‘On the Lot…’ more like ‘Off my DVR’

I’ll admit it; I do like to watch reality shows. Recently Fox started a new show about directing movies, created by Mark Burnett (“Survivor”) and Steven Spielberg.

With that combo it had hit written all over it.

And it was great… for the first week. The first few episodes we got to meet a few of the directing hopefuls brought to Hollywood to undergo some challenges in order to cut down the number of contestants from 50 to 18.

The first challenge was to pitch a movie with a generic story idea. It was great to see how these people stayed up all night to come up with ideas and how they pitched them. Of course some were horrible, but it still made for great television.

So after a few were cut the next challenge started right away, no rest for the wicked. The directors were spilt into teams of three and told to make a short film in 24 hours. Of course styles and personalities clashed. Some people failed and were cut.

As with the last challenge, the next one started right away. This time they were put in charge of a professional film crew and expected to film a one page of dialogue film in another short amount of time. The episode ended with the directors getting to the sets, so the logical conclusion was that we would see what would happen during the next episode.

My digital cable guide said there was a two hour episode airing Monday at 8 p.m. I tuned in.

I was horrified.

There was a studio audience and it really looked like a poor man’s version of American Idol. Then this lady started talking, who didn’t look anything like the host of the show for the previous episodes.

I had to check the guide again to make sure I was watching the right show.

Then they introduced the prestigious panel of celebrity judges. Gary Marshall who is a great director and legend and Carrie Fisher who was in the “Star Wars” films and has written a bunch of movies. OK, those two are legends. The third judge? Some dude that directed “Disturbia.” Huh wha?

My eyes rolled so fast I thought I was going blind.

So at least I was going to see the 24 directors and how they did on their third challenges. Nope, they went straight to the final 18, only taking a few seconds to overview the challenge. I don’t even know who the six were that were cut. I thought to myself “OK my DVR screwed up again and didn’t record an episode.” I double checked and realized that there was not a “missing episode” there just was no explanation at all.

Then they do straight into another challenge with the audience judging the films and picking a winner, I then took the chance to turn the television off.