I admit, I used to watch a lot of reality TV. My only excuse is that, well, that's all there was on. Plus the office I used to work in had a lot of reality TV fans, and if you wanted water cooler conversation then you had better know what happened on "Survivor", "Big Brother", etc.
But I think that reality TV, even the ones that were somewhat interesting, has gotten really, well, dull. I couldn't tell you who won the last season on "Survivor" or "Big Brother", and I also couldn't care less who wins this season. Even my favorite reality show, "The Amazing Race" seemed pretty low on it's first show of the season last night. Watching drunk Swiss men laugh at the contestants while they tried to carry hundreds of pounds down a steep hill, falling and hurting themselves, just seemed cruel. Not to mention the couple that appears to be reforming meth addicts who are afraid to leave the U.S. Um, hello, you applied to be on a show that takes you around the world. Plus even the deaf kid could find the yodelers more quickly than they could. If their combined IQ's added up to the triple digits I'd be surprised.
Have we seen it all before? Or, possibly, is the prospect of all that "reality" in a time where the actual reality, well, kind of sucks, just not what we need right now?
Reality television is cheaper to produce. But I don't think it's very 'entertaining' any more.
2 comments:
I dislike the majority of reality TV since most of it seems bent on humiliating people in one form or another. Or it focuses on the lives of the most shallow and uninspiring people they can find - I mean why on earth would I give a damn what the housewives of Orange County are doing or who the Kardashians are dating?
Having said that I will confess that I am a Survivor junkie. Most of the people on it are obnoxious but there are usually two or three nice folks and I always find myself rooting for them. I used to enjoy The Amazing Race also (the first season of that was the best - great contestants) but I stopped watching after one episode where a guy hit his wife. It was a slap/shove on her backpack but he had been speaking abusively to her the whole season so that was the last straw for me. It didn't matter that she was a complete ditzy idiot that I would have liked to have slapped at one point or another. I just couldn't support a show where spousal abuse of any kind was going to be used as entertainment.
I'm hoping that the flood of reality shows is lessening. I miss good TV dramas and sitcoms. It's true that reality shows are cheaper to produce, but it is also true that you get what you pay for.
I watch Idol, Biggest Loser and Hell's Kitchen. These seem to have better prizes than money...success in the form of a career or a healthier life. Never really got into much else.
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