Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.How I became a fugitive from reality TV by J. G. Fabiano Lying on my favorite couch that should have been replaced years ago because, as my wife explains, I have a head that secretes an acid that could dissolve aluminum siding, I find myself watching more and more `reality TV.' As I watch people cheat, lie and steal for money I wonder if anyone else in this country remembers how Saturday Night Live skits of 30 years ago became the norm for most of our present day reality television shows? The boom in `reality TV' started a few years ago with the success of "Survivor." I never watch this show because it is difficult for me to believe that a group of people who are supposed to be stranded in some uninhabitable place don't get help from the scores of production people that surround them the whole time they are supposedly stranded. This particular show started a kind of revolution in television. Copycat shows sprouted where there once were situation comedies that had nothing to do with reality. I tried to talk to my wife about this and her response was that I should try to catch up to the twenty-first century. Ready to prove her wrong I immediately pulled out the TV page of "The York Independent" to prove my point. I, and many others I suspect, watch entertainment television after the news programs have put me into a deep depression about the state of the world. On Monday, there is a show entitled, "Fear Factor." This reality program places people in pools filled with maggots, makes them eat worms and straps them into cars that flip upside down and basically shows how low some people are willing to sink for a small amount of money. (Would you eat leopard slugs or have Madagascar hissing cockroaches crawl up your nose for $50,000?) As to how this particular show entertains anyone is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it makes the viewer feel superior when they compare what they do for a living wage to what the participants on TV are willing to do. I watched a few minutes of one show that featured people eating cockroaches and, after I had switched channels, put my can of cashews back in the cupboard. If, like me, you can't handle "Fear Factor," you might want to try another reality show entitled, "Average Joe." This is a show in which male contestants compete with each other to win the affections of a beautiful blonde model even though the contestants all look, well, like me. The expression on the face of the young woman said it all when she watched her homely parade of pimply, overweight or scrawny suitors file off the bus only for some of them to collide with the scenery on their way to shake her hand. Why this beautiful young woman would want to subject herself to this kind of humiliation I don't know but I am pretty sure it has something to do with money. I never made it past the opening scenes of this show because as soon as I saw someone with more hair on their back then me I shut it off. For those who can't go two days without being grossed out Tuesday offers a second dose of "Fear Factor." This one carried the sub-title: "Four Stunt Show" and had people jumping off buildings into a small pond, being locked in a glass coffin with snakes, eating pig butts and hanging between moving trains in order to see if the trains would tear them in half. This feast of entertainment was punctuated by an endless succession of contestants in close-up screaming directly into the camera because they just realized they weren't going to get any money. Program note: If the stunts on Fear Factor are too sickening to watch you can always change the channel and watch, "The best damn sports show period." This is a live program in which the biggest star is Tom Arnold and will have you wanting to go back to the people screaming directly into the camera. If you're lucky you might catch an episode of "Dog Eat Dog" which is hosted by a woman who looks like a set of football uprights with teeth. This show consists of people willing to be dunked in and out of cold water until they lose all their clothing and/or throw up - all for fabulous prizes like $100 in grocery coupons. The "action" is interspersed with intellectual problems calculated to challenge the sharpest mind, like: "Spell your name". But be warned, most of the contestants get this question wrong! I think this show has more to do with sex than money because the contestants all have to look good in a bikini, including the guys. If watching these shows makes you feel even just a little degraded as a human being you can always tune into "The Bachelor," on Wednesday night, which is one of the biblical signs of the impending end of civilization and will make you yearn for the highbrow distractions of Ozzie and Harriet or at least Gilligan. This particular show started out by having a phoney millionaire pick a mate from a choice of 16 beautiful females. They were told that, if they were chosen, they would win a million dollars. The twist was that, if they actually won the money, they could then tell the bachelor to get lost - which one of them did. This was the only part of the show that made any sense to me, probably because it was the closest to reality. My wife and most of her friends love this show so much they talk about it on the phone to each other the next day. I would rather eat cockroaches than hear another one of the people on this show talk about how they're looking for "somebody special with whom they can have a meaningful relationship." Still, this show has proved so popular it has spawned many different types of Bachelor-like shows. In one version the winning woman who jilted the dumb oaf who picked her then became a bachelorette who had to work her way through a posse of suitors also looking for a meaningful relationship with that special person. Or not! Another show featured a bachelor going to Europe to repeat the plot of the original for the benefit of those who hadn't seen it yet. Maybe they could take this idea a little further and set the next show in Antarctica where the idea would be to see who was smarter, the suitors or a bunch of penguins. For me, the most annoying new reality show appears on Thursday evening and makes the consumption of cockroaches look almost dignified. It is entitled "Extreme makeover" and I have yet to see a whole episode because my wife makes me leave the room rather than put up with my snide remarks or gagging sounds every time a cosmetic surgeon siphons 50 gallons of body fat out of somebody's belly. The primary purpose of this show is to have contestants compete for the prize of free cosmetic surgery. The show turns the standard TV premise on its head because the person who wins has to prove that he or she is the most ugly of all the contestants. How's that for an ego builder? At the end of the show the winners are paraded in front of their family and friends who gasp and weep because their loved one just became a little less ugly. My problem was I could see little difference between the before and after scenes. Most of the contestants just looked like they'd had a bath, a good hair cut and been shown how to dress properly. Which, come to think of it, would be an extreme makeover for most of the population. Of course, if you don't enjoy watching bloody surgical procedures you can watch the fifth instalment of, "Survivor" which is now competing with all the other reality shows by allowing as much sex onscreen as the television censors allow. Actually, since watching the sex scenes on "Big Brother" and "Paradise Hotel," I have come to the conclusion that television censors have now joined the ranks of the unemployed. Only Friday night offers some relief to the lover of old-time TV. This is a night filled with sitcoms watched by live audiences that feature funny people saying funny things. I'm not saying they're all good but compared to reality TV they're Shakespeare in the Park. And when the networks can't offer anything worth watching I fall back on my all time favorite and flip through the channels until I find a re-run of `The Honeymooners.' After 50 years of television they haven't been able to come up with anything better! The End
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