Get Real (Better Yet, Don't)

Sorry to say this folks, but I do believe the party's over. We've had all we can stand, we can stand no more. Reality TV has got to go!!!

Now before you going saying "there he goes again, he probably didn't even like reality shows from the start, so of course he's going to make us believe it's over", I did like reality shows for a while. I thought "The Real World" had some of its finest moments the last four seasons, I was into "Road Rules" for a couple of years, I even watched part of the first episode of the first "Survivor". However, it has become very apparent that we are NOT watching reality with these shows anymore, and in some cases, we never were. We are watching controlled reality, this is the reality that the geniuses who created the show came up with in order to get the highest possible ratings, and America is starting to catch on.

Heck, the turning point may have been when the people on the show itself caught on and essentially the "lab rats" tried to put one over on their captors. Of course, I am referring to the near-walkout at the end of "Big Brother" last year. The show was getting no attention, and it was obvious that things were being done to tweak the situation in order to goose the ratings, and the remaining inhabitants of the CBS house had enough of it. They planned to all leave a week before the last episode, thus leaving the network scrambling to fill all those time slots and facing a PR nightmare. And suddenly, it didn't happen. Most likely, what did happen was the "contestants" were threatened with serious "breach of contract" lawsuits.

We got the message, though, and people from other shows got it, too; hence, the lawsuit filed by the contestant from "Survivor 1" that claims she got booted unfairly. Hell, if anyone should be suing, it's the kindly old lady that got tossed in the very first episode. I stopped watching at that point, because it was obvious what was happening. Get rid of all the old people and let the younger, more demographic-friendly contestants duke it out. Think about it; one different vote and it would have been Rudy who had gotten booted. If you'll recall, he survived by one vote; in fact, all the votes of the one clan or alliance or whatever the hell they were in that first episode were to kick old people off the island. And all of them went on camera and said pretty much the same thing about each of them: "well, they're so bossy, and they're older and slower than us, etc."

So "Survivor 2" comes along, and what's the first thing we notice about the cast? They're younger and better looking. First rule of television: if they won't watch for the plot, they'll watch because the cast is hot; best all-time example: "Baywatch". As opposed to 15 minutes of the first "Survivor", I watched a grand total of ZERO minutes of the second. Then, whats-his-name gets burned (shows you how much I paid attention to the show), and they airlift him out for medical attention? What's up with that? See what I mean about CONTROLLED reality?

Well, the fecal matter finally hit the rotary oscillator for good with me when I flipped on MTV a couple weeks back for the "Real World/Road Rules Casting Special". The previous format of this show was to show us the videos sent in by these wannabe "strangers", and then watch how they go through the process of getting whittled down to the finalists. Sometimes they left you holding your breath and wondering which of your favorites made which show, and which ones didn't make it at all. Not this year!!! Nope, they gathered all the finalists, and put them up for the weekend at a resort, thus giving them all the opportunity to meet and get to know each other ahead of time. And what's more, they trotted out a couple of Real World/Road Rules alumni to ask the finalists questions about which of the others would you want to sleep with and all that? Come on!!! This is supposed to be "the true story of seven strangers, yadda yadda yadda..." Where is the surprise and the excitement of these people meeting and figuring out how to coexist when they ALREADY KNOW EACH OTHER GOING IN!!! Especially when we were told before the end who the lucky people were, so all you needed to do if you had made it was take a wild guess who would be your future roommates, and you had a 50-50 chance of being right. I'm sorry, but that was it. I've seen a couple episodes of this season, and I have really no interest in it. That's too bad, because it used to be a big part of my Tuesday nights.

And so, we come back to "Big Brother", which has already been scaled back in terms of nights per week and all signs point to the fact that CBS is expecting a clunker and pretty much leaning toward never doing this again. We can only hope. Meanwhile, as the controversy over past editions continues, "Survivor 3" is off and running in Kenya. Of course, we won't see what really would happen if you plunked these contestants in the middle of Africa, things like fierce animal attacks, horrible weather, the occasional violent revolution, nope, none of that. And honestly, I'm tired of this sanitized version of reality, and I really don't think I'm the only one. And I haven't even begun to talk about the other even worse reality shows, like "Temptation Island", "Spy TV", even this guaranteed joke of a "Love Cruise" that Fox is sticking us with for the rest of the summer. Oh well, such is the case during the summer when everything else is in reruns or you may see the occasional failed pilot or 5-6 episode series that won't be picked up in the fall. I've actually liked some of the "non-hits" that have been trotted out over the years, most notably and recently "Opposite Sex" which aired on Fox last summer, a series about three guys enrolling in an all-girls private school. It did have some good moments, despite the admittedly cheesy premise.

Anyhoo, I don't know if it's the pathetic quality of TV this summer or something else, but I'm actually liking some of the previews of the new fall series. Only time will tell, and of course, when it does, I'll be the first to tell ya about it...