Telefrirendship
Because I have, like, no friends, TV is a close companion of mine. Oh, don’t cry for me, Argentina—I didn’t have cable for some nine odd years, so we’ve much catching up to do, TV and I. Plus with TV, you can always change the channel at your leisure, whereas changing the personality or mindset of a friend can take undue effort. And you can switch off the TV at any time.
So I feel I speak on some authority when it comes to reality TV. Some of it is flat out, unbelievably repugnant, like “Jenny Jones” or the rat-eating antics of “Fear Factor”. Other shows are mildly inspirational, like “Next” and “Room Raiders”, the first gay dating shows of memory that feature gay contestants.
But perhaps the most disappointing is the “Real World/Road Rules Gauntlet”.
Now, for you old school folks, you’ll remember “The Real World” as being the first reality show to feature an openly gay and fully self-accepting character, Norm Korpi. The third season, in SF, also featured the legendary Pedro Zamora. There was even a hint of diversity among the cast in the earlier seasons.
Now, the show is basically a debauched orgy of cutie kids drinking and fucking, and generally being uninteresting to the nth degree. I tried watching a recent episode and was as ardently bored as I remember my logic class in college being. Maybe you can chalk it up to co-creator Mary Ellis-Bunim having kicked the bucket recently, but whatever the case, it’s sad to see a show that so helped me in my coming out stoop to the rank levels of crap that it has. Do we really need to see the pits of the human experience hoisted on display in competition on “The Gauntlet”? What good does this do for us as a society?
God, I’m sounding more and more like an old fogy by the second.
