Warning: Verbose Ranting and Raving Ahead. Proceed with Caution.
If there is anything that drives me absolutely crazy right now, it’s the preponderance of reality television shows and game shows on television . . . the vast majority of which make me want to barf. (Excuse my language.) Maybe by ranting in this blog entry, I’ll get some of this mental toxin out of my system.
Pictured above is a moment from “Deal or No Deal,” a show which I do not begin to understand. I know that when each of those briefcases gets opened and a certain dollar amount is revealed, the audience either squeals in delight or groans in misery – and I have no clue as to why. And I know that host Howie Mandel is sometimes on the phone to receive a deal from someone somewhere that is offered to the contestant if they want to cash in and play it safe. How all of that works, I do not have a clue. The one thing I know is that the show is wall to wall banter. . . pointless blather in which we listen to the contestants yelling things like “I KNOW this my moment! I KNOW it! I KNOW it! NOTHING is standing in my way!” Then the briefcase they’ve selected is opened, everyone groans in disappointment, and the next thing they’re saying is “It’s Okay! It’s Okay! I’m NOT going to let this get me down!” I just feel like I’m drowning in the tough talk bravado of all these contestants. . . and part of what really makes me crazy is that these contestants get coached into carrying on in exactly the same way. Whatever happened to people being allowed to be themselves? Isn’t anyone ever allowed to be a little bit shy, a little bit hesitant? Evidently not, at least not on this show. I find myself wanting to scream at the screen “just play the game! ! ! just play the stupid game! ! ! Enough with all the meaningless grandstanding!” But they don’t seem to hear me above their own din.
Speaking of sameness, I hate the sameness of reality shows like The Bachelor or Beauty and the Geek. All of these beauties are cut out of exactly the same fabric and there is so little uniqueness to any of them. And there is so much meanness. Are all of these women so mean to begin with? Or are there network guys in blue suits carrying clipboards advising everyone to be on their meanest behavior in order to give the show a little extra kick? It ends up being so unrelentingly unpleasant.
Speaking of mean, I think American Idol is an unspeakably vile show. I am thunderstruck at how the producers of this show can be so cavalier about playing with people’s hopes and dreams for the sake of entertainment that caters to the lowest common denominator. I think it’s especially hard to stomach those preliminary rounds when the contestants are a bewildering mix of delightful and disastrous just so we can watch the disastrous ones raked over the coals by Simon C and Co. That just seems so wrong to me, to allow really bad contestants to advance out of the preliminary just so they can be shot down in a spectacular ball of flame. And it especially galls me that so little of the “judging” that occurs seems to have much of anything to do with what separates good singing from bad singing. A fervent fan of the show assures me that the critiques often do dig deeper than the mere “selling the song” layer. But in the few times I’ve tuned into the show for a few minutes, I have seen next to nothing in the way of helpful and perceptive criticism.
Back to The Bachelor – The Bachelorette – Joe Millionaire – and the like. . . Supposedly these are shows designed to bring people together with the best possible match, but in fact the long-term success rates for these shows is abysmal. The mate-seekers would be better off looking for love in their local morgue than on these highly artificial programs. One thing I’ve noticed that really sets my teeth a’grinding is that on a show like The Bachelor, two people will go on a “date” of sorts and seem to talk about absolutely nothing beyond the date itself. Dinnertime banter: “How are your shrimp?” “Delicious, thank you.” “I chose them because this restaurant is especially famous for how they prepare them.” “I believe it.” “I thought that after supper we could walk around the grounds of the library and then watch the moon rise over the lake.” “That sounds lovely.” “After that. . . “ blah blah blah blah . . . Whatever happened to “Tell me about your family” or “Do you think very much about global warming?” or “How about those Packers?” You know. . . the way normal people talk with each other on a date.
(I’m just getting started.)
I am really sick of the whole notion of contestants voting one of their own off of a given program. . . mostly because that turns programs and competitions basically into popularity contests, which I don’t think make for a very interesting spectator sport. And it especially bugs me with an otherwise commendable show like “The Biggest Loser” – which deals with the tough problem of people trying to lose weight. Unfortunately, the producers didn’t think it would be interesting enough for the contestants to simply win the prize money by losing the greatest amount of weight. , so the show ends up importing the whole “voting people off of the show” thing from Survivor, making the whole thing seem so heartless and insensitive and just plain cheap. ‘
And even more innocuous shows like “Extreme Homemaker” or “Trading Spaces” after awhile feel like they’re 95% talking, Isn’t there someone in that directorial chair who can advise them to cut back on the “talk talk talk” and actually do some work for a change?
There are a few things to say about the best known, most wisely conceived game shows. Programs like “MatchGame” are at least fun to revisit, as is “Password” from the golden air of television. But things really started getting noisy with Wheel of Fortune, in which unsuspecting contestants are compelled to always clap for everyone’s appointment as the wheel is spinning. Who are they clapping for? Do they honestly think that the clapping does anything to that wheel? Maybe fans would play better if it were possible for them to concentrate less on those sorts of extraneous matters.
One quick question illustrates this beautifully; probably about 25 years ago, we were watching Wheel of Fortune, and everyone clapped for everyone else, as usual. One of the contestants hit a hot streak, winning money on the board with every letter. .until this much has been revealed to the public. . . HEIGH HO, SILVER – – -Y. At that point, the contestant guessed that that the phrase was “HEIGH HO, SILVER, PONY.” I’d like to think that the contestant in question wasn’t actually that stupid and that the reason they couldn’t come up with “Heigh Ho, Silver, Away” was that they had spent too much mental energy making sure that they were flashing friendly smiles – and too much mental energy saying things like “Big Money ! Big Money! ” while spinning the wheel.
Thank goodness for a show like Jeopardy, which dares to be quiet and sensible and civilized. But how frustrating that a show like that is such an isolated exception to the rule in this particular genre.
The answer to why all this noisy crud is on TV is simple- People Watch It. And it’s cheap, so it’s incredibly lucrative for the networks. But it’s still so dispiriting to me to have the schedule swamped with noisy, empty programming.
It’s enough to make you want to read a book or go exercise.