One of the latest offerings from the vast wasteland of Reality Television land is The Academy, which follows the 18 weeks of training recruits must endure to become members of the elite Orange County Fire Authority. It wasn’t total shit.
The show is set, predictably, in Orange County, California – the warm, moist, sloppy birthplace of much reality TV. Orange County, however, is a high risk area for brush fires, which makes the location for the show believable in a way that illustrates my knowledge about the likelihood of brush fires developing in the OC region of the West coast.
The opening for the show is catchy in that newfangled rap beat kind of way that made me think of Bad Boys II (bad-ass in a way that I’ll admit goes against my better judgment but I still can’t deny). After the gritty setup we’re introduced to the 28 recruits comprised mostly of former firefighters and dispatchers, though there’s a lovely former VP of Sales & Marketing thrown in there for funsies: cut to him driving away from the introduction ceremony in his Porsche; quick cut to a beach volleyball scene where he’s “totally dominating bro!”
The commercial break has nothing to do with the show but it took me by surprise: Bill Clinton sitting next to George W. “Newcular” Bush pleading with Hulu viewers across America to help Haiti by donating to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. Is it wrong that W’s inclusion in the Fund and subsequent commercial made me want to
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.