My thoughts on 2 disappointing Summer 2011 TV shows: "Expedition Impossible" and "The Voice"

I haven't talked about TV in quite a while, so here is my opinion of 2 Summer shows which made their debuts this Summer.

First I want to talk about Expedition Impossible which recently started this Summer on ABC. This is Mark Burnett's attempt to do an Amazing Race-type show. Mark Burnett is known for several reality shows with Survivor probably being the most successful one to date. So with a resume that includes Survivor, how can you go wrong?

Well unfortunately Expedition Impossible just isn't a very good show. When you watch this show, it is obvious that certain words and phrases are replaced by the ones used in the Amazing Race such as Pitstop, Team Number 3, etc. with terms such as checkpoint, 3rd place, etc. in order to avoid legal problems.

But the show suffers from a much more serious flaw. Unlike Amazing Race, Survivor, The Apprentice, and other competition reality shows, Expedition Impossible has almost zero strategy involved in it after 2 episodes. It is almost 100% physical endurance challenges. Which means teams that are not as physically strong will most likely be at a disadvantage as the show continues. With the Amazing Race you do have Roadblocks where you can strategically pick a player to perform a challenge. Amazing Race also has Detours, which is a choice between 2 tasks, where the players can choose the task they think they will be better at to get ahead of other teams. Expedition Impossible just completely lacks these kind of strategic elements.

This is ironic that the show has no strategy element to it since the word strategy is often used by many Military organizations and since Mark Burnett is a former Military person himself.

Now why do I call The Voice (which also coincidentally happens to have Mark Burnett's name attached to it as a Producer) which has been a successful show on NBC a "disappointment"?

It mainly has to do with the lousy format of the show. First we had the audition rounds where the contestants sang while the coaches were turned around in their chairs. This was apparently to get us to believe that the coaches wouldn't have picked these contestants based on their physical appearances. Well if you look at this year's Top 4 on The Voice, you have contestants such as a bald headed rocker woman with some facial piercings and a guy wearing a hat that looks like it is currently in style. The point is these people aren't much different in appearances than any other singing talent competition show or artists who are already famous and have very unusual looks like a Lady Gaga.

Then you had the boring battle rounds which lasted way too long. Then we had another round where 2 out of 4 contestants were saved with one being saved by America and the other by their coach. Then when the coaches had 2 contestants left they were allowed to try to bias the vote towards the contestant they wanted to represent themselves in the final instead of allowing only America to decide. This does not make any sense to let the coaches have so much voting influence throughout the entire season when the original premise of the show is that the coaches are obviously not smart enough to pick the contestants on just their overall appearance. And if it wasn't bad enough that the coaches had so much decision power on this show about who stayed or who went all the way up until the week before the Finals round, they all had to regularly get up and perform which makes you wonder if these coaches were doing this for their contestants or for themselves to boost their own music careers.

I am hoping for a complete overhaul of this show when it returns next Winter. But since all 4 coaches are already coming back for next season, I would expect that the show will likely keep most of this current format intact. Which is a shame since it is trying to be several different types of things while doing none of them really well.