Real Reality TV
- By Richard McCann
- Published 10/2/2008
Richard McCann
I'm a 40 year old landscaper with lots of interests. I live in Landenberg, PA, a small town on the outskirts of Delaware. I was born in Manchester, England, and I have lived in this country for almost 30 years. I enjoy writing about anything: gardening, politics, motorcyles, how-to's of all sorts, art related stuff, traveling, you name it! I love to do anything creative, and I live for seeing horizons!
Is there any reality TV on TV? There is. Most people couldn't tell you what it is, off the top of their heads, but it's there. It's on every night. It's on the same time. It's just one little part. It's not fun. It's not interesting. It's not that exciting. After all it's reality. If it was any of those things, it wouldn't be reality.
"Survivor" is not reality TV. It is as far from reality as most people will ever get. It includes beautiful people in some tropical location playing stupid games. That aint real. That's not even close to reality. We are not all ugly. Most people are average. Some people are ugly, some are pretty. No one is as pretty as half the people on these "Reality" shows. They aren't reality. They should call it the "The Bullshit Hour", or "La La Land", or maybe "You Aint Here", but not "Survivor", not "The Real World", not "Big Brother". Don't even think of calling it reality TV. The people that came up with that name for a genre must think that the average joe is so stupid, that he doesn't even know what reality is. Get a clue, you producers. Get a clue, you writers. Get a clue you TV people. The average joe lives in reality. We see it every day. Reality is boring. Reality is slow. We know exactly what reality looks, and feels like. We live in reality.
They have a channel on cable devoted just to "Reality Shows". All they play all day long is reality TV. Not of it is real. It's all B.S. There might be a car chase in there, that actually took place. Let's look at the car chase. The guy who is getting chased either stole something, or stole the car. Or both. That's not reality. Most people go through life without ever getting anything stolen. Sure, you might have been robbed. Or your house might have been robbed, or your car might even have been stolen, but it's not really reality. Not for the most part. Not for 99.9% of the people. This isn't reality. This is a strange occurrence. It's just a miracle that someone caught it on camera. Or it might be caught on 3 different cameras. Thehn edited, then some exciting sound is added, then some narrator talking over the top of it "...Those young bastards in the speeding car, don't give a crap about any of the people they are speeding past. Look as they almost hit that old lady! They are scum. They will be going downtown very soon." Then there's a scene of the car crashing, the criminal jumping out of the car, and the cops giving chase. They might include a second of some cops wrestling the kid to the ground, the cop swings his nightstick at the kid's head, and then...the next clip starts rolling. Or cut to commercial, or maybe a quick re-edited flashback of the last few seconds of the chase, and the kid getting caught, and of course "...Those valiant law enforcement officers who just took their life in their hands must now carefully subdue this reckless, low-life, and put him where he belongs, thak God Almighty for L.A's finest individuals." Like I said, not reality. Cops aren't like that. Most of them are perfectly nice people. They're cool. They aren't great. They aren't evil. They are average. They like donuts. So frickin what? I like donuts too! I love donuts! That's reality. Most criminals aren't even like that. They steal something, they get caught. They don't put up much of a fight. They know they did it. They are outnumbered. They give up. That's reality. But there is some reality TV on TV. I saw some tonight. You might have seen some too.
Sitcoms are not reality. We know they aren't reality. We don't call them reality. But we want them to be reality. We get to like the characters on sitcoms. We wait eagerly for the next episode. We want to be in their lives. We want to be able to have great lines to say. We sometimes say lines like sitcoms, but we don't usually get the same answer. The other person might storm out of the room, or slap us, or just give us a look like that's not funny. Or maybe what we wanted to say, and what we actually said wasn't quite the same, and then we don't have a laugh track, so the person being talked to doesn't know it was a joke and so on. That's just reality. That's not TV. or reality TV. That's us thinking we'd like reality to be a little more like TV. We might get hot for someone on a TV show. We might even start thinking we are that person. Usually when no one else is around. But sometimes you have a friend at work who acts like someone on a TV show. You think the show is funny, and your friend is pretty funny as "reality's version of TV character" so you let him slide on it. Or, your co-worker is so bad a version of the TV character that you just let him go on with it, and don't say anything while he's doing it, just so you can talk with the other guys about it later. Or, sometimes...this is a really funny one, your co-worker pretends to be exactly like a TV character, and acts like that character, to be tough, or funny, or emotional, or whatever, and he picks an obscure character off a little known show, in the hopes that no one knows that person, but you do, and you let him go on with it. The other guys might give him shit about it, or talk about him behind his back, but you feel sorry for him, if that's how bad his reality is, that he can't even be himself. He pretends to be a little know TV character. Oh well, that all happens in reality.
