I wonder if anyone other than me has noticed that ESPN's Dream Job is beginning to look a lot like survival of the youngest? Again tonight I did a little back and forth between DJ and the Practice, figuring that I could catch one of the reruns if I wanted to see the whole thing. And I turned in to catch the cuts at 11.
A few weeks ago, when the show began, there were 12 contestants, ranging in age from 21 to 40. 7 candidates were aged 30 or older. Now the show is halfway through, having cut 6 candidates, all of whom, in an interesting coincidence, are aged 30 or older. Kelly, the one remaining candidate older than 28, is also the one who sounds like he's tried the hardest to develop the "reporter cadence" that every local news reporter abuses to the point of absurdity. You know the one: Look straight at the camera, try your hardest to appear dead earnest, and say the following, "If it sounds too good to be true..." (pause a half-second longer than necessary) "...it probably is." Makes my skin crawl, that does.
Anyhow. Whatever appeal Dream Job has (and this from someone who typically avoids reality programming like the plague it is), it's in the fantasy that "hey, I could do that," and I'm sure that our 12 finalists were not simply the twelve best--they were chosen as a means of tapping into that fantasy. And so it's been interesting to me, as a thirty-something, to watch each of the thirty-somethings on the show drop off one by one.
I can only think of two rationales. One is that the older a body, the more attuned and enculturated that person gets to the rhythms of his or her chosen profession, and the harder it becomes to adjust to a new one. Much like we lose our facility for learning languages very quickly (often by the time we begin "foreign language study" in most cases), perhaps these older finalists simply have trouble adjusting to what is certainly a profession. Perhaps we might argue that Kelly, as a lawyer, is the one of the 7 most attuned to adjusting his delivery depending on audience (although, truthfully, I expected Lori as someone who did marketing to be better than she was).
Okay, so that's one. Number two is a media-based argument. Fact of the matter is that I didn't grow up on ESPN. It's 25 this year, but that's a specious number, and more for the point of their "silver anniversary" nonsense than anything else. I grew up following baseball, football, and college basketball, but I didn't get exposed to ESPN until fairly late in my own personal "sports history." I remember when it was considered kind of cult to watch it, with Australian Rules Football and all. Except for Kelly and only barely Zach (who's 28), ESPN is in fact older than the rest of the contestants, and I wonder if there's a subtle difference, a little generation gap, between those who grew up with the network and those who didn't, between those who see shtick as an inherent part of the talking head honor code, and those who don't. You can tell the difference between the ones who host SportsCenter and the ones who entered the biz as writers. As a thirty-something (and a reader), I prefer the latter, but I don't begrudge the fact that this show is about finding someone who will do the former.
Ah well. Selection Sunday is almost over, and I've got to get back to work...
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