Divided. It's crap

I watched a TV programme the other day. I know, shocking in itself, but it just had to be a programme called “Divided” on ITV1. If you don’t have a TV, you’re bonkers and living in the 50’s, but I’ll forgive you if you download Zattoo and watch it next time that way.

Anyway, it’s another one of those shows that demonstrates everything that’s wrong with humanity. Greed and selfishness. Media execs seem to believe, while this may be true, it makes great TV.

It doesn’t.

It’s depressing, it’s annoying and drives me crazy. Let’s look at the one episode I saw; featuring two women and one bloke, who from the very beginning you knew would be trouble. He was trying to exert his “dominance” if you can call it that. Which meant he was in it to win it.

How does Divided work? Well there are three rounds of questions that earn them more and more money each time, but they all have to decide on an answer unanimously, and while they’re bickering over which answer to go for, the money goes down like a clock. If they come to a decision quicker, they earn more money. However, if they get the question wrong, then their total earnings are halved. At the end, the money is split into three piles. Pile A which is the lion’s share, pile B which is a middleground, and pile C which is a pittance compared to the other two. They have to decide and agree on who takes home what. If they can’t decide, then they all go home with nothing.

You can see why I thought this bloke would be a problem now.

Anyway, the game goes on, everyone works together, they get quite far, get their total halved a couple of times, and the “decide who takes home what” round comes up. Pile A has about £5,000 – pile B has about £2,000 and pile C has about £900.

Lady on the left wants the most as she got some of the most obscure questions correctly, bagging them lots of moolah, bloke in the middle immediately steps in and says he deserves the most because he’d been running the show all along, lady on the right wants the middle amount because she got a few obscure ones correctly, but also lost them a bit.

They disagree, so the clock starts ticking down. Lady on the left immediately switches her amount to the lowest just so they all go home with something. The game completes, and everything’s sorted. Bloke gets £5000, lady on the right gets £2000, lady on the left gets her £900. While the presenter is telling everyone what they got, the bloke can’t seem to keep a straight face, and did that hands clasped in front of face expression that seems to say “holy shit, I can’t believe they let me do that! What a bunch of losers!”

During the Americanism part at the end, where the contestants talk to a camera and tell them their thoughts on the results, the lady on the left (who immediately switched to the least amount so they all go home with something), said that she could see the bloke wouldn’t back down and she’d be the bigger person and take the lesser amount because something is better than nothing.

Bloke comes on and says he was there to win it, and he would take the biggest amount or he’d go home with nothing.

I think that bloke should thank his lucky stars I wasn’t taking part in the game, as I don’t think he would make it out of the studio car park alive. What a mentality to have. “I’d rather go home with nothing than see someone else get more than me.”

The lady on the left gets major kudos from me. Rather than have everyone go home with bugger all, not even a Blankety Blank checkbook and pen, she took the least amount.

Communism. Just do it.

Still, what were the benefits of a Capitalist society over a Communist one again? I can’t seem to remember. Someone enlighten me.

We may have earned a few more points if  she hadn’t been smacked in the face by a violinist when she was coming down the stairs.

I am very surprised Germany didn’t score higher, after pulling out all stops on eyecandy levels, and the song was damn good too.

"Phwoar" would be the word

Then again, they haven’t won in 53 54 years, so I don’t know what I was expecting.

I may go down as being a wanker (hey, that’s what this website is here for right?) but I really did not see the attraction of Norway’s winning entry at all. Especially less so after his little “homophobic” issues.

Not heard about that? Well apparently some gay chaps wanted a photo taken with him. He refused because “he’s not gay”. That’s like refusing to have your photo taken with black people because you’re not black.

He also struck me as an arrogant asshole. Interrupting the presenters while they translate, and even during the end when he came back on to perform again, the presenters were attempting to officially close the show but were stopped mid-word by him addressing the crowds. The.. rapidly.. diminishing crowds I might add.

I could have sworn I heard a lot of booing as he was announced as the winner as well.

No, not that Waldo

A song I thought would have done a lot better was Finland’s entry by Waldo’s People. Very catchy, very Euro, very random capitalization. Then again I was surprised to see them get through the semi-finals at all. The dark haired one of the trio of backing singers was incredibly out of tune on that day, luckily she picked up for the final.. though obviously she didn’t do a good enough job.

Don’t get me wrong though, Eurovision is a lot of fun, it always just seems to incite anger during the results, when, despite all of their attempts, they just can’t seem to stamp out friendly voting.

It’s so surprising that I would become addicted to it. To me it always seemed like the “mood” option on MySpace, just on a site of it’s own. But then I realised how simple it is. I have an application in my system tray called “Tweetdeck” that keeps me constantly updated on how all my “Friends” (in MySpace terms) are doing, and also lets me update what I’m doing or what I want to say, without me having to faff around with logging into a website or anything. Very very handy.

As a bonus, I’ve noticed quite a few celebrities using Twitter, without the help of their PR agencies (like their MySpace profiles). The celebrities I’ve noticed are personally using it, are Keith Chegwin, Noel Edmonds, Stephen Fry, Terry Wogan, LeVar Burton (Geordie from Star Trek: TNG), Brent Spiner (Data from the same show), and a bundle more. It’s so refreshing to see, say, Cheggers getting confused over an email and asking for a bit of help, rather than have his ghostwriter telling everyone about his latest show.

Also, I believe I have found the world’s worst advert. It’s from Glade. Having not learnt their lesson over the little kid sitting on the toilet and needing an air freshener, they’ve gone one step further; just in case we didn’t quite understand the last time.

Gobsmacking, is it not? Those of you who don’t watch a lot of TV, think yourselves lucky. This is on almost every advert break on every major channel. You also have to love that they insist “more discreet than an aerosol” — well that may be, but the advert certainly isn’t! Insisting that the little kid is going “to do a poo at Paul’s” doesn’t exactly leave much to the imagination.

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