More Drama in This Week's Reality Shows

Triangular love stories, matchmaking, sob stories etc, have always been part of the TV serials, but this has also entered the reality shows these days. Instead of focusing primarily on music and performance, the shows are now concentrating more on the personal life of the contestants. Cooking up love stories between contestants, trying to portray a sympathetic view on contestants, have become part of every episode. If there is one show which stands out of all these TRP gimmicks, then that's Indian Idol. With just one week short of getting the third Indian Idol, the top 2 contestants Amit and Prashant are giving their best shot and trying to outdo one another. The elimination of Musarrat in SRGMP and Mirande in SVOI was very sad. But sadder was the public display of outrage by the Rock Gharana mentor - Himesh Reshamiya, who blamed Raja for Musarrat’s elimination on Friday. In this unfortunate fiasco, however a very valid question was raised by Himesh, one which has been plaguing the audience as well – what should be the criteria for voting - should a contestant's previous performance be taken into account or only the performance of that particular week?

This week, the love story angle reached its ultimate limits in SRGMP. To propagate the Trishanku love story between Aneek, Sumedha and Amanat, we saw Sumedha being tossed like a ping pong ball between Yalgaar gharana and Rock gharana and the saddest part being, her mentor also took part in it. In the little charade put up by Bappida, Ismail and Himesh, one thing was clear – Sumedha was treated just like a puppet doll. Her privacy, sentiments as well as dignity was violated and compromised on. A prank that was carried too far? It was unfortunate to see her being dragged like this, when it was clearly apparent that she did not encourage or want to partake in it. After everything, she would want to be known for her singing not her love victims. The same can be said about Poonam’s background too. That girl is talented enough to make it big, without her background story providing any back up support. It’s about time, such forced love stories and personal stories are stopped being advertised to gain TRP’s. When will the mentors learn that they can’t compromise on a participant's self respect, privacy or dignity? Credit should be given to the Hit It gharana mentors - Vishal and Shekhar for keeping out of these “dramas” and maintaining the dignity required of a mentor(s).

This week’s SVOI was free of the regular “Judgemental” dramas. Friday's episode in SVOI was a very emotional one, with each of the contestant's parents coming on sets to cheer their lads and this also became a historical moment for Jatin and Lalit, as we got to see them unite once again on this set. Overall, this episode can be listed as one of the most memorable episodes of SVOI. On Saturday however, the show seemed to have been following the foot steps of Zee SRGMP. Not only was the theme and the sets looking identical, but even the small drama that was created for the sake of TRP appeared similar. The male contestants fighting over Rakhi Sawant for getting themselves married to her or Alka setting up a marriage bureau for Abhaas might have sounded humorous, but is it really needed for a reality show where we are judging the contestants for their singing?

Every contestant, every mentor, every person has their own personal story. However, it should be simply the talent and being in the right place at the right time, which ought to give these participants the much needed first break. Let these participants then succeed based on merit of their talent and determination. Let their life stories be left private or personal and not advertised this way. It’s fair on them, its fair to their families and its fair to all the audience that, they then vote purely on the merit of a singer’s talent and not on these TRP gimmick stories.

Author: Barnali

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