Pirate Master: This Show Blows (the Man Down)
Bare chests and treasure chests! / CBS
Our readers (well, Keith, anyway) want to know:
I made the mistake of watching Pirate Master last night. Have you caught it? Thoughts?[Ed: Spoilers deleted, as if anyone on the planet was going to go through the trouble of time-shifting this dud.]
Arrrrr, Keith, I did watch it! My thoughts: I felt like I was watching a Survivor outtakes reel, right down to the shamelessly ripped-off screen-graphics typeface. Does the fact that Mark Burnett was ripping himself off make it any better?
Honestly, I have no idea the exact genesis of the show, but it looked like it was conceived at the opening of a Survivor season, just before the ritual "stranding" of the players, when someone on the crew said, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we just left them on the boat?"
Which, actually, it might have been: say you did an entire season called Survivor: Adrift, in which the tribes had to spend 40 days in the claustrophobic confines of a ship lost at sea. That I'd watch. But take those same Survivors, dress them up in silly costumes, and it becomes like hanging out after showtime with the sixteen dumbest members of an amusement-park revue.
Mark Burnett largely established reality TV as a commercial force in American broadcast TV. Between this and On the Lot, it seems like Burnett is on a one-man campaign this summer to kill it. What say you, mateys?
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1
This was really, really, really bad. Coming from a guy who still watches every season of Survivor and gets made fun of for it. And just about every other crappy reality TV competition show.
I mean, it didn't really even make sense. And the terrible quality of the props/"pirate missions" made it almost laughable.
Did they give this to you for review in advance? Would not surprise me if they didn't.
All that having been said, I might stick around and watch since there is absolutely nothing on this summer.
PS Why didn't they go all the way and make the banished "pirate" walk the plank?
And PPS - is there a worse show name than Pirate Master? What does it even mean?
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@Jim:
1. Oh God no, they didn't send an advance copy. They knew better.
2. This calls for a contest. What would "pirate master" be a good euphemism for? Keep it clean. But, you know, not too clean.
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Does anyone think that its mere coincidence that this show was started right after the release of the lastest Pirates of the Carribean sequel?
I'd be willing to bet that this show did start out basically as "Survivor Adrift" --- but someone suggested that "pirates" were hot right now, and what was once a decent idea went into a death spiral...
(the best thing about a "survivor adrift" series is that it would be fairly easy to give it the "big brother" treatment --- if everyone is stranded on a boat, it would be relatively easy to install cameras and microphones to provide continuous web coverage....)
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"2. This calls for a contest. What would "pirate master" be a good euphemism for? Keep it clean. But, you know, not too clean. "
geez, i can come up with one, but its pretty filthy....
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@p_luk: sigh, I know. Times like these I wish I had a non-corporate blog.
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Arrgghhh! Me thinks if ye drink enough grog matey, this skirvy dog'd be tolerable. Nahhhh!
As I said over in the spelling bee thread, the whole stinker of a show was worth getting to see "scientist/exotic dancer" James get cut adrift in a unanimous vote. He thought he was "all that and a bag of chips" and the crew thought he was a moron......which he was. The shocked look on his once cocky face made wasting an hour of my life worth it.
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"This calls for a contest. What would "pirate master" be a good euphemism for? "
Master of my "domain". Who remembers that bit of TV trivia?
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Well, the pirate ship has a mast, and someone has to put it up, so that person might be called the Pirate Master. Then he goes home to mum, the Pirate Mater. Then he goes into banking, offering fixed rate loans at 3.1417%, and he would call himself the . . . . (oh I just sickened myself. Sorry).
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Can someone tell me .... Please....Did they drop this Junk in the middle of the run ?? It was so stinking, I was stuck to the set to see how bad it could get...Personally,,, I would not mind getting STUCK with a couple of the Laddies on the ship on an island or a bunk for a day or two..
Thank ya in advance Lads and Laddies..
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