A Humble Guide to UTOPIA: Preseason Edition

Hi everyone!  TV Tater here!  I am one of your new Utopia updaters this season.  My blogs for the show will be a bit on the snarky side so I hope you enjoy them!  If you want a more in depth recap of the cast check out Vince’s blog post HERE.  He will  be doing power raking all season and I will be doing weekly recaps of the show and feeds.  So now for those of you who don’t know…  Utopia is a new reality TV show on Fox networks. We need this because The Truman Show, EDtv, Big Brother (782 international versions and growing!), The Glass House, Survivor, all the annoying Real Housewives shows, and the Gordon Ramsey Channel somehow overlooked something. That or Fox had more airtime that they needed to fill to sell advertising. So anyway, here we are.

What it is:
Utopia’s producers have given unto us these fifteen… oy… fourteen people for all to ridicule and critique. Set on a 5 acre farm these people are to start with a pile of wood and a hammer and expected to build a standard urban subdivision. And a Starbucks. Or something. I don’t know. There’s a cow too. Not sure how it fits in. They have one year to do this or the land is foreclosed on, Don Trump buys it, stamps him name on all the buildings, declares it bankrupt and then takes a tax write off. I might be wrong about this, but since the show hasn’t started, who knows…?

Cast:

The producers went down a checklist of professions and stereotypes and like Noah made sure they had one of each for their new ark. Patriot <check> Chef <check> Contractor <check> Lawyer <check>

Hold up! What is a new civilization going to do with one lawyer? Doesn’t it usually take two lawyers and a judge to screw people over? Oh wait, maybe the producers hope he will become their first politician, you only need one of those.

Back to the list, Pastor <check> Redneck Handyman <check> Pregnant lady (WHAT?) <check> Ex-con (the first client for the lawyer guy!)<check>  Huntress <check>  Chili Farmer (farmers are good!)<check> and a belly dancer, cause if there’s anything a group of 14 people need to survive cut off from the world, it’s a belly dancer.

At this point you’re wondering if I’m going to go down the list person by person and talk about them. No. I don’t care about these people. Neither do you. For the first 2 weeks they are known by their stereotype role. After that we may or may not start to remember their names, and why we like or dislike them.

Predicted Winner:
According to the producers, this show has no real purpose, wait, I mean goal. The Utopians can do what they want, with no production supplied games or challenges or rewards. Expect this to change if Fox sees the ratings decline. If the casting choices work out the way the producers hope (look: its the atheist having an argument with the pastor!) then there may be some drama and conflict. Skeptical couch potatoes everywhere have heard this before and been underwhelmed.

Where to see it:
There are 24hour a day live feeds you can watch on the internet, and in a welcome departure from the norm (I’m lookin’ at you Big Brother!) it’s partially free. With 130 cameras on the farm, they can show multiple things happening at the same time. With the free “livefeed” you get to see two camera angles of one conversation/event, and with the paid subscription ($5/month) you can switch between 4 cameras watching things going on around the farm, you creepy stalkers. Some of this will get used on the TV show, airing on Fox twice a week for the next year.  In summary, apparently this show is similar to a real life Seinfeld in that it’s a show about nothing.

So what do you think so far?  Let me know in the comments section below!