Tool Academy UK
First off, I love awful reality TV and so Tool Academy looked like it was going to fill the ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ hole this year, sadly I’m worried it won’t.
Tool Academy is an American format, hence the tame American slang, I’d rename it Twat Camp. Twelve ‘tools’ are nominated by their girlfriends (who, as becomes apparent are just as tooly as their meat headed other halves) for rehabilitation. The young gentlemen begin the show thinking that they’re on a programme looking for ‘Britain’s Ultimate Lad’ it’s only after putting them in shameful scenarios that the big switcharoo happens, they’re actually in a sort of charm school for men.
This is where it all falls down a little. The show was sort of fun when they were all being lads and at a strip club, oh how we laughed, it was like being transported to the beginnings of Sky One with ‘Ibiza Uncovered’ just in a rented mansion with better cameras and a knowing Rick Edwards providing ironic commentary.
Once the true show is revealed, with pointless banner unfurling and fireworks that no-one could see as they were all inside, some of the ‘tools’ go Jerry Springer Show mental and stomp about for a bit much to the joy of the producers but not so much for me. It was quite scary, these boys (bar a couple) are the reason I avoid buy-one-get-one-free Bacardi Breezer clubs or where more than 4 boys in one square meter have low cut All Saints nipple showing t-shirts on. I don’t really enjoy aggravation and that’s all this bit was. Silly insecure boys shouting whilst their girlfriends, who must have known this was going to happen but were too fixated on the Daily Star spread and the £25,000 prize to consider the feelings of their partner, ran after them pretending that this was something she’d not expected.
We then go to a ‘therapy session’ where we learn of why the ‘tools’ have been enrolled. Dr Sandra Scott, the Big Brother psychologist sits in a big chair and asks the lads why they think they’re there. Now as expected there’s the angry one, the vain one, the neglecting one and the stoner one, there’s also one with the teeth of Bugs Bunny but that’s not why he’s been enrolled. One of the ‘tools’ nicknamed (as they all are, like some kind of awful male Spice Girls) ‘Twinkle Tool’ and the reasons for his enrollment in this hammer house of hormone imbalance is as follows…
Abby believes Joe has a gay streak as he avoids manly things like beer drinking and instead enjoys dancing and drinking WKD’s. Abby says Joe has a complex about his image and enjoys a good cry with his mum.
Excuse me? Is that a ‘Tool’? If so maybe I’ll go buy myself an All Saints deep V and a Pint of Stella. Surely what all these girls want is their boys to be a little bit more like Joe. If Abby really thinks he’s too ‘gay’ then maybe she should swap him with one of the other ‘tools’ or preferably take her homophobia and fuck off.
I can’t figure out what this show wants to be. I tuned in hoping for something frothy that doesn’t take itself too seriously, what I got was the foreshadowing of domestic violence and some VT of them all drinking wine in the woods.
They were apparently taking the Commitment course, I’d like to challenge the curriculum, and the editing. It was mainly thick people saying that they trust each other 1,010% then downing a glass of Blossom Hill. One couple ‘won’ the challenge, it was never explained how, and got to be filmed having a bath with candles all around them.
Then some boys got expelled and others got a badge with ‘commitment’ written on it whilst orange girls tried to match their man with a shadow I gave up caring during the drawn out ‘Blazer hanging ceremony’, it made the Dorothy shoes hand over from ‘Over the Rainbow’ look normal.
Sorry E4, D-, the British tools aren’t as funny as the American tools. I’m worried one of them would glass me in a TGI Fridays.
