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"Surf Girls" Review By Shawn McKenzie 05/19/2003 As reality shows become more specialized in specific activities, your enjoyment of them may be based on how much you like the activity they are doing. That might be, at least for me, the problem with MTV’s new show, “Surf Girls.”
The show pits 14 amateur female surfers against each other for a spot in a professional surfing competition, the Roxy Fiji Pro Championship. It is a Wild Card slot in the WCT (World Championship Tour.) Since only 16 female surfers get to compete in the WCT, it is very hard to get in. One way to get a slot is to rank in the top five at the end of the world qualifying series, and another way is to get the Wild Card slot. Every episode they will eliminate at least one of the girls. They will train, travel, and live together in a surfer boot camp as they compete for the single spot. The girls will travel around the world (starting with Australia) for six and a half weeks and meet professional surf coaches, who will help to train them and get them ready for competition. The women are evaluated based on surfing ability (60 percent), weekly physical fitness tests (20 percent), and positive attitude (20 percent) as they visit Australia, Tahiti, Samoa, and Hawaii. Roxy Team Manager Danielle Beck acts as the host of the show and den mother of this group of girls, though she doesn’t “host” the show in the vein of other reality shows. The show is more in the vein of “The Real World” where it just documents the process. There are two types of judging for the surfing style. Short Boarders are judged by the difficulty of their maneuvers. Long Boarders are judged on their wave selection and the length of the ride on that wave. They eliminated two of the girls in the first episode. Aimee was booted because she had family concerns and Neva was booted because she had a bad attitude. They were just about to eliminate two more girls at the end of the episode, when it ended, leaving a cliffhanger. Their rankings for each of the girls were done on a stoplight scale. The Top Ranking girls were in the green, the Middle Ranking girls were in the yellow, and the Bottom Ranking girls were in the red and are sent home.
I think I would like this show better if I were more exposed to the sport of surfing. Living in Colorado, I don’t see a lot of beaches around, so my exposure to surfing is only through movies and TV. This might be a good show for those interested in the life of surfers and the rigorous training process the athletes go through, but since I’ve never had an interest in surfing myself, it didn’t draw me in. I tried to look for some stories to keep my interest along side the surfing, like in the movie Blue Crush, and there were a few. Neva’s attitude was interesting to watch, but she was booted, so that’s over. Another girl named Robyn was thoroughly convinced she was one of the worst of the girls, yet she ranked in the green. Her neuroses might be interesting to watch in the future. Other than that, it wasn’t that interesting. The previews for next week look promising though. Like always, I will give “Surf Girls” a few episodes to try to hook me. I definitely appreciate the fact that most of the girls are very attractive and wear small bathing suits, but the surfing itself doesn’t hold my interest. As a reality show where they live together, it isn’t that interesting, since it is all about the surfing (which it should be, but I’m not a surfer, so I don’t care. I want the general conflict, like who has the worst attitude or who is the biggest flirt.) Like I said, check it out if it’s your thing, since it is very dedicated to the world of surfing, and you may get to see a lot of surfing legends that you worship. For me, I couldn’t care less.
Ratings System:
DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!
Try to catch this show every week...
If a better show is on, tape this one...
If nothing else is on, maybe this will be good...
If this show is on, change the channel immediately!
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