TV bums: funny. Reality bums: annoying, scary, worrying, you wonder how many diseases they have, and you hope none are contagious, and certainly not airborne. You will gladly give hime
some change as long as he goes away quickly. TV door to door salesman: funny. Reality door to door salesman: annoying, scary, you wonder if this guy is a serial killer, you want to go back inside, slam the door in his face, and/or grab your bat, but you know you can't so you buy one of his lame products, just to get him to leave. TV jobs: Even the most boring TV jobs seem fun. Hardware store guy, lots of fun. Sales clerk, real fun. Bus boy, lots of fun. Reality job: You know. But those are sitcoms, or shows. They aren't reality. They don't claim to be reality. We should know better. We wish reality was like the show. We wish reality was fun. But it's not. If it was, we wouldn't call it reality. Some parts of vacations are fun. They aren't reality. If you are on vacation all the time, you are either a little kid, with super rich parents that are pretty dumb, a rich guy with a trust fund, or a movie star. All not reality. Or so few people that fall into those categories that they might as well be fantasy. But there is some reality TV on TV. I saw it again tonight. I saw it last night. For some reson I keep seeing it. Whenever I see it, it makes me smile. I know reality when I see it.
TV commercials aren't reality. They are such a joke. The only good ones are the tongue in cheek funny ones that make a mockery of themselves. I don't know why they keep making such boring commercials for the following products: paper towels, bathroom cleaners, toilet paper. Paper towels have to include a kid spilling something, followed by a woman mopping it up. Clearly sexist. That's not reality. Oh, it happens. But we also use paper towels for just about every cleaning job. We eat off them instead of plates. We use them as coasters. Occasionally we write on them. Occasionally we run out of toilet paper at work, and use paper towels. We use them as snot rags. We use them as fire starters. I've seen a roll used as a pillow. Come on, manufacturers, give us a break! Give us some reality. We love it, we will eat it up. Bathroom cleaners. These commercials have to include some animation. It's either a genie, someone with super powers, or some magical cleaning wizard. We all know the routine. Get on your knees, squirt some crap on a sponge, and scrub until the skin is peeling off your fingers. "Amazing magical super sponge with new cleany ridges" sucks! It's a frickin' sponge, you jackasses! No amount of fancy names is going to change the fact that it's a sponge. Get over it. Toilet paper. These commercials crack me up. They mention everything but what it is used for. Wiping feces off your rectum! Now that would be some reality TV. A TV commercial for toilet paper "Just soft enough so it doesn't scrape your butthole, but strong enough that your finger doesn't poke through!" Say it!!! No, that would be considered politically incorrect. Even though every person on earth takes a crap. I take craps. You take craps. Your wife and kids a crap. Hitler took a crap. Hell, even Jesus took a crap. He probably didn't even have toilet paper back then. But there is still some reality TV on TV. I saw it again this evening. It was real.
I turned on the News tonight. There were the news anchors. All covered in make up, smiling, telling us all kinds of stories about the local stuff that happened around town. Now let's get this straight. This is reality, but just barely. Most news stories happen to one person, or one family, or one school. That's it. Somebody might know someone who's been on the news, but that's it. The interviewers then try to find the ugliest person standing nearby to interview. They usually pick someone who has almost no command of the English language, or talks in ebonics, or some other dialect. They ask this person some vague question, and then then they jump back to the interviewer, who says "Back to you, in the studio Frank!" The folks then hop in their van, and high tail it out of there. The news anchor says something quaint, and then they go to the next story. This goes on for a while, usually for 3 or 4 stories. Mostly they are depressing, occasionally they have a human interest story. These are usually about animals. Usually pretty boring animals. Neither about humans or interesting. They toss one or two in a week for fun. Also pretty far from reality. Then there's the weather. How you say, could the weather not be reality? Well, it's like this. See if you know anyone who can tell you without a thermometer what the temperature is. It's either too hot, too cold, or about right. That's about it. It's either sunny, or cloudy or raining. That's about it. It's hot in the Summer, it's cold in the Winter. We know already! What's a barometer? Who knows, who cares? It's falling? so what? Does anyone care if it was 87 degrees on this day in 1902. If it's a thunderstorm, where I live, the power is almost sure to go out pretty soon. If it hasn't gone out yet, great! If it has, I'm not watching the news anyway, and besides calling the power company there's nothing I can do about it.
