Rob and Amber: Against the Odds, but with an Audience?
Rob and Amber: Against the Odds, but with an Audience? by Roxanne McDonald
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Rob and Amber have made a living on being reality TV stars. Will their new show make them any more (or less) popular? |
They started as competitors on season four, “Survivor: Marquesas.” They fell in love. They dabbled on “Survivor All-Stars,” in season eight. They took their show on the road of “The Amazing Race,” in season seven. And now Rob and Amber Mariano will further the exploitation, take advantage of their reality fame, by doing their own show—“Rob and Amber: Against the Odds.”
Originally titled “The Rob & Amber Show,” the new reality
TV program is set to run for ten half-hour segments on FOX Reality, set to premiere in January of 2007. The premise of the show involves the ever ambitious, ever industrious Rob, who will take on the challenge of playing professional poker in Las Vegas. The Morianos will risk their earlier “earnings” in the casinos as the cameras roll to witness whether Mariano—executive produce of the new show, along with Linda Ellman, Rob George, Christopher Meindl, of Ellman Productions–will blow the newlyweds’ “Survivor” and “Amazing Race” winnings or whether he will parlay it as he plans.
Rob will have a poker tutor, the professional player Dan Negreanu, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal, and will play the odds of the tables while his wife Amber works on her projects, one of which includes, says Linda Ellman, setting up the couple’s Las Vegas apartment to “surprise” her husband.
The bigger gamble might be airing their troubles and tribulations as Rob “learns” and as Amber fidgets—having become accustomed, one would think, to competing right alongside Rob. The risk is the money, sure, but the risk is also trying to keep popular with television audiences.
I loved Rob from the start, mostly for silly reasons: his Boston accent recalls for me the childhood time spent growing up in New Hampshire. Every time he spoke, it was as if I had been given another whiff of Grandma’s perfume or something. The familiarity kept me coming back to first “Survivor” and then to “Amazing Race” as much as did the love of both those shows in general.
But then Rob has got that nasty side, that side to his personality that is callous and cutthroat and dismissive of others: he pulled some sneaky punches on “Survivor,” and on “The Amazing Race” he lied to others and pulled the quintessential cold play when he drove right past fellow competitors who had overturned their jeep.
My friends and other reality TV viewers have soured on Mariano, so I wonder how many will care to tune in to a show dedicated to filming Rob and Amber more so than on Rob and Amber among other equally engaging to watch players?
The “Rob and Amber: Against the Odds” show information is not fully disclosed, with The Futon Critic getting as close to the details as I can find as of yet, so the “cast information,” for instance, merely reads Rob Mariano; Amber Mariano.
Will they be enough to sustain a ten-week reality series? Or are the odds looking even slimmer?
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