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boring but for boarders
Mostly troughs, few crests, for WB reality show
By Dan Jewel
By definition, surfers are young, possess impossibly perfect bodies, wear very little clothing, and are notorious partiers. So Mark Burnett, the creator of “Survivor” and thus the closest thing reality TV has to a deity, had a clever idea.
Take seven surfers competing on the North Shore of Oahu for the Vans Triple Crown, one of the most prestigious events in surf-dom, and stick ’em in a house together, where they’ll be sure to drink, hook up and, if all goes well, maybe have a brawl or two. It’s “The Real World” meets “Blue Crush.”
At least, it was in the pitch meeting. The end result, “Boarding House: North Shore,” premiering tonight at 8 p.m. on the WB, is neither as sleazy as “Real World” nor as visually thrilling as the movie “Blue Crush,” last summer’s guilty pleasure.
To begin with, the personalities aren’t interesting enough. With the exception of Sunny Garcia, the oldest and least mature of the crew, the rest of the boarders seem like fairly mellow, well-adjusted individuals. Which is nice for them, but not for the viewer.
The rest of the lineup: Veronica “VK” Kay, is a 22-year-old party chick and model for Roxy surfwear. Chelsea, the youngest housemate at 19, shows little personality in the first episode. Danny Fuller, 21, an exceedingly mellow guy, has a reputation as a womanizer. Damien Hobgood, 23, a religious Donny Osmond lookalike, is proudly abstaining from sex with his girlfriend (“always have the Lord first,” he says). Myles Padaca, the reigning Vans champ, has a pregnant wife and wants to win the prize money to provide for his family.
Somewhat removed from the group is Holly Beck, an intensely focused and somewhat antisocial 22-year-old. She’s oddly obsessed with Veronica, constantly complaining to the cameras that she doesn’t take surfing seriously enough, doesn’t have focus and direction in her life, etc., etc. She comes off as merely jealous.
But unlike “The Real World,” whose residents are typically one step up the evolutionary chain from apes hurling feces at one another, this group seems unlikely to have many screaming fits — or, for that matter, sex in hot tubs.
The only truly interesting character (after the first episode, at least) is Sunny who, at 33, is out to prove that he isn’t past his prime. The other six housemates — and every other pro surfer we glimpse — are terrified of him. For good reason: his mammoth ego is matched only by his belligerence.
He tends to take nearly every action of those around him as a personal affront, screaming at someone who accidentally cuts in front of him while surfing and nearly starting a brawl with a drunken, slurring barfly who apparently glanced at Sunny’s wife.
But with the other housemates all cowed by the guy, there’s little room for out-of-the-water conflict.
Which leaves us with the surf competition itself.
Unlike “Blue Crush,” in which the cameras seemed to ride the waves alongside the actors (or their stunt doubles, anyway), the surfers in “Boarding House” are filmed from the safety of the beach.
This is understandable; the producers couldn’t very well send out cameramen on surfboards to capture them in the middle of a competition. But they could have done something like that during practice rounds.
At the very least, they could have filmed with a little more flair, to give viewers some taste of adrenaline rush during surf scenes. Instead, we see exactly the same shots they show on ESPN12, or whatever channel broadcasts this stuff.
As “Boarding House” continues its six-episode run, it will no doubt build in excitement. But at the moment, it’s really for surfing fanatics only.
June 18, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Dan Jewel is a senior editor at Biography Magazine in New York and a frequent contributor to Media Life.
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