Finally, there's what I like to call the reality section. Yes, the traffic report. Now this is funny. You can always relate to it. If you aren't in it right now, you might be soon, or you just passed the accident. Even if you aren't ever in it, you usually know the bad spots, and you've prbably been there once or twice. You can relate to those folks in the stuck line of cars. But even this report which I say is as close to reality TV as they can get, always seems to miss. You are sitting in your car stuck ni the middle of a traffic jam, and you turn on 87.7 That way you can listen to the TV feed. They go to traffic. You are waiting for them to mention the traffic jam you are stuck in, and they never do. You wait for it, you anticipate it. It's almost like you saw yourself on TV. You were in that jam. But they never mention it. They don't mention your state. Nobody cares. After all, it's reality.
"Survivor" is not reality TV. It is as far from reality as most people will ever get. It includes beautiful people in some tropical location playing stupid games. That aint real. That's not even close to reality. We are not all ugly. Most people are average. Some people are ugly, some are pretty. No one is as pretty as half the people on these "Reality" shows. They aren't reality. They should call it the "The Bullshit Hour", or "La La Land", or maybe "You Aint Here", but not "Survivor", not "The Real World", not "Big Brother". Don't even think of calling it reality TV. The people that came up with that name for a genre must think that the average joe is so stupid, that he doesn't even know what reality is. Get a clue, you producers. Get a clue, you writers. Get a clue you TV people. The average joe lives in reality. We see it every day. Reality is boring. Reality is slow. We know exactly what reality looks, and feels like. We live in reality.
They have a channel on cable devoted just to "Reality Shows". All they play all day long is reality TV. Not of it is real. It's all B.S. There might be a car chase in there, that actually took place. Let's look at the car chase. The guy who is getting chased either stole something, or stole the car. Or both. That's not reality. Most people go through life without ever getting anything stolen. Sure, you might have been robbed. Or your house might have been robbed, or your car might even have been stolen, but it's not really reality. Not for the most part. Not for 99.9% of the people. This isn't reality. This is a strange occurrence. It's just a miracle that someone caught it on camera. Or it might be caught on 3 different cameras. Thehn edited, then some exciting sound is added, then some narrator talking over the top of it "...Those young bastards in the speeding car, don't give a crap about any of the people they are speeding past. Look as they almost hit that old lady! They are scum. They will be going downtown very soon." Then there's a scene of the car crashing, the criminal jumping out of the car, and the cops giving chase. They might include a second of some cops wrestling the kid to the ground, the cop swings his nightstick at the kid's head, and then...the next clip starts rolling. Or cut to commercial, or maybe a quick re-edited flashback of the last few seconds of the chase, and the kid getting caught, and of course "...Those valiant law enforcement officers who just took their life in their hands must now carefully subdue this reckless, low-life, and put him where he belongs, thak God Almighty for L.A's finest individuals." Like I said, not reality. Cops aren't like that. Most of them are perfectly nice people. They're cool. They aren't great. They aren't evil. They are average. They like donuts. So frickin what? I like donuts too! I love donuts! That's reality. Most criminals aren't even like that. They steal something, they get caught. They don't put up much of a fight. They know they did it. They are outnumbered. They give up. That's reality. But there is some reality TV on TV. I saw some tonight. You might have seen some too.
Sitcoms are not reality. We know they aren't reality. We don't call them reality. But we want them to be reality. We get to like the characters on sitcoms. We wait eagerly for the next episode. We want to be in their lives. We want to be able to have great lines to say. We sometimes say lines like sitcoms, but we don't usually get the same answer. The other person might storm out of the room, or slap us, or just give us a look like that's not funny. Or maybe what we wanted to say, and what we actually said wasn't quite the same, and then we don't have a laugh track, so the person being talked to doesn't know it was a joke and so on. That's just reality. That's not TV. or reality TV. That's us thinking we'd like reality to be a little more like TV. We might get hot for someone on a TV show. We might even start thinking we are that person. Usually when no one else is around. But sometimes you have a friend at work who acts like someone on a TV show. You think the show is funny, and your friend is pretty funny as "reality's version of TV character" so you let him slide on it. Or, your co-worker is so bad a version of the TV character that you just let him go on with it, and don't say anything while he's doing it, just so you can talk with the other guys about it later. Or, sometimes...this is a really funny one, your co-worker pretends to be exactly like a TV character, and acts like that character, to be tough, or funny, or emotional, or whatever, and he picks an obscure character off a little known show, in the hopes that no one knows that person, but you do, and you let him go on with it. The other guys might give him shit about it, or talk about him behind his back, but you feel sorry for him, if that's how bad his reality is, that he can't even be himself. He pretends to be a little know TV character. Oh well, that all happens in reality.
