SPOILER ALERT
If you haven’t seen this episode of On The Real, you should probably stop now and watch it, or don’t. The Review covers all the juicy bits anyway.
So last week’s episode of On The Real was so spectacularly bad that I almost considered just abandoning my quest to review every episode altogether.
Took me a few days, and a thousand pep talks in front of my mirror, but I decided to get off my ass and do it, who knows, just maybe someone else is making a show and needs to know that I’m outchea, ready to drag them no matter how far down the shit hole they go.
So let’s get to it then.
Episode 5 begins at Faridah’s house, the whole Cliff hanger of Lolu receiving a call that has them ‘screwed in the ass’ long forgotten.
Lolu is there, cake in hand because apparently it’s Faridah’s birthday. She doesn’t want the cake, just to not have to go out on her birthday. But apparently she has to, because ‘Accelerate TV’ *wink, wink* wants to film the stars of On The Real behind the scenes. They’re paying for a fancy birthday dinner and inviting the rest of the cast. Lolu gets a call and has to bail; his son is sick and he needs to go pick him up.
Faridah digs into her cake, weepy as hell when the door bell rings. She goes to open it and plot twist, it’s not Lolu at the door, coming to apologize.
It’s her parents.
Then we are tortured through yet another diary session where the cast ‘tells’ us how hard it is for them to be reality tv stars with their parents hounding them. In case you weren’t sure that was why Faridah’s parents were introduced out of nowhere.
It’s the evening of the birthday dinner. B.J and Wana are together, having pre-dinner drinks. Amaka’s making an effort to ignore B.J and Faridah, the guest of honour is missing. the ‘Accelerate TV’ producer (who is supposed to be an avatar for Temidayo Abudu) gathers the cast together and gives them some watery speech about acting natural. In the middle of her speech, Faridah arrives late, trying (and failing as usual) to make an entrance, with a bottle of wine in hand.
I have never heard of a restaurant that lets you bring your own wine into their establishment, but we’ll let that slide.
Then for whatever reason they give Lolu a diary session where he reassures us his cast is ‘professional’ while wheezing and huffing and generally acting like he’s having a seizure.
David Jones David is doing such a horrible Ari Gold impression, that if I was him, I would sue for damages.
They get to the actual dinner and Wana starts to pick on Auta, asking what she does for a living, to which Auta replies with this gem.
‘Right now I dont work, but I’m in between jobs.’
Before we know it, they start asking how she affords her apartment. Auta concedes that it’s paid for by ‘a friend’. Wana suggests that it’s paid for by a sugar daddy and B.J digs in, joking about how the ‘hustle’ must be so much easier for her because he’s a girl. This is the point where Efosa bristles and before we know it Efosa socks B.J in the jaw.
And while the boys are trading punches, the girls tear into each other, Faridah even threatens to pour wine on Wana.
And I basically closed the tab and wondered about all the bad decision that led to this scene.
The writing was entirely horrible, I’ll admit, and better actors would have given us a scene for the ages. But this cast feeds so well on each other’s incompetence, they managed somehow to make a bad thing worse. I was watching a secondary school drama group gives us an ’emotionally driven’ scene.
God, make it stop.
After the fight, Faridah goes to her parents who have barely said/done anything the entire episode, and apologises to them for embarrassing them. And they give us a stereotypical ‘Nigerian’ parent response of them being ‘disappointed’ because they spent school fees.
This could have been a great opportunity for character exposition, a glimpse into why Faridah is the way she is, but all we get is some lazy writing.
Amaka and B.J are in another corner, being all unnecessarily close. This is the same girl who was avoiding B.J at the start of the episode and he got decked defending someone else. But then again, common sense is in short supply in the writer’s room of this show so…
Anyhow, B. J and Amaka start whispering and being generally annoying. We find out Efosa and B.J are supposedly best friends. Could have fooled me. He blames her for his behaviour, then asks her why she pulled away when he kissed her the last time. She tells him it was because he ‘surprised’ her. So my nigga asks her and in response she basically assaults him with her mouth.
So romantic.
The final scene of the episode sees Sumbo, Lolu’s assistant giving the ‘Accelerate TV’ staff booze and souvenirs. Lolu appears, and orders Sumbo to steal their camera from their bus. The producer understandably flies into a rage and Lolu explains that the ‘bad’ footage can’t get out. That makes no sense because everyone knows a fight between reality TV stars equal an astronomical rise in ratings. But yeah, Lolu is supposed to be a ‘bad’ guy, and what could be worse than petty theft?
Maybe it’s because Lolu is supposed to have had some drinks but David Jones David’s Igbo accent comes clearly to the fore as he delivers his lines, which incidentally is his best performance so far. Maybe homeboy needs to drop the faux accent and embrace his inner 51 Iweka Road, he’s clearly destined for that.
Permit me at this point to state how stupid it is for Accelerate TV to try to plug itself in its own show. I can’t even wrap my mind around how anyone on the team there thought this was even a remotely good idea. And here we were thinking them plugging Samantha’s Bistro so brazenly was super tacky.
Even worse, the characters who play Accelerate TV staff in the episode are so dumb and incompetent that I’m not even surprised everything they do is bad. It’s just a mess all through.
Somebody fix it. Anybody, please.
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