Our latest dive into reality competitions is Destination X, which has a fun travel twist: Contestants travel across Europe in a bus with blacked-out windows, and on only rare occasions (some earned, some given) they get to see the outside world. They use that knowledge each episode to guess where they are; the person who has the worst guess is eliminated.
I’m really enjoying it! I like that the audience is in on the guessing game: We’re mostly limited to the same information as the contestants (though we have the benefit of the camera lingering on certain clues), but it’s still a good geography lesson. Four episodes in, it’s mostly about guessing the country–once you know the country, you just pick the biggest city in that country and you’re good.
I also find it amusing that the producers picked Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the host (best known as Negan on the Walking Dead) and gave him this puppetmaster-style narration, but he really just seems like someone who wants to hang out with the contestants who are voted off. Maybe that’s scripted too, but it seems genuine.
Also, I really hope that we get to see how the contestants get from the bus to their exterior locations. They have these fancy blindfolds, but in some locations they have to traverse pretty far from the bus while blindfolded (i.e., to a snowcapped mountain). Are there personal assistants leading them by hand the whole way? I want to see!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the show if you’ve watched it. What do you think?