I never used to watch much television. In fact, I really haven’t regularly watched any television shows since the Nickelodeon glory days. All of a sudden I’m finding myself tuning into at least one show most nights.
The shows I watch now are a little more graduated than Nickelodeon in content but not necessarily maturity. With the exception of ABC’s “Lost,” most of what I watch falls under the reality television category.
And disturbingly enough, I don’t even really want to watch this stuff, yet I’m still tuning in. Maybe it’s a culmination of timing. February is a particularly slow month for sports. Both college and pro basketball teams are in the middle of their seasons, and not many people watch professional hockey anyway. Baseball is still a good month-and-a-half away, and football is now just a memory until the fall.
This is also about the time of year when most networks will begin to air the new seasons and series of their programs. They constantly remind their viewership of these premieres through commercials and headlines in the bottom right corner of the television screen. They show us the juiciest and most action-packed clips of the first episode that so easily entices us into remembering that “Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels” comes on Sunday at 9 p.m. eastern time, 8 p.m. central time only on VH1.
“Rock of Love Bus” easily might be one of the trashiest shows on cable right now, yet I still watch. I’m not a Bret Michaels fan. I’m not a Poison fan. It’s not even the constant cleavage flying around the set that keeps me tuned in. The show is, for lack of a better description, a bunch of nasty-looking tricks chasing Michaels’ gonads (and bank account) around in tour buses. It’s nothing short of a waste of air time on a channel that was supposed to be dedicated to music. But people watch, myself included.
Speaking of channels that were supposed to be dedicated to music but are not any longer, MTV’s “The Real World” airs immediately after “Lost” on Wednesdays. Since I’ve already dedicated my evening to television anyway, I always flip to “Real World.” The show has been a success since 1992. It has traditionally paired seven different, normal young people from different backgrounds into a house and made a series out of the cast’s every blunder.
This season features eight cast members instead of seven and is set in Brooklyn, N.Y. I can’t explain why I have always watched this show either. It might be because I’m relatively close in age to most of the people on the show. Perhaps it’s the elaborate house they always get to live in, or perhaps it’s the overall lifestyle MTV provides these kids with for six months.
On a recent episode, one character got drunk and proclaimed that one particular transsexual he knew was a “better” transsexual than the one cast to the show. On top of outing the transsexual to the rest of the cast, dubbing one transsexual better than another was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard for so many different reasons. Despite the trash, I still watch.
Tuesdays offer a different kind of reality show in Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” This was a hard one to admit, but I catch this gem every time a new episode is on.
It features a group of attractive and wealthy middle-aged women from Southern California. The show profiles each woman’s elegant lifestyle while showcasing their constant bantering back and forth with the other housewives. They act and dress 20-30 years younger than they actually are. They are spoiled to the core. Regardless, they complain about not getting the yacht they want or that their kids are drinkers (even when they do it at one mom’s own party). They have a general disrespect for money and its value. Their Bravo audience watches with awe.
But why do we watch reality television? The truth is that there is nothing “real” about reality television. Normal people don’t walk around in public wearing only lingerie (”Rock of Love Bus”). Having a cast including two people who were seriously abused as children, one transsexual and one guy with the “best abs on the east coast” (”Real World”) is not representative of normal people. Hot moms with millions (”Housewives”) is far from typical.
We don’t watch because it’s normal. We watch because it’s the exact opposite. Reality television profiles the anomalies of normal people. The fulfillment we get from watching lies in the exaggeration of what reality actually is.
Except Michaels’ case. Somehow I feel like that’s his life every day.
— Oliver Casey is a junior in enterprise management. He can be reached at [email protected].
