The Specialists

There’s no Friday Foreshadowing today, because we’ll be featuring some awesome guest art next week. So instead, I’ll try blogging, which is something that I used to do with some regularity on this site, but have recently been neglecting.

I’m in crankykpants mode today, so it will be one of those blog posts. The back-in-my-day, don’t-you-just-hate-it, kids-these-days sort of posts. But I’ll try to keep it short. Merely teaspoons of bile, not buckets.

My wife’s guilty pleasures include several “reality” TV shows. I use quotation marks here, because these shows don’t reflect any reality that I know. She only watches a few of them regularly, but the entire genre sets my teeth on edge. It horrifies me to think that these shows are now traveling through space and may someday serve as an alien race’s first exposure to humanity. Any time I see an alien invasion movie where no clear motive is given to the aliens, I assume that they have just seen an episode of Jersey Shore and justifiably decided that our species did not deserve to live.

There are the various “real housewife” shows that follow the exploits of vapid, spoiled, vain, overgrown children as they struggle to survive their lives of fashion shows and three-martini lunches. I’m not really sure you can call yourself a “housewife” when you have more nannies than children. Of course, I’m also not sure you can call yourself “human” when more than 50% of your body is plastic and silicon. But I guess “The Artificial Trophy Wives” just didn’t have the same ring to it. (I’m not picking on the titular ladies of these shows. Their husbands and boy toys are just as bad.)

Then there are the countless shows, from house flipping shows to cooking shows, that are so obviously scripted, despite their claims of “reality”. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a person answer their door and pretend to be surprised to find the star of the show on their doorstep. Really? So the camera crew that was in your living room didn’t tip you off?

But the worst of the worst, the most painfully awful show in a field of awfulness, has to be Big Brother. As much as I love 1984, I almost wish Orwell hadn’t written it, so that it could never inspire the creation of this monstrosity. Of course, it is a great example of Orwellian doublespeak. Just as the Ministry of Truth spreads lies, so does this televised entertainment make me want beat my own brains out with a claw hammer. Okay, it’s not a perfect metaphor…

What bothers me the most about this show is how seriously it takes itself. The participants all scheme as if they were the reincarnation of Machiavelli. There are plots within plots and double-double-double-crosses. They explain their complicated maneuvers in private interviews and the host speaks to them as if they were fully functioning adults rather than puffed up babbling idiots. The only reason their inane schemes work is that the other players are just as stupid as they are.

And in a competition where the goal is to be the last person in the house, they are always surprised when their competitors actually, you know, compete. Deals will be made wherein some neckless oaf will promise not to “evict” some shrill harpy. The harpy will carefully consider his assurances: “You swear? Swear?” “I swear!” And then she will be shocked and hurt when the knuckle-dragger reneges. What did she expect, really? In Big Brother, as in the world of dinosaurs, betrayal may be sudden, but it is inevitable.