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'One Ocean View': Six Degrees of Stuporation
They know what they want.
"I want to find somebody and start working on a relationship," one young man says. Maybe he should start working on a personality first. Even a mere identity would do.
  Mary, of ABC's new reality show. The reality turns out to be both sad and harsh. (By Heidi Gutman -- Abc) |
When one randy lad learns that the young woman he's talking to runs a dating service, he's so pleased that he risks using up all the requisite cliches of youthspeak at once: "Get out of here! No way! That's crazy! That's cool!"
You're stupid! Shut up!
When in doubt, and in lieu of transitions, the director cuts to shots of the sea -- a gull peering down with seeming (and justifiable) disapproval, or kids playing with a Frisbee, or members of our cast playing volleyball. Also raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens . . . (we'd go on but we'd only get sued by the copyright owner).
Life would seem fair, at least relatively, if a derivative series like this earned a rating of precisely zero, if audience membership found that there's absolutely nobody out there watching. But some people are attracted to even the most seemingly wretched shows, with reality soap operas usually fulfilling one important promise: offering up characters that viewers can easily and quickly learn to hate.
The female appeal of "One Ocean View" seems to lie in the way the men get more attention from the filmmakers, each one representing, to some degree, a trait to be avoided. Good actors might have fun with such overdrawn stereotypes, but the alien creatures on this show are hampered by a contagious lack of conviction. Even they don't seem to believe they're who they say they are.
In olden days of newspapering, journalists had to write on much-detested six-ply typing paper. Each little packet, stuffed into the typewriter, produced an original and five copies. One trouble among many was that by the time you got to the fifth copy, the letters were fuzzy and unreadable and the point of the story had somehow grown vague. That's the case of "One Ocean View." It's the fifth copy of six-ply television. You have to squint even to see an image there, and it's just not worth the effort.
One Ocean View (one hour) premieres tonight at 10 on Channel 7.
