Friday, August 2, 2013

Review: Strip Search

Yet one more awesome reality competition I've found myself happily addicted to is Penny Arcade's Strip Search.  Like Top Chef or Project Runway, this is a competition to find the best in a certain field, namely running a web comic.  Unlike most other reality shows, the contestants on this one aren't constantly at each other's throats and backstabbing each other.  In fact, this is quite possibly the nicest group of people on TV I've seen since the character on Full House.  Quite the opposite of the reality competition trope, they do seem to be here to make friends.  Also, instead of the judges (Jerry and Mike from Penny Arcade) crushing the soles and hopes of anyone who gets eliminated, they meet two on one with them with words of encouragement.

The show is broken down into 20-30 segments that follow the pattern of a social challenge mostly for funsies, a competitive challenge to determine potential contestants to eliminate, and an elimination challenge to whittle down the contestants.  Jerry and Mike definitely had a lot of fun both mocking tropes of reality competition shows and interacting with the contestants.  Just a warning, there is some NSFW language throughout the series, but kind of what you should expect if you've ever read the Penny Arcade comics.  Despite that, this web series is a great way to counter other shows making you lose your faith in humanity.  I really hope they can manage to make more seasons of this show at some point in the future, but they're pretty busy guys.

2 comments:

  1. Agreed. GREAT show. Perhaps one of the coolest side effects was how at least three or four of the artists then went on to have their own ridiculously successful Kickstarters.

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    1. Yeah, I think most other reality competition shows make the finalists famous enough to not really have to win to make a good living doing what the competition is about, but I feel more likely to root for the Strip Search finalists.

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