TV Review Reality TV: I’m not Watching By Tony Clark (March 13, 2003)

I don’t really watch reality shows, but I see enough commercials to know what they’re about, people who go on a show and have their lives taped for 5 weeks. Yes, the TV producers give the shows different names and different plots, but in reality there is no difference between them all. These TV shows that lack substance top the charts and I just don’t know why.

It all started with the first "Survivor." People were interested to see how these people would get along and who would win the million-dollar prize. Sure it was something new, and people like original ideas, but these ideas have been so overused that the plots are just starting to get absurd. People trying to survive on an island is great, almost like a real life "Gilligan's Island," but when it comes to people getting married by America, it has gone too far.

These TV shows make our society look like idiots. We are pawns to the TV stations. They throw us a bone and we don’t really care if it tastes good or not. No matter how shaky the show is. How are people still fascinated by these programs? These TV programs lack anything that resembles good television. These aren’t shows that I want my little brother and sister to watch just because I think I would be supporting them losing brain cells.

Another thing I don’t understand is why they are called reality shows. Is reality going to some French chateau and trying to woo a millionaire and beating twenty other women for him? If there was a true reality show then it would be someone getting up and going to work and going to bed, but that just wouldn’t bring in the amount of money that the television companies like to see. People watch these shows and fantasize that this might happen to them one day.

Reality shows have another flaw. I have been around for a while and I know that reality does not involve a bunch of beautiful people. This is how the stations get you to watch, no dialogue necessary, just throw a bunch of girls in bikinis in a hot tub and have them swoon around some shmuck who thinks he is the man because 20 beautiful women want his money, that he doesn’t really have.

It is sad to see how people demand so little from television. What happened to having good actors who made simple jokes that didn’t involve corrupting young minds? Why would people watch a family get turned against each other, for a million dollars? Such simple bland ideas, that contain nothing but fluff. These shows are just around to make money, while leaving the viewer sucked into a trap of watching poor quality television.