My brief tumultuous love afford with The Voice

I still have no idea how it happened.

One minute I am watching hours and hours of scripted drama, glorying in the skill of the writers and actors that produce quality entertainment like Mad Men, Community, and Once Upon a Time… and the next?

Why all of a sudden, as if by some act of sorcery (and don’t think Channel 9 doesn’t have warlocks and witches, and the occasional vengeful fairy locked away in a dank basement casting spells that compel people to watch its shows), I am sitting in from of my TV watching The Voice Australia.

Eyes where they shouldn’t be
Watching it. Not simply seeing the occasional ad for it flit across my screen – which would be well near miraculous if it happened because my TV knows not the way to Channel 9 – or reading the occasional fluff piece on it in whatever compliant arm of the media has bent over pretzel-like this week, but watching it.

Ye gods. The apocalypse is nigh and it is coloured red and black, which is a stylish way for the world to go but hard on the eyes after a while. As is Seal’s brown leather jacket, which frankly does nothing to advance the cause of fashion or flatter his figure (much of which is on show thanks to budget cuts at Channel 9 which restrict him sadly to just two buttons or less a shirt).

As best as I can recall through the hazy mist of spell-cloaked recognition, I came home one night, tired from a long day at work and dinner with a friend, and my house mate, who I believe to be secretly in league with the media satan that is Channel 9, was watching one of the first episodes of The Voice.

It seemed innocent enough. Singers walk out on stage, the judges – sexy Seal, goofy Keith Urban (whose hair is one of the few things I adored about the show), icy Delta Goodrem (who acts like a mannequin come to life) and fun-loving Joel Madden (who frankly is a lot of fun, tattoos and all) – sit in big red chairs with their backs turned, and if they like the voice, they hit a button and… PRESTO! The seat turns and they think… “Oh lord, that person looks like they’ve hit a brick wall and be scraped off it cell by cell, and even though they sing like an angel, I have to coach them now? How will I sell this truckload of fugly to the world?”

It is lovely, oh so freaking lovely
No, of course they’re not thinking that because this is a lovely show. A warm encouraging uplifting show that commends everyone. Children skipping through the fields on a bright summer’s day while bluebirds flit about their heads trilling with joy. And the audience? Oh they are lovely too. They are possessed of such laudatory zeal that they clap like maniacs on a particularly potent blend of speed every time a contestant so much as looks like they’re going to sing. But of course being lovely people, its non-addictive speed and no one has a downer after the effects wear off.

See I told you. It’s all lovely.

And therein lies its great evil, my friends. Before you know it, you are lulled into thinking it’s all Care Bears and rainbows, sunshine and roses, and there is nothing evil lurking in the shadows…for of course there are no shadows are there?

I think this is why I fell temporarily in love with the show. After a day of battling the uber-competitive denizens of Sydney’s commuting system, and playing dodge the harried commuter as you rush to your train, The Voice is like a calming sweet lotion that relieves the aches and pains of daily life.

But just as quickly as it wormed its way into my viewing heart with talk of talent, smiles and reaching dreams, it true nature was revealed last night when I gave up valuable sleep to watch a few of what they charmingly refer to as the “battle rounds”. It makes sense that they have to whittle the original 48 people selected by the four judges – that’s twelve apiece for those of you who can’t be bothered reaching for your calculator – and it’s what happens on all these reality singing shows so that doesn’t worry me.

Who killed the loveliness?
Of course, using the word “battle” does summon images of desperate contestants lunging Hunger Games-like towards their opponent, diamond-tipped microphone in hand, readying to cut out the vocal chords of the person who would rob them of their prize. Hardly a warm and fuzzy and lovely moment is it? But I should have seen it coming because there was no way the loveliness could possibly last.

And naturally it hasn’t. In the space of one episode the Care Bears have been despatched to the glue factory, and the contestants are now locked in bloody vocal duels to the death (of their dreams).

As I said, having elimination rounds makes for good TV and frankly the idea of watching all 48 of the singers sing all over again one by one is enough to make me rip my own vocal chords out if only I could secure one of those bladed microphones (EBay perhaps?)

So the sudden lurch to arch competitiveness comes as no surprise to a TV-hardened though surprisingly young viewer like myself. No, what has driven me to distraction faster than a contestant bursting into tears and blubbering on about their dreams for fame, fortune, and tryst with one or more famous singers of the same or opposite gender – sorry I mean their dream to SING, which apparently is intimately attached to their tear ducts – was the way the four judges kept trying to make out that it was still a fiesta of love, brotherhood and mung beans.

Smile sweetly while I rip out your vocal chords
Clearly it wasn’t. Oh the contestants may have smiled at each other throughout the songs and pledged eternal commitment to the other’s cause – they have very short eternities in reality TV shows lasting, oh say, about the length of an average three minute pop song – but deep down they were trying to reach for their microphone knives concealed cleverly under all the bonhomie and quirky wanna be pop star outfits.

And somewhere in all that, the judges, who veer from vapid to ridiculously upbeat (no I will not identify who is who – it’s a fun game to play during the interminable number of ad breaks) kept chanting like it was some weird invocation to summon truth and integrity – two of the lesser known gods of the fame pantheon – that they weren’t sure they “believed” whichever singer had fallen foul of their expert judgements.

As they rabbited on about this spurious notion of believability, and being true to yourself, and the necessity of bringing an end to the intractable civil war in Syria (actually no that may have been ABC News24 which the last time I checked wasn’t singing about anything), I felt that nascent flame of attraction that had drawn me to this reality TV show, slowly flicker and die.

Not because the contestants were welling up with tears every five nanoseconds. Or because the judges were making them duke it out. Or even because there were so many ad breaks, I ran out of toilets to go to. No, my passion and ardour so briefly aroused, stumbled to the place where Care Bear loveliness goes to die, at the sheer inanity of it all.

Which is  what defines so much reality TV for me. It isn’t profound or clever or witty. It doesn’t truly engage you on any sort of deep, meaningful level. It is all emotional smokes and mirrors, contrivance piled upon manipulation, a faux experience of bonding with others that doesn’t survive the running of the final credits. It succeeds because it fools enough people for enough of that time that what they are seeing is real.

You know like Care Bears and unicorns made of pink sticky fairy floss are real.

So suitably chastened at being fooled once again so easily, I feel much like Emmett in one episode of the US version of Queer as Folk. One night he goes to Babylon, a gay bar the Queer as Folk guys frequented, meets and falls in love with a guy called Brent, dramatically and quickly (think West Side Story) before breaking up with him almost as quickly (think The Way We Were). It was a parody of the briefness of gay relationships, but applies such as easily to my experience with The Voice.

I have fallen in and out of love with this show in record time. I know it will try to woo me back with promises of dreams fulfilled, hopes restored and Care Bears brought miraculously back from the dead (hopefully not as zombie play things) but it will not work and I am not going back.

To forestall or rid myself of temptation, I have removed Channel 9 from my remote control in a complex operation that not even I understand, will not even look a passing media warlock in the eyes, and I am downloading new episodes of scripted drama as far as my VISA card will allow.

Ah yes, it’s good to be back with my true TV loves and I shall never desert them again. (Unless of course The Amazing Race or Survivor cycles around again for another season in which case you may need to stage a hurriedly organised intervention for me.)