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Reality gone bad

By Kristina Walton
Staff Writer

Everyone wants it. You do, I do.
Even your dysfunctional pet
does. It’s called 15 minutes of fame and it’s even easier to get these days. There are several ways: marrying yourself, cloning a baby, streaking at a baseball game, and now reality television.

Realty TV started off with a bang in the early Nineties on MTV’s the Real World. Soon followed Road Rules and a plethora of other reality-based themes. But did anyone know that when major networks picked up this trend it would go this far?

With the plots getting more ridiculous and the casts getting more eccentric, reality television has truly hit an all time low. Primetime is almost to the point of having to choose which idiot will jump off a cliff first and for how much money. Whatever happened to sitcoms with witty humor? Have reality shows lowered our standards of quality programming?

Fox’s Man vs Beast is one of he most offensive shows that I’ve seen in quite awhile and I’ve watched plenty of Fear Factor. To play on the humor of watching a race between little people and an elephant both pulling on airplanes is so patronizing towards these people that it is almost as ridiculous as watching a Playboy Playmate eat strawberries covered in living flies. The depth of humiliation that they must have to deal with is almost indescribable.

Dating shows have been around since Chuck Barris’ reign, but did anyone imagine that it would lead to such disastrous shows as Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire, elimiDATE, or The Bachelor? Have any of these couples stayed together? I think we all rolled our eyes at the plot for Joe Millionaire.

NBC’s Fear Factor has been widely criticized for making its contestants do everything, including eating a horse’s rectum. Survivor’s first season never lived down the moments when they had nothing left to eat but the island’s rats. Many people think that these shows have gone a bit too far for ratings.

But to top the list off, the only thing scarier than not receiving a rose is the television psychic. I guess when the slogan “call me now” became an instant hit, TV producers thought it was time for the medium. To put all of your faith into someone pointing at an eager audience member asking if they had a father who has passed is equivalent to thinking you’ll be able to walk again after a televangelist “heals” you just from the touch of his hand.

Animal Planet even caught onto the bandwagon with its own version, The Pet Psychic, where a lovable British women claims to use her supernatural abilities to talk with animals.

The reality of reality television is that it is so ridiculous and yet so ingenious all at the same time, which really sums up what each series is really about.

But one has to ask, do seven strangers really live in a house and talk about their feelings all of the time? Probably about as often as you and I braid each other’s hair!