Deprived college years, where I spent 3 years in a hostel, where the only thing we got to see was "Ozhiyum Oliyum" every Friday at 7pm. Tamilians, you know what I'm talking about. It's a show where they played Tamil movie songs with the grating violin music and the over-dressed heroines doing demented dance moves, and the heroes accompanying them with robotic movements. I watched even these shows, simply because I liked to see the light on the television!! You know, my mom used to say this about me: This girl will watch the television, even if there is only a white light on it!! And I have been known to stare at TV static for almost an hour, hoping against hope that the picture will resume! Ahem... Anyway, my parents are good, exemplary, salt-of-the-earth types, and I LOVE them, but the truth remains that they wouldn't let me watch TV. Till now, TV remains a weakness, a fatal flaw, and an obsession for me, my sister and my brother! Go shrink that!

So, time went on, and wherever I went, bad TV haunted me. Finally I landed in Nagercoil, where we had cable TV, and boy was I happy!! Little did I know that "cable TV" in Nagercoil meant 30 local channels that had the same death-inducing crappy programs hosted by the same nasal host with the cheesy clothes, the heavy make-up and the stiff body language, who played the same crappy old Tamil songs that even the actors in the songs wouldn't be proud of!! Some of the remaining channels contained local Christian programs that featured the very same people you saw in church every Sunday and then in every grocery store during the weekend! GAAAH! Finally you had BBC, CNN, StarMovies, HBO, and Star Sports in their grainiest, most teeth-chattering, nail-scraping-on-blackboard glory! So, wheee! I was happy....NOT!

This month, my life changed into this glorious aria to television, when we got DTH at home! Yaaaay! The clear-screen-high-definition heavens sang songs of joy in surround theater clarity!! And I. Was. Home. 

So, here I was, sitting on the couch, basking in the glory of watching one channel on a small box in the corner, and also being able to scroll down 100 and more channels, not being able to decide on whether I should watch that awesome reality show on one channel or this classic Oscar-winning movie on this channel, when.........

...... my husband comes in, grabs the TV remote from my hand, activates all the sports channels, and sits down to watch the IPL.

Cue: hair-tearing and gut-wrenching screams!

"From Draft to Post" Series - Rant #2

This is the second installment of the "From Draft to Post" Series. Enjoy...or not...whichever is fine....

Post Title: Top 10 Sitcoms so ROFL!
"I love watching television, used to watch it a lot. I view it as an educational experience, and YES, I have learned a lot through television! Don't laugh, and Don't call me 'Loser'! I guess I took to television when I stopped having enough time to read a whole book.
So, I used to watch a lot of movies, mainly Hollywood movies. And then, I found out that I do not have time to sit through an entire movie. The obvious solution (for me, that is...) is to watch sitcoms, and TV shows! Of course, any other normal person would have just stuck to doing the chores with some music on. But not Me! :D
Anyway, now I watch shows, and I love them...only 30 minutes to an hour long. I won't have a mild seizure if I don't watch the ending (and there are MANY ways how that could happen), and I can totally stand in the kitchen and tune in and out whenever I want. You can't do that with movies, as everyone always talks so softly. In shows, at least you know you missed a joke when you hear everyone laughing!!
Aaaaanyway, my top 10 favorite shows (some are reruns of shows that people have probably forgotten, or miss)...
1. F.R.I.E.N.D.S - I love, love, love this show!!! I've watched it so many times, I can say the lines before the characters do! But I still laugh at all the jokes... Joey trying to learn French for an audition was ROFL!!

these people are just ADORABLE!!!!!

2. How I Met Your Mother - I missed the first 2 seasons, but my good friend Nameeta gave me the DVDs, and I watched all of it. I love Robin, because just like her, I don't get some of the 'American-isms' in the show!... My favorite moment, Barney getting slapped - all 3 times!

The cast...

...and how they'd look if they all dressed like Barney AALLLL THE TIME!!!

3. Everybody Loves Raymond - (apparently from here on, I had nothing to say...only show and tell henceforth!!!)

a.k.a epitome of dysfunctional family!!

4. 30 Rock

heheh! weirdness thou art 30 Rock!!

5. The King of Queens

This is the look of a man who is not amused, but is threatened into amusement!!

6. Seinfeld

No, seriously, what is the deal with these people?!?!?!

7. 2 and a Half Men

I shudder to think what would happen when ALL these men actually grow up!!

8. Boston Legal - dunno if this qualifies as a sitcom per se, but I laugh loud and long enough to make up for the studio laughter that is missing in this show....!!!!

The cast...

...and the GODS!!!

9. Carpoolers

A little meh sometime, but funny nevertheless!

10. Pushing Daisies

This is how much of show-offs these people are, actually. And I love them!!

And one for the road....

11. That 70s Show...

ASHTON KUTCHER...That is all!