Just When We Thought TV Couldn’t Get Any Richer…Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes Alreading Making for Great Viewing

Just When We Thought TV Couldn’t Get Any Richer…Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes Already Making for Great Viewing by Roxanne McDonald

Two TV moguls with two popular shows decide to buy a vineyard. Are we jealous? Not when we see the risks they have to take and the crap they have to endure….

“Corkscrewed: the Wrath of Grapes” aired on FOX Reality TV last night (December 10, 2006). With the first few minutes of watching, we might infer how oh, great, another show about the rich getting richer: executive producer of “America’s Got Talent,” Ken Warrick, and executive producer of “So You Think You Can Dance” and co-executive producer of “American Idol,” Nigel Lythgoe (close friends since childhood), get the idea to invest in a vineyard.

Numbers like 6 mil and 2 mil a piece are bandied about. Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell, Ryan Seacrest, and friend Simon Fuller are asked to buy in. All agree, with some reticence. Then they start pulling out—one at a time they have they have their reasons. Cowell says they don’t have an inkling about wines, and Fuller has another contractual obligation which prohibits his participation.
Then the already in-place contracts with vintners erode: the vintners pointedly rescind because they prefer to do business with those who “have an interest” in the Paso Robles community. (In other words, Nigel and Ken are, as they infer, Hollywood types, from England—strangers who have no business in the wine business?)

Then the heat gets so bad that the owls die, throwing off the eco-balance and inviting the gophers and other burrowing and plant-munching critters back onto the property…by the hundreds. They have to “blow up” the critters.

Then there’s a fire that almost wipes out the crop of newly planted grape plants.

The TV show title is taken, of course, from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a desperate novel centering on the Joad family in depression-era California. At first glance of the previews and the marathon of “Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes,” we might think that rich guys getting richer has nothing to do with the devastation Steinbeck’s characters experience…

save the cute, ironic play on the title, which has something to do with grapes and California.But after closer consideration, it is clear that a venture involving ignorance of the particular business, a control freak vineyard owner who sells the property/business without disclosing vital details and who stays on to run the thing ’cause he can’t let go, combined with people backing out left and right, might just promise sadistic voyeurs some real tragedy befalling the mighty moguls.

Beautiful scenery, literal and figurative snakes, and protracted suffering: what more can a reality TV viewer ask?

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