Space Cadets - The Final Frontier?

It's over, the surprise has been sprung, the joke is done, the cosmonauts have been brought back down to earth with a bump.

It was good for me but for many others it was not. The viewing figures testified to the public loving shows where celebrities eat live bugs and kangaroo testicles, where people send in their most humiliating videos, where murder detectives investigate the most heinous killings for our entertainment week after week.

The contestants signed up for a show being produced by a sister company of Endemol who have brought us such enthralling masterpieces as Big Brother without knowing exactly what they would be asked to do. They went through some pretty ridiculous selection tests before they were even supposedly flown out to Russia for a 3 week training programme to prepare them as civilian space tourists.

You see there are a lot of people who like to shout "I'm wacky, I am! The life and soul of every party! Woo hoo! I'll do anything, I don't care what anyone else thinks." - yawn, yawn. I kinda see this as Channel 4 taking people at their word. All power to the chosen few, those brave souls Keri, Paul and Billy who agreed to fly, that alone is brave. Me, I know I would wet myself before I did that, so yes they picked up the gauntlet. While at the moment of the reveal they probably felt a bit embarrassed, I think they have been rewarded handsomely.

Keri by all accounts is on the books of an agency offering people for extras work, hey this can't have harmed her profile much. As an actor you can be asked to do some of the most ridiculous things, as Charlie and the actors on the show can testify. Billy, has admitted he could do with the money to "consolidate a few debts". Billy, you have got it. There's even been a little bit of a "friendship" developing between Billy and Keri, aw! As for Paul, he's finally popped the question to his girlfriend and now he can afford the wedding.

Last nights performance with Charlie "passing" an intestinal worm and the burial ceremony for Bimby the (famous Russian) Dog was just plain funny. The way they did the reveal was not the harshest thing I've seen. Certainly better than those shows where they line up possible prizes for children then take them away when they fail the task. Certainly better than watching incest, murder, rape and spousal abuse on a prime time soap opera. Certainly better than being told on a Saturday, Wednesday or whichever night the lottery can get away with that "It could be you!" - yeah along with the other 60 or so million in the country (that's the cruelest deception of them all).

So most people didn't like the programme, it was a bit cruel, it was boring, it was too obvious to fool anyone. Open your eyes, there are many more things to get upset about all around us every day and I don't hear much murmuring going on there.

Still a little part of me hoped that it would have turned out to be a double bluff, that we the viewing public, were being conned all along. Oh well, there's always Space Cadets 2 - The Mission to Mars...! (supposedly being filmed now)

Right now - Cadets, I like you, I admire you and I salute you!!!

:)x

Oh gosh I better go lie down quick - I've just read this again and I sound like Jerry Springer - gggaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrhhhhh!!!!! Bucket Please!!!!!