Enabling Part One

Sometimes I worry that, as a member of the viewing public, I am an enabler. This has been a concern twice this week.

First example: A strange excuse for entertainment entitled How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?. Based on a British series of shows that set up a very public competition for a lead role in a high-end musical, this is CBC's quest to cast the role of Maria in an upcoming revival of The Sound of Music in Toronto.

First off, let me clarify this: I have never watched American Idol nor Canadian Idol. I don't watch So You Think You Can Dance. I don't even watch Are You Smarter than a Canadian Fifth Grader? (For one thing, we don't call it the Fifth Grade in Canada; it's Grade Five.) So, I go into this thing thinking: Younger daughter loves Sound of Music; there'll be Broadway tunes; we can all watch this together.

Okay, so the first two shows are basically documenting the winnowing process. The first concludes with a rather silly reception in London where the twenty hopefuls are called upstairs in twos and threes to be told, on camera: "We don't think you are Maria"/"You could be Maria". Pretty artificial and definitely humiliating for those who don't make it, but perhaps only marginally more brutal than the cattle-calls they've all experienced.

The second show was live-ish. (we have six time zones in Canada, so there was a designated voting time for the great unwashed public.) This featured ten show stoppers in groups of two, followed by some more rather brutal critiques.

Then there was the third show, a third of which was taken up with superfluous footage of the "Marias" in Saltzburg. Why? Presumably because they have the budget for it. The rest was Gavin Crawford, our hapless host from This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Second City among other things, trying to feebly yuck it up while they take an unforgiveable amount of time telling groups of girls they will make it to the next round until the final two are forced into a "sing-off".
Together.
After being told by the judges that they are deservedly the least popular.

But, oh no, there's a final bit of degradation. The loser of the sing-off, having had her hopes crushed and her short-comings catalogued, must stay on the stage and have the remaining Marias surround her in a rainbow of dirndl skirts and serenade her with "So Long, Farewell, Au Wiedersehen , Good Night".

No, no, wait. Then Loser Girl has to finish the song with "Good Night...Good Night....Good Night...."

Pardon me, but am I the only person who is appalled? How about if we just go back to public executions, or feeding Christians (or your bêtes noirs of choice) to the lions?