America’s Next Disposable Celebrity
Greetings, Steve here. Welcome to another edition of the When Reality Knocks Guide to Being More Cynical. Today’s topic: Reality T.V.
Now, the thing about reality t.v., in my humble opinion, is that is terrible, awful, boring, insulting to the viewer’s intelligence and generally bad. Other than that, I have no real problem with it. It just seems to be getting worse all the time. When you look at what’s offered on reality t.v., you’d think it would be very popular among those recovering from brain surgery, but real, normally functioning people watch this stuff. The trend seems to have started out with documentaries, informative programs telling you about things that mattered, and then moved into vaguely entertaining programs about vaguely interesting people doing vaguely interesting things and now its just a bunch of irritating whiners hitting each other with sticks. Whether or not you like reality t.v., you have to admit, things are going downhill, quickly.
The problem, as I see it, is that there are so many new reality t.v. shows that it would take all day to watch them all. And since most of the reality shows out there are take-offs of each other, essentially you’re watching the same thing over and over again. All the shows seem to have the same basic structure: You take a bunch of unstable, eccentric people who are prone to public melt-downs, put them in some essentially random situation, turn the cameras on, give them meaningless, silly tasks to do and wait for the soap-opera to unfold. You get people on the show by promising them both the chance to win money and 15 minutes of fame far greater than they actually deserve. So, really, reality t.v. ain’t that hard to put together. The trick seems to be, and here’s the thing nobody ever says, to act as if the people on the show are the best and the brightest, when, usually, they’re just people with nothing else to do. Let’s be honest: If you’re the best and the brightest, you already have a good job and don’t need to go on t.v. to find one or to compensate for your lack of success with false celebrity. Did the republic just collapse? Mmmm,no? O.k., just checking.
Let’s have some real reality for a moment: With a few possible exceptions, the best business minds in the world don’t need to go on t.v. to get a job, the best designers in the world don’t need to go on t.v. to get a job and really, truly interesting people don’t need to go on t.v. to get people to like them. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some entertaining reality shows out there: I got a kick out of 19th house on the BBC a few years ago; I’ve got moderately hooked on rock star: INXS in both a `how did one of my favorite bands come to this,’ and `ooooo, I wonder who they’ll get“ way; and I must admit an utterly voyeuristic fascination with Family Business, so I understand that people like these shows. But for every good reality show, there are 10 shows filled with masochistic people dunking their faces in containers full of scorpions and hitting each other with 2X4s, just because somebody told them to. Aren’t there wars on somewhere?
Now, I have been accused of being overly cynical, so instead of just complaining about reality t.v., I’ve decided to offer a solution, an idea the networks could use that would save us all time. What I propose is that the networks all get together and create one master reality show, one show that covers absolutely every aspect of the whole genre and then we can all get out reality t.v. fix in one hour, instead of sitting in front of the t.v. for hours watching basically the same show over and over again. The title for the show would be, get ready:
America’s Next Disposable Celebrity. Here’s how it would work: contestants would have to compete in a singing contest in front of a smarmy britsh guy who says things like `that was so bad it made me want to rip out my spleen and throw it at you’, for the chance to get their houses renovated, so they can use it as a location for Donald Trump to fire Paris Hilton after she crashes a car trying to drive it onto the back of a truck so that she can get off the island, where everyone is a washed-up celebrity complaining about their problems with Martha Stewart talking about her life in prison, the best of whom get to compete in full-contact ballroom dancing in the octagon, the winner of which will be taken outside and shot.
I honestly can’t see how America’s Next Disposable Celebrity couldn’t be a big hit and I am standing by to review lucrative development deals from producers. Sometimes I do this as a public service, but sometimes I like to get paid too.