text: Live! Yes, but not kicking.<br /><br />True story: Some time ago, a Dutch TV station made an announcement that they were going to air a new reality show. A contest rather. The main participant in this show would be a woman who was dying of something terrible and she would be donating her kidneys to one lucky person with progressive kidney failure. For real.<br /><br />The country and the international media were all over this story like flies on a turd, saying it was appalling, immoral, what-is-this-world-coming-to, and the like. In a way, I had to agree.<br /><br />As the months passed, the tension built up to a degree that the government was mostly occupied by the issue of whether they should let this show go ahead or not, instead of running the country.<br /><br />The show did air and right up to the last moment they were pushing ahead. And up to the last moment the country was up in arms, the Prime Minister making speeches, every newspaper writing about it, everyone in the country holding their breaths. And the network pushed on. Towards a new frontier in television. And they definitely succeeded in doing just that. They pushed the envelope.<br /><br />The show aired and we all watched a terminally ill woman selecting the right candidate to receive her kidneys so he or she would live, whilst she would die shortly after.<br /><br />And then, in the last moments of the show it was revealed that it was a partial hoax. The woman was not ill, but all the candidates were. There was no kidney auction. The whole show, that, with the publicity and the commercials and all the discussions, built up for months to a fantastic climax, was a publicity stunt to focus attention on the problem of major shortages in organ donors. The man who founded this particular network himself died of kidney disease.<br /><br />Now THIS is television. Leaving everybody far behind in amazement.<br /><br />Don't give me a poorly acted, poorly directed flick about some woman trying to get a Russian Roulette show on American TV.<br /><br />As if.<br /><br />*Spoiler* As if I'm going to believe they would get this through the FCC. As if I'm going to believe this would get through the US Supreme Court on the basis of free expression. As if I'm gonna believe the ridiculous ending where this woman pulled it off and has conscience issues because some guy shot himself on air.<br /><br />It's all been done before. Watch Running Man with Arnold instead. At least it had a semi good ending.<br /><br />*Spoiler* This is an appallingly bad piece of film, together with a ridiculous ending. So she gets shot in the end, is that supposed to make us movie going public feel better after we leave the theater because there was some kind of justice? Don't take my word for it, but I would say this: leave this one alone and watch a test pattern instead, you'll get more quality.