efragarcia59 Reviews

The Hype House (2022)

Nothing to Get Hyped About

[2/10 · 10 January 2022]

So what we have here is a number of social media 'stars' who for some strange reason think they are famous enough to claim A-list status just for posting random stuff on TikTok and somehow, someway, getting paid for it enough to rent two mansions in California. I can personally confirm they are not A-listers. An A-lister is someone you can recognize even if you don't follow their work that closely (you don't need to be the world's most ardent cinephile to know who, say, Meryl Streep or Leonardo DiCaprio are, as such, they're in the A-list), and I can confirm I didn't know any of the Hype House residents prior to watching this show to see if it really was as bad as everyone was making it out to be.

Well, it's that bad, and then some. It's an overly dramatic, yet boring beyond belief, look behind the curtain of the machinations of these wannabe celebrities to keep their numbers up and the lights on, and exactly what lines are they willing to cross to keep the Hype House up and running (a stunt wedding for YouTube views? Seriously, what the hell, Alex?), sprinkling all of it with the great divide between House founders Chase and Thomas. The former, at least, does sound like he could have a half-decent music career ahead of him if he just cut ties with this lot. But he's basically the only one with anything resembling actual talent in here.

Seriously, don't bother. You're better off forcing Netflix to cancel Hype House by ignoring the daylights out of this thing.

Todo es mentira (2019– )

All bark and no bite

[2/10 · 14 January 2019]

Despite an interesting premise, 'Todo es mentira', a joint effort from La Fábrica de la Tele and Minoria Absoluta, doesn't really pack a punch. Minoria's signature caustic humor is nowhere to be found, and instead we get unfunny jokes, absurd debates and visitors from La Fábrica's true flagship show, 'Sálvame', which actually runs opposite this one and is (rightfully, if we look at the ratings) treated as a far bigger deal by Cuatro's parent group Mediaset. In the 'unfunny jokes' department, Itziar Catro's comments about her own overweight are the most glaring case in point. It's perfectly fine to be able to laugh at oneself, but she's abusing the resource. Miguel Lago's output has peaks and valleys, convincing when he pulls off his upper-class snob gimmick, but absolutely lost in the aforementioned debates with Castelo. And host Risto, no matter how hard he tries, simply isn't believable as the vitriolic juror we met at 'Operación Triunfo' anymore, which is good for his other show, 'Chester', but here contributes to most of the show's satire falling flat on its face.

Todo va bien (2014–2015)

Mindless segment parade

[3/10 · 2 February 2018]

This program billed itself as a 'multi-format' show, which should already be the first red flag. 'Todo va bien' featured a cast mainly built on the crew of morning radio show 'Anda ya', and essentially tried to export to television the formula of success of the radio show. But what is good to listen to on the radio doesn't fare so well on TV without the invigorating element of music. 'Todo va bien' became a strange parade of segments ranging from interviews to celebrity parodies to hidden camera pranks, and the script just kept switching abruptly from one thing to another. This 'multi-format' show, thus, ended up trying to be too many things and not really being any in the end.

Singles XD (2017)

Swipe left

[2/10 · 30 December 2017]

This effort from Cuatro and Bulldog was billed as "the first live dating show", and mainly consisted in a bunch of 'singles' looking for love, as the title indicates, with the added 'XD' possibly looking to add an aura of 'modernity' and 'coolness' to it. And there lies the main problem of this: both the show itself and its participants tried way too hard to be 'cool' and 'modern' and as a result ended up stepping into 'bland' and 'superficial' territory. This resulted in dates as uninteresting as the conflicts born out of them, while the attempted integration of social media (mainly Instagram) on the broadcast felt forced.

This show was cancelled three weeks in because very few people watched. And if you aren't among them, you're not missing much.