Things that are Annoying #1

Things that are annoying #1 - 'Take Me Out' 

Alright, I can’t deny that the TV program ‘Take Me Out’ has its followers, but it honestly has to be the single biggest piece of garbage I’ve ever had to sit through in my entire life. Seriously, everyone else in the room wanted to watch in and I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I think the phrase ‘much ado about nothing’ is very apt in this scenario.

For all those that have yet to insult their intelligence and watch this horrible, horrible show, the basic premise is that one man comes on to the show, at which point he attempts to find a date from the 30 or so girls that are on as ‘regulars’ of the show. If the girls dislike the man, then they are able to press a big red button that turns out the lights on their name pedestal thing. If all the lights go off, it’s a ‘blackout’ and nothing happens. If lights are left on, a date is chosen and they go to this fictional island somewhere on Holiday called Fernandos or something. It’s probably somewhere like Spain, but they don’t tell you that.

The first problem that I have with this is it goes against practically all the smart things to do before attempting to start a relationship (i.e. actually know the person for more than 15 minutes beforehand) and the whole setup means that the people can literally lie their way around things to get a free holiday, which is all well and good but it’s not really the point of it all. I greatly dislike the workings of the show anyway but I’m going to overlook that for now because there’s greater things that I really hate about it.

Like for example, the one that I watched a couple of weeks ago basically had this guy come on, and the girls were relatively impressed at first. Then, they went ahead and put this video on that basically is him describing himself and his life and the moment he said ‘I work as a cash machine engineer’ about 10 lights went off at once, likely because they were expecting a footballer to waltz onto the show with a few million quid in the bank.  

If you’re that desperate for a date of some kind that you have to resort to going on Take Me Out, I don’t think you can afford to be that choosy to be fair. It just goes to show that some of them are there for all the wrong reasons which is a shame really, or it would be if it weren’t a hopeless idea for a show anyway.

I suppose it’s ‘Blind Date’ for this generation, but it’s not got any better in that sense, only much bigger scale, which is silly. Though Blind Date, going with the whole ‘blind’ theme meant that you couldn’t go entirely on looks which is a much better idea than what they do on Take Me Out, where people turn their lights of before the person has even spoken a word. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but apparently all the ‘contestants’ on Take Me Out can, so fair play to them. 

I do greatly dislike all of these relationship-themed ‘game’ shows, since it just shows how stupid everything’s getting nowadays – people are only focussed on looks and/or money it seems, and that’s a really sad state to be in. It doesn’t bother me, mind – I don’t intend to be in any sort of relationship anyway but I feel for the people who get caught out like this. And I’m not saying that absolutely everyone’s like this either, but that’s what it appears to be from my view, however limited it may be. 

It does make me chuckle though that people actually take this stuff seriously though. Without intending to offend anyone, Take Me Out is honestly one of the worst excuses of a TV program I’ve seen in a long, long time, but the thing is that it’s now got its own aftershow and all sorts, it’s really quite ridiculous. And the best thing is that practically every single follow-up I’ve seen on the show they’ve said that there ‘wasn’t anything there’ and went back to square one. Even better, one said that they weren’t ready for a relationship as they were going to university, but went on the show anyway. The idiocy of some people...

I might be taking this a bit too seriously. Obviously the show’s only designed to be entertaining, not as a serious long-term matchmaking solution, but I can’t help but notice that it’s a bit too silly at the best of times, especially the people that are on it. That Paddy bloke is pretty funny at times though, I’ll give it that.