Introduction to Forever Eden, Reality TV Show
on Fox
Artcle by Mick Liebner, Bikini
Day 3-13-04
I have to admit that this TV show kind of snuck
up on me and caught me by surprise. I was surprised
because when I saw the trailer promoting the debut
episode of Forever Eden on Fox I had no idea it
was related to one of my fave shows of last Summer
Paradise Hotel.
Intuitively upon seeing that promo
I set Tivo to grab a Season Pass for Forever
Eden. That was
about 10 days ago and since then Tivo has snagged
3 episodes for me to watch. Last night I finally
watched the season premiere and I must say I am
pretty impressed with Forever Eden. At least it
started off on the right foot. That’s not
to say Forever Eden doesn’t have its flaws,
or that it often appears derivative of Paradise
Hotel and other reality TV Shows. It still has
a fresh quality and fortunately the cast is interesting
enough to get my vote of acceptance even after
viewing just one episode. (I’ll watch #2
and 3 tonight if time permits).
Forever Eden Opening Video & Title Sequence
Streaming
Windows Media Video Clip - length 46 sec.
So what exactly is Forever Eden?
Forever Eden is a one-hour reality show that
airs Thursday evenings
at 9 PM. Forever Eden is touted as the first open-ended
unscripted soap opera. Nice PR speak but DUH, aren’t
all reality TV shows open ended??? I guess what
the producers are saying is that conceivably the
contestants can stay FOREVER in EDEN. OK... but
we all know that depends on ratings, but let’s
give the producers their due and run with that
concept. The idea for the contestant is to not
get evicted, collect coins to get rich and most
importantly – humiliate themselves to our
glee. And it’s all open-ended and will conceivably
last forever. Forever Eden.
OK. I’ll run with that!
By the way, in interviews the producers
of Forever Eden have pointed out that this series
is NOT intended
to replace Paradise Hotel, which they say “may” show
up for another 25 episodes itself.
Forever Eden while not identical
in concept to Paradise Hotel is basically a twin
brother. Not
identical perhaps, but a twin nonetheless. It has
almost the same music, music cues, similar graphics,
similar camera angles and movements, twists and
turns, same host (oops – that isn’t
Amanda Bynes but this new attractive host named
Ruth England sure sounds like Amanda, same accent
and delivery.). Forever Eden even has some cast
members that look like they were pulled from Paradise
Hotel. I did a double take when I saw one dude
with the backward baseball cap and wondered if
Keith Cuda was making an appearance (not Keith).
For all of Forever Eden’s similarity to
Paradise Hotel it is still quite unique and does
have it’s own identifiable odor. It only
smells of Paradise a tad, and doesn’t rip
it off blindly. Either way would be fine by me,
but it is refreshing to know that the producing
team that brought us the fresh reality of last
summer’s so-so hit Paradise Hotel, have a
new series to taunt us with. And judging from the
first episode I would say we can expect to see
a lot of the better aspects of Paradise as these
seasoned reality producers reach in their bag of
tricks.
I look forward to the upcoming
episodes of Forever Eden and at this point in
time believe Fox has
a good show in it’s hands. Hopefully Forever
Eden will build an audience despite landing in
4th place in the ratings for it’s debut episode.
It promises to be very entertaining.
See our recap
of episode 1 of Forever Eden at Bikini
Day’s Forever Eden Site.
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