It's 8 p.m., do you know where your children are? Well, of course you do. They're in front of the brain remover, watching the finale of Joe Millionaire. And why not? So is the rest of the depraved populace in our ill-natured country. We can't begin to solve our own problems in life, so we watch other people's on TV in a shallow attempt to make ourselves feel better about our own pathetic lives.
Reality TV has been sweeping Europe for the past several years. It all started with the growing interest in tabloids -- you do remember Diana, don't you? The Euro-trash were all over it: "Hey, my life sucks, let's look at someone else's." So some damnable beast decided one day, "Maybe this would work on TV."
BOOM!
Now we are all glued to the screen watching some construction worker choose between a slut and a brunette with a butt-chin. Why do we care about this? Perhaps it is another American way of escaping the grim realities that surround our every day lives, or maybe it is something much more crooked. Something we just don't know yet about our species.
MTV's Real World and Road Rules were perhaps some of the first to subtract IQ points from our already lacking skulls. But even those shows began to lose subscribers to whatever new version of recycled garbage Fox was airing that week. In a feigned attempt to win back audiences, MTV recruited a couple of very promiscuous ladies to join the show -- immediately, they have their audience back. Unfortunately, MTV is not the Playboy channel, and male interest in the Las Vegas penthouse orgies soon faded.
Ripley's Believe It or Not is yet another one of these horrifying TV slots that plague our monitors -- the list goes on. If we can't get enough entertainment out of watching Joe-the idiot get it on with the blonde one in the bushes, surely some other channel will be showing rebroadcasts of police chases or people having near fatal accidents.
It will only be a little bit longer before the relatively undiscovered videos of public executions and horrendous travesties that are readily available for the novice Internet user to download become the new thing for all of us to watch. But it won't stop there. We will eventually, if still traveling on the same path we are now, want to witness all types of realities. We will be a parallel of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, publicly executing whoever happens to be there so that some a-hole producer at Fox can buy a new Rolls for his arrogant trophy wife. And why not? I mean hell, we are contributing to this madness. We feed on this type of harsh realism because we simply can't get entertainment from doing anything else. We watch, the ratings increase and the shows become more and more ridiculous.
Ancient Romans did enjoy watching murders daily in the Coliseum, but we all thought we were a little bit more civilized than them. Maybe we were at some point, early on the Darwinian scale. But something seems to have slipped from our grasp on evolution. We have become beasts again, and are subject to extermination by the other life forms on this planet that live in reality rather than watching it through a glass tube.
And the audacity of whoever it was who coined "Reality TV." I'm sure every bit of it is real. My ass. We all know that there has to be some producer back there telling the people to re-do the last emotional outburst so it will look a little more dramatic. And these producers have all just won the most recent spot on every psycho's hit list. They had to pull the Fox trick, didn't they? They had to sell us on the cliffhanger, and we had to fall for it, because watching these pathetic displays of insolence have made our level of realization slip a little under par -- so much that we can't tell they are going to screw us. No, we all tuned in to see the finale, and all they gave us was a recap of the entire course of events and hinted at the surprise next week. So we got mad, but a week later, opened our mouths wide again in a blank simian-esque stare wondering deep inside which tramp will be the lucky one to figure out she has been chosen by a liar.
So now that it is all over. They have a new series: will the couple last? Oh, golly gee! I hope so, don't you, Opie? Well I'm sorry, but perhaps you haven't noticed that reality around us doesn't have time for this drivel. If it is realism you are seeking, watch the damn news -- we are about to go to war and the Western Alliance is cracking. Wake up people! Get out of your dreamy fantasy where Fox is king and ABC tries to catch up with a group of bad singers with highlights in their hair. Start paying attention to your own life and quit worrying about someone else's that you will never enter.
Some evil force lies in the middle of this new TV craze. Before we know what hit us we will be lying, ten years or so from now, in a pile of rubble, smoke billowing from ash-covered ruins where suburbs used to be, watching a handheld TV on which the newest episode of Public Executions for People Who Like to Watch Reality is airing, ignoring the chaos we ourselves have created. Don't watch Married by America, or ABC's Are You Hot? Instead, try to lower your dosage of lithium and grasp a hold of what matters: your life. Not the guy's on TV.
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