Saturday, January 07, 2006
The Reality TV show bandwagon
I never really thought of myself as a bandwagon watcher. I mean, I don’t play any musical instruments and parades make me yawn. And yet when a popular trend shows up my first reaction is to be skeptical. I like to think of myself as a free-thinker who doesn’t get sucked into fads. I like to be different. (However if you ask some people that translates into, “I like to be weird.")
But despite my propensity to shun the popular (perhaps it’s from lingering resentment over being completely unpopular in high school) I will occasionally admit that I actuallly like some of these fads. The biggest and most embarrassing example: reality TV shows. When Survivor first came out and became this enormous hit, I scoffed. What’s so fascinating about a group of money-hungry cut-throats prancing about an island doing stupid games?
Oh how I resisisted. Never watched a single episode… that is until, what was it, season 8? (Wow 8 years of resistance, isn’t that impressive?) It was Survivor: Guatemala and my sweetheart, bless her heart, insisted she wanted to watch it. Being from there she was interested to see what they were doing in her country. You should have seen the stink I put up, “It’s the same as all the others! It’s just another stupid, pointless reality show. Do we have to watch it?"
There’s no point in arguing with her. You don’t mess with the alpha dog. I knew my place, so we watched the season opener. They introduced all the contestants, they showed off the beautiful scenery, went over the rules… I started off watching as a petulant child and by the end of the show, the strangest thing happened… I was genuinely interested in what happened next! How could this be? We watched the next one, and the next one… it was bizarre to me that I enjoyed it so much.
So then we started getting hooked on other shows. So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Next Top Model, The Biggest Loser... they were all captivating. Somehow I had climbed onto that reality show bandwagon with everyone else. So now I admit… I’m a terrible rebel. I’m not that different, though I’ll keep trying to prove otherwise!
So when does the next season start??
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Categories: • The TV ate my brain