TV bums: funny. Reality bums: annoying, scary, worrying, you wonder how many diseases they have, and you hope none are contagious, and certainly not airborne. You will gladly give hime
TV commercials aren't reality. They are such a joke. The only good ones are the tongue in cheek funny ones that make a mockery of themselves. I don't know why they keep making such boring commercials for the following products: paper towels, bathroom cleaners, toilet paper. Paper towels have to include a kid spilling something, followed by a woman mopping it up. Clearly sexist. That's not reality. Oh, it happens. But we also use paper towels for just about every cleaning job. We eat off them instead of plates. We use them as coasters. Occasionally we write on them. Occasionally we run out of toilet paper at work, and use paper towels. We use them as snot rags. We use them as fire starters. I've seen a roll used as a pillow. Come on, manufacturers, give us a break! Give us some reality. We love it, we will eat it up. Bathroom cleaners. These commercials have to include some animation. It's either a genie, someone with super powers, or some magical cleaning wizard. We all know the routine. Get on your knees, squirt some crap on a sponge, and scrub until the skin is peeling off your fingers. "Amazing magical super sponge with new cleany ridges" sucks! It's a frickin' sponge, you jackasses! No amount of fancy names is going to change the fact that it's a sponge. Get over it. Toilet paper. These commercials crack me up. They mention everything but what it is used for. Wiping feces off your rectum! Now that would be some reality TV. A TV commercial for toilet paper "Just soft enough so it doesn't scrape your butthole, but strong enough that your finger doesn't poke through!" Say it!!! No, that would be considered politically incorrect. Even though every person on earth takes a crap. I take craps. You take craps. Your wife and kids a crap. Hitler took a crap. Hell, even Jesus took a crap. He probably didn't even have toilet paper back then. But there is still some reality TV on TV. I saw it again this evening. It was real.
I turned on the News tonight. There were the news anchors. All covered in make up, smiling, telling us all kinds of stories about the local stuff that happened around town. Now let's get this straight. This is reality, but just barely. Most news stories happen to one person, or one family, or one school. That's it. Somebody might know someone who's been on the news, but that's it. The interviewers then try to find the ugliest person standing nearby to interview. They usually pick someone who has almost no command of the English language, or talks in ebonics, or some other dialect. They ask this person some vague question, and then then they jump back to the interviewer, who says "Back to you, in the studio Frank!" The folks then hop in their van, and high tail it out of there. The news anchor says something quaint, and then they go to the next story. This goes on for a while, usually for 3 or 4 stories. Mostly they are depressing, occasionally they have a human interest story. These are usually about animals. Usually pretty boring animals. Neither about humans or interesting. They toss one or two in a week for fun. Also pretty far from reality. Then there's the weather. How you say, could the weather not be reality? Well, it's like this. See if you know anyone who can tell you without a thermometer what the temperature is. It's either too hot, too cold, or about right. That's about it. It's either sunny, or cloudy or raining. That's about it. It's hot in the Summer, it's cold in the Winter. We know already! What's a barometer? Who knows, who cares? It's falling? so what? Does anyone care if it was 87 degrees on this day in 1902. If it's a thunderstorm, where I live, the power is almost sure to go out pretty soon. If it hasn't gone out yet, great! If it has, I'm not watching the news anyway, and besides calling the power company there's nothing I can do about it.
Finally, there's what I like to call the reality section. Yes, the traffic report. Now this is funny. You can always relate to it. If you aren't in it right now, you might be soon, or you just passed the accident. Even if you aren't ever in it, you usually know the bad spots, and you've prbably been there once or twice. You can relate to those folks in the stuck line of cars. But even this report which I say is as close to reality TV as they can get, always seems to miss. You are sitting in your car stuck ni the middle of a traffic jam, and you turn on 87.7 That way you can listen to the TV feed. They go to traffic. You are waiting for them to mention the traffic jam you are stuck in, and they never do. You wait for it, you anticipate it. It's almost like you saw yourself on TV. You were in that jam. But they never mention it. They don't mention your state. Nobody cares. After all, it's reality.
