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Considering the whopping volume of mail I got on
my last opinion piece
(none but I know you all read it,) I'm here to
write about the evils of reality television.
Now I know what you are thinking, "I love reality
television, nothing beats
seeing how messed up some folks are or what people
will do for money."
I love reality television too, but there are
things like the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, For
Love or Money and so on; that really make you
think that love is an easy thing to find if you go
on television and basically make every little
thing you do be judged by America. Love is not
something that you will find in twelve random
women or men that will lead to marriage. Love is
something that must be kindled over several months
or years before marriage can take place.
Then there are the reality juggernauts that CBS
has in Big Brother and
Survivor. These shows encourage people to make
deals with and lie to their group mates to avoid
getting voted out of the house or off the island.
The best example of this is Boston Rob from
Survivor who lied to and made all sorts of deals
to keep him and his little girlfriend, Amber, from
getting voted off the island. By doing this, he
got a brand new truck and all sorts of benefits by
keeping his girlfriend on the island. Frankly, is
this the kind of message we want to send to
America? In life you must lie, backstab and do all
sorts of evil things to the people around you to
get ahead. Frankly, I say turn off all the things
like Survivor and Big Brother and watch some good
comedy like Last Comic Standing or Chappelle's
Show.
Then there are the gross out shows, like Fear
Factor, that have their contestants eating all sorts of nasty things like
cow eyeballs or brains and all sorts of other
parts of cows that would be unhealthy to eat. Are
they not aware of mad-cow disease can be spread
from animal to human through the ingesting of the
infected brains?
You see I'm not putting down all reality shows;
my recommendation of Last
Comic Standing comes from watching it from the
beginning and knowing that some of these people are
actually funny. They don't have to lie to each
other to get ahead in the show; their skills as a
stand-up comedian get them forward to the next
round. The same thing goes for the show Next
Action Star where a judging panel goes over how
they did in a short movie and makes a decision on
who moves on and who goes home.
Here's a list of mostly mature shows that are
excellent watching in place of any reality show out there.
- Nip/Tuck: I came in on this show during the
beginning of the second season,
and must say it has my curiosity piqued. For the
very mature out there 18 and up.
- Chapelle's Show: As mentioned above, it's a show
all about Dave Chapelle and
the wacky things he comes up with. The man's mind
is a fertile playground of racial and grown up
humor. For the over 17 crowd.
- South Park: Forget all about the foul-mouthed
things you might have heard
from various parental groups. The show is funny
and timely and definitely for the 15 and up crowd.
- Insomniac With Dave Attell: Comedy Central sends
a camera crew out with Dave after this late night stand-up shows and he
goes carousing and finds all these late night jobs
at the various cities he goes to. For the 15 and up crowd.
There's four good alternatives to the
reality television circuit
that you can watch.
If you have any good ideas for alternatives to
reality television shows e-mail them to me, just
put in the subject line Alternatives to Reality TV
and to get a hold of me just erase the nospam in
the address line.
Next Month I hit upon the D20 system and all that
it implies.
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