(Yar, I know "Unreality" isn't a word GEROFF ME!)
Have you seen these reality T.V. shows? You can hardly miss ‘em, they’re fucking everywhere. Every little thing has it’s own reality show now, and they are the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Yet millions of people are watching this fecal programming.
What the hell is wrong with you monkeys?
I try and try to avoid these things, they are like ass termites to me. But the problem is that every network on T.V. not only has one, they usually have a dozen or more competing for the top slot at whatever particular network they run on, so I can’t get reruns of the A-Team, or catch Soul Train without having to wade through 20 separate versions of “reality”. A quick search on Google revealed a list WAAAAAAAY too long to paste on to my humble little blog. But the list below is representative of, oh, let’s say about 1 for every 20 reality shows:
Amazing Race
The Apprentice
The Bachelor
The Real World
Big Brother
The Flava of Love
Survivor
Making the Band
Miami Ink
America’s Next Top Model
Rockstar Supernova
Top Chef
UFC (For God’s Sake!)
Road Rules
Breaking Bonnaduce
Who Wants to marry a millionaire
Who Wants to be a Superhero
Joe what’s-his-bucket
And that’s just a partial list of the crap reality shows, there are dozens more. And all of them are trying to convince you of how “real” people live & behave. Hey, here’s a thought: NONE OF THIS SHIT IS “REAL”!! It’s as fake as the WWF, minus the body-slams. The people in these shows don’t take a dump without rehearsing, checking their hair, and putting on just the “perfect” outfit to be seen heading to the john in. Every fight is staged, every make-out session is nothing more than amateur acting, every drama scenario has had about a half-dozen walk – throughs before they filmed it. And they always portray the nastiest, most conniving, back-stabbing bitch (man or woman) as the “winner” of whatever “Reality” they are promoting.
But it‘s the ones that fuck with the family unit that particularly piss me off. “Temptation Island”, “Swapping Spouses” “Wife Swap” and that one on MTV where the parents set up their daughter with another guy & the boyfriend has to watch the date. What is that shit about? Just an attempt to create misery out of a normal marriage? Do you really suppose a 10+ Amazonian goddess with huge boobs and an inflated libido is REALLY going to pull up in your driveway & whisk you off for the weekend to a deserted tropical island? Oh yeah, THAT shit’s an everyday occurrence, you can’t open a paper these days without reading about some poor guy who was snatched away by another Sheena of the Jungle, never to be heard from again. I suppose, with Hollywood and all, that I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, what boundaries do they really have anymore, right? But anything dealing with pushing a relationship’s limits just…bothers me. It’s wrong. I know how trite that sounds, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Many relationships are such fragile things to begin with, and every couple goes through that “struggle” stage, where the whole thing could fall apart at the drop of a pin. The last thing a relationship needs is a visit to “temptation island” to spice it up! And the same thing always happens, one or both of the couple do something stupid that they regret later, and by then it’s WAY too late: The damage is done & the marriage is over, the couples having given up precious emotional ground they have fought for over a stupid T.V. appearance. I don’t know who to blame more, the networks or the idiots who tried to cheat the odds.
And now, the final straw...”Survivor Races”
Oh My Lack of God.
That is just beautiful, let’s put a group of racially separated people on a deserted island & see who wins! The only thing missing here (I call it “The unfinished clause”) is “…And whoever wins is the superior race!”
It would suit me just fine if the creator fo these things was strung up by his toenails & dunked into a well full of angry scorpions. For a week.
So, I’m setting up my own reality show. I’ve got a webcam & a computer. I’ve got funding ($21.30 from my wife’s purse) and I’ve got a theme: Who Wants to be America’s Next Real Apprentice Rockstar Flava of Rum Bathroom Race!
Here’s the deal: I’ll set up the webcam in my bathroom & then go on a three-day Rum bender. You guys can watch as I puke & shit my intestines out. If I’m still alive at the end of a month, I win!!
Tell me it wouldn’t be at least as interesting as any other “reality” show. You get to see my hairy ass in the bargain.
Somebody call the Amazons…
6 comments:
Menken's Dictum: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (sometimes I've seen this as "taste") of the American public.
True then, true now, true either way. I tuned into one episode of Survivor when it first came on, to see what all the hubub was about, and I lasted until the first commerical. Yawn.
I watched part of one episode of some rock-star-wanna-be show because a local girl was in the finals and it was in the paper -- I wanted to see what "Storm Large" looked like. Pretty girl. Can sing, too -- having had a rock band locally for years. Yawn.
When they have a Survivor in Alaska at forty below, maybe I'll be impressed, But since running around mostly-nekkid in such weather will get you turned into a corpse-sicle, that ain't gonna happen, and they pick those folks for camera appeal, even the old guys.
I'm with you. Wish 'em all into the cornfield ...
Is there any doubt about who's going to win?
I'll bet you 80 million dollars it's the team of color.
It couldn't be any other way. Literally could not be, if one team has to win. If they have the white team win it'll look racist. So they have to have the black team win so as not to be racist.
They combined all the races on the third episode. Racial separation now has nothing to do with the show. It was such an obvious ratings ploy, but you think they would have held onto it for a little longer.
Keep your hairy ass to yourself Monkey Boy!
J
They can't actually show people being killed in gladiatorial combat, so they do the next best thing. They watch people be eliminated, whisked away never to be seen again. It's especially popular if you get to see some real emotional pain and humiliation. Half the fun of the song-and-dance shows is laughing at someone with no talent giving his modest all and suffering the inevitable snarky comments from the judges.
You'll notice that only one person gets anything from these. Twenty people invest weeks or months. Only the most viciously political gets anything. Competition is certainly part of life. This goes way too far and has an unwholesome message. There's only one winner. Everyone else is a loser. There's only room for one, the Elect. Nobody else matters. It's singing out of the Plutocratic Republican hymnal.
Along Steve's line I've always wanted to do a different sort of Survivor. Take a group of people. Give them adequate but not generous equipment and put them down in a marginal environment where they are going to have to work like hell to survive. Canadian boreal forest in early Fall. The desert Southwest US. Parts of the Australian outback. At the end of every episode the group decides who has been most responsible for whatever success they had that week.
Hey, you know what they should air?
"Survivor Bolivia"
Nine UNICEF workers must cross the Andes mountians without getting kidnapped or becoming mules for drug lords into America.
"Survivor Bangkok"
Six frat boys must survive Patpong road for a year without getting AIDS.
"Survivor Iran".
Twelve Catholic women must travel cross-country through fundamentalist Islamic Iran wearing jeans and a T-Shirt. The first one to make it to the American embassy without being raped, tortured, disfigured, dismembered and killed...Wins.
I mean, I'd watch that!!
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