No More, Please

However, we can do without the following 8212;The Most Annoying Things on Television

Reality shows
They say you can8217;t flog a dead horse, and they don8217;t get any dead-er than Reality TV. But can we ever stop bitching about this favourite whipping boy of ours? Aside from the obvious scripting, what really get our goats are SMS voting and rude judges. Cricket expert and TV show host Harsha Bhogle says, 8220;I avoid watching reality shows because the judges are so often rude and pompous. Besides, voting by SMS is very unfair; the best person never wins.8221;

Interminable dying scenes
They never just expire. They give a speech, bringing tears to the eyes of their on-screen families and boredom to viewers. 8220;I once watched a TV character die for 20 minutes. It had to be the world8217;s longest heart attack,8221; says VJ Cyrus Sahukar, 8220;and at the end of his paroxysms, one character asks him, 8216;Are you OK?8217;8221;

The 8216;copycat8217; syndrome
There is much truth in the idiom, 8220;If you8217;ve seen one, you8217;ve seen 8216;em all8221;, especially with regard to TV shows. Show A has a generation leap and it8217;s only a matter of time before shows B to Z have it too. Actor Luke Kenny agrees, 8220;It8217;s all about popularity. What is a hit on one show is immediately copied by others. In fact many of these 8216;original8217; ideas, like the generation leap, are lifted from foreign soaps.8221;

Only head injuries
How many times have we seen a character have an accident, only to end up with a head injury, indicated by a single streak of blood, usually located near the temple? 8220;What makes it funnier,8221; says TV host Kunal Vijaykar, 8220;is that if there8217;s a bandage wrapped around the victim8217;s head, there will always be a single red spot on it. It8217;s as if they want to prove that there really is an injury under that bandage.8221;

8216;Breaking news8217;
We agree these are competitive times and television is a battlefield over TRPs. But that doesn8217;t excuse classifying the abduction of a cow by UFOs as 8216;breaking news8217;. Kenny attributes it to this age of sensationalism. 8220;There8217;s a feeling among news channels that if you don8217;t classify an event as the end of the world, then nobody will take notice of you,8221; he explains.

Coloured contact lenses
It8217;s funny how almost nobody on TV has the standard Indian black or deep brown eyes. It8217;s either green or blue or grey. 8220;Quite frankly, it8217;s scary,8221; says Sahukar, 8220;They do close-ups of women wearing all sorts of crazy contact lenses8212;blue, green, magenta. If I see something like that, I walk with my eyes on the ground for the next two days; it scares me that much.8221;

Overdose of graphics
There was a time when the only graphics during cricket matches were scorecards and run rates. Now it8217;s dancing tigers, lame ducks and huge ads. 8220;It was cute when the Australians started the trend of a duck cartoon when someone got out for a duck,8221; says Vijaykar, 8220;But now, the graphics obscure half the screen and to make matters worse, loud bhangra music is played.8221;