What is reality TV? First and foremost let’s face the fact that there’s not a fine line between reality and reality TV, but a very thick, almost solid black line between the two. There’s nothing ‘real’ about reality TV and everyone knows it; and those who don’t know it, need to face the sad reality, get their noses out of their television sets and get their minds back into reality because nothing is more realistic than the reality of the fact that these people let themselves sink into the portrayed reality of the fakest of the fake of the worlds… Notice how I kept going with it? Bottom line is… It’s all as fake as shit and you need to just STOP investing your emotions in it.
I literally just looked up ‘Top 10 Reality TV shows’. Let’s break it down, shall we?
1. SURVIVOR – Number one on the list. Let me break it to you once and for all. If it’s being filmed, they’re not ACTUALLY in as bad conditions as they are portrayed to be in. Ohhhhh, the WILD… Their only source of nutrition is coconut water and they must survive without technology or they’re voted off the island… Please. On-camera they’re lounging on hammocks and off-camera they’re charging their cell phones so they can post behind-the-scenes photos on their Instagram. I call complete and utter BS. This show should be voted off the island.
2. AMERICAN IDOL – I have yet to watch a full episode, let alone a full season of this show. I have however heard some interesting information regarding the history of certain stars that only became stars thanks to said show (Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, etc). However… I’m inclined to believe that this particular ‘reality’ show isn’t all that real only because the judging process is way too systematic; it’s made for TV. You always have Paula cheering and coaxing people’s egos as Simon tears them down with mean commentary, all the while the token black guy acting as the happy medium, basically being the deciding factor in these people’s supposedly random chance of fame. Something smells fishy.
3. THE BACHELOR – Oh. My. God. Where do I even begin? This reality show is the epitome of all that is not real about all reality TV shows in the history of television. A guy is placed in a mansion with a bunch of bitches that are looking for ‘love’. They are forced to live together where inevitable cattiness emerges as they fight for their one and only. Eventually one whore, who probably has a boyfriend back in Tennessee, walks away with a red rose and a proposal from ‘The Bachelor’. A month later, the ads in People Magazine run that the couple didn’t make it and that either the marriage is off or they’re getting a divorce, depending on how far along they’ve gone with it. What People Magazine isn’t telling you is… It’s a scam, people!
4. NEWLYWEDS – “Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says ‘Chicken of the Sea’.” As much of a Dumb Dumb as Jessica Simpson was, she was hot; perhaps that’s what kept the show going for as long as it did. It was a stupid show featuring the life of rich people and their daily surroundings of a so called ‘daily life of a newly married couple’. Please; you don’t behave like your natural self when there are cameras on you 22/7, ever. Who knows, maybe their marriage would have lasted longer than 2 hours if there wasn’t a reality TV show attached. Then again; that Vanessa chick that Nick found afterwards seemed to be much more suitable for him… Just sayin’.
5. PROJECT RUNWAY– Heidi Klum is hot; okay. Fashion is a thing; okay. Does that mean that the two combined can make a ‘realistic’ TV show? I mean… Maybe I’m just too dense to understand the ‘fashion industry’ or rather that which is considered inspiring and mind-blowing in the modern world, and therefore am unable to appreciate the art behind that which is perceived as fashion…. If that is in fact the case, then I’m okay with it. I’m okay with not recognizing a piece of ‘clothing’ being perceived as ‘magnificence’ when a few garbage bags were quite literally sewn together on a whim with some resemblance of a silver lining disguised by foil. I reserve the right to say ‘WTF?’. This is what we’ve come to? This is ‘Fashion’? This is what people get paid millions of dollars for? Give me a break. The only reason I ever dressed up my dolls in garbage bags when I was little was because the Soviet Union didn’t have much else for us to play with; and now it’s a ‘Thing’? That’s preposterous. What’s even more preposterous is creating a ‘reality TV show’ where people ‘compete’ to become the next best fashion designer. Sigh.
6. REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY– Hahahahahhahahahahaha. I can’t stop laughing. This show is as real as its featured women’s faces. Come on, you can’t possibly believe that the cameras are discretely following these women around, whose worries in life start at the hair flip and finish with an acrylic manicure…. The only real thing about this show is the fact that there’s REALLY a huge amount of people that succumbs to their curiosity and indulges in all the show’s fakeness. Whether it’s Orange County or New Jersey, it’s really all the same; a bunch of over-operated-on bitches prancing around, talking shit about one another. While it may be all to resembling of real life, I assure you, it’s all staged and designed merely for entertainment purposes.
7. JON & KATE PLUS EIGHT – Heard about this… Never watched it. All I know about this show is the brief description and the ultimately inevitable outcome of them breaking up. I say inevitable because that’s what happens to every and all relationships once they enter the ‘Public Media’ zone. So… Jon and Kate had 8 kids and decided to put that shit on blast via making a TV show out of it? A good old ‘What it’s like to be married and have 8 kids’ kind of shindig? Hmmmmm… No wonder it failed.
8. JERSEY SHORE – Gasp. There are too many emotions happening in my insides right now in order to properly put into words and describe how I feel about The Jersey Shore. I’ll try though… ‘Jersey Shore’ singlehandedly is responsible for the bed rep Jersey gets as a state. Between the horrible accents, overly orange skin tones, Sonic-hair styles and obnoxious public behavior, the cast of the show certainly paints an ugly picture of that which New Jersey is as a whole. Fact of the matter is that most of the main cast of ‘Jersey Shore’ is from Staten Island, NY. There is nothing real about ‘Jersey Shore’ except for the fact that a bunch of imbeciles choose to hang out on the Jersey Shore.
9. THE OSBOURNES – Can we all just say that this is a slightly better version of The Kardashians? The Inside Look at a family and all its dysfunctions as they struggle through the life of fame? Actually, come to think of it, I don’t know if it’s better cause it’s older and more ‘Rock & Roll’ than ‘The Kardashians’ or exactly the same because it’s basically just as mundane and fake as any reality TV show. It even has the same structure – mom, dad and a bunch of obnoxious kids. What else is new?
10. THE HILLS – This one takes the cake. Its sole purpose was to collect a bunch of hot people to see who would be the ‘fittest’ to go past their 5 minutes of fame. They weren’t even that secretive about their ‘scripted television’ concept and still people swallowed their dialogues and ‘life-like’ situations at Starbucks and various ‘Lunch Joints’ as real – ugh. All in all, Lauren Conrad developed a fashion line and remained semi-off the drama radar. Heidi Montag developed a body disfigurement. Audrina Patridge developed nothing seeing as how there wasn’t much to work with to begin with; although she still manages to show up on TV for reasons unknown to me – she has zero personality/brain capacity. I guess a pair of fake tits and some pearly whites trumps any ability to act or even speak in public… That Kristen chick; the blonde one, gets pregnant and remains a bitch to this day. I had the displeasure of speaking with her one time when I was working for an appliance company and she called a work order for her dishwasher to be fixed. Poor thing; whatever it must be like to wash your dishes by hand. Then there was that one cute guy that landed a role in One Tree Hill shortly after his appearance on The Hills. All in all, this particular ‘reality TV show’ was a complete and utter mockery of anything that is real, but at least a few people benefited from it.
The only reality that is behind ‘Reality TV’ is the one you are wasting while glued to your television sets, believing that these people actually have something substantial to add to your otherwise dull lives. It would be much better and far more appropriate if it were called ‘Unreality TV’ or something… At least then it wouldn’t hide behind a fake premise but instead be straight forward about what it’s out to deliver – a temporary escape from reality; nothing wrong with that.
