I'm not a big television watcher. I mean, I wake up every morning to ESPN and watch my share of sports. If you throw in the movie channels and a select few shows: Law & Order, Seinfeld, and Frasier, then you'll pretty much exhaust the gamut of my television watching. And every so often, I'll overhear a conversation about this show or that show, or someone will ask me if I caught a certain episode of something. My answer is inevitably 'no'.
But I was prompted to go on a journey. During my journey, I found a collection of the most ridiculous shows ever! And these are popular shows. Shows that otherwise intelligent people are faithful viewers of.
16 and Pregnant: That's right! Let's have a show that glamorizes the mistakes of teenagers. Yeah, I guess the idea should be to show the ills of their actions, but the show doesn't really make it seem all that bad. I'm sure it would make no sense to have a show called 16 and Taking Advanced Placement courses.
The Real Housewives of _________(Insert City of Your Choice): A show with a bunch of people with nothing else to do but host parties, drink themselves silly, and bitch at each other. Sounds like Congress. All the shows of this ilk are the same. Why would anyone invest an hour out of their lives to watch these women put on these extra obnoxious masks?
Celebrity Apprentice: Why the hell does this show even exist? I know Trump doesn't need the money. I guess it's just his way of staying relevant, especially given his White House delusions. But what really is the purpose of bringing together the likes of walking pharmacy, Gary Busey, crazy-ass Star Jones, and a woman whose name has no business being associated with the word "celebrity". What is a Nene Leakes? She reminds me of my aunt. I try my hardest to avoid spending long periods of time with that particular aunt. Why would anyone want to turn on the television and bring a Nene Leakes into their living room?
Dog The Bounty Hunter: So, what we want to do is give a racist, druggie bounty hunter and his husband a platform to reinforce generalizations and stereotypes while putting legal beat downs on Blacks and Latinos at a disproportionate rate. Oh, but he gives them a pep talk and prays for them before he drops them off to jail. Man, we get to see racism and redemption all in one show. How can anything beat that?
No offense to the Christian network, but with all of the nonsense on the airwaves, there should be one network dedicated to stupid ass "reality" shows. This will be the new TBN: Tiger Blood Network, all Charlie Sheen all-day. Just a bunch of mind-numbing, intellect-diminishing dribble with as little redeeming value as humanly possible.
- They could give the O'Jays a show. It could be called, The O'Jays (or insert the name of any old rock, R & B, or Rap group that is still trying to hold on 20 years after their popularity): Remember? The whole show could follow as they go around to see if anyone recognizes and remembers them. Once they find a person that knows them, then the purpose of the show switches to them trying to remember enough lyrics to perform a song for the lucky person.
- How about The Ties That Bind? This show would focus on toddlers' struggles to tie their shoes, men's struggles for that perfect Windsor knot, and the nearly impossible task of a woman trying to tie the back of her dress.
- The most popular show would be, "I work at Mickey D's, can hardly read and write, but swear with conviction that I'm going to be a superstar rapper and all the women are going to want me then, even though they barely look at me now!"
I must admit that I do have one little reality TV pleasure. It's called Bully Beatdown. It's brilliant. It takes a couple of lovable losers with a story of how they've been tormented by some obnoxious bully. The show then puts the bully in the ring with a mixed martial artist who proceeds to beat the bully's ass into submission. All to the delight of the once-bullied losers who receive money for each time the bully is knocked down or submits to the grasp of the martial artist. I question the authenticity of the show. It may all be a rouse. But the premise is amazing. A sense of redemption for all of us out there that ever had to suffer at the hands of a bully.
And every once in while, there is a gem of semi-reality television. Case in point: Comedy Central's roast of Donald Trump. These roasts are simply an hour full of comedians and semi-celebrities making as many disparaging remarks as they can about a willing figure. Flavor Flav and Hulk Hogan are previous recipients of this honor. The Donald Trump roast was comedy gold because of one particular member of Jersey Shore. Some prophetic genius booked Mike "The Situation" as one of the roasters. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Remember the kid in the high school talent show who swore he could sing, but could barely carry a tune. And once he started singing, the giggles and blank stares from the audience alerted him to his less-than-stellar voice. But he was already on the stage and too far into the song to simply stop singing. So, he suffered through what seemed like an hour to get to the end of the song, only to be met by raucous laughter, boos, and pitying applause. Well, that was like winning an Oscar compared to this. And even though I really don't want to do anything to give any more attention to "The Problem", if you haven't seen it, here it is:
If this was what reality TV was, I would be hooked. But instead, we get a million versions of The Real World, a thousand cake/bake/wedding shows, and voyeuristic looks into the fake lives of people that we really shouldn't care about at all.
Read a book!
