Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been severely slacking. Part of the problem has been I haven't really had anything to post about. At one point I thought about doing a post about Rosie O'Donnell loving Honey Boo Boo, and how awful that whole mess is, but I think South Park pretty much said all I wanted to say in the episode that featured Honey Boo Boo. One thing I will say is, I read that Rosie loved the Honey Boo Boo family so much, that she wanted to buy them a house. Really? Cause that sort of family needs a house from Rosie? How about oh I don't know, a hurricane Sandy victim that lost their house, or maybe oh let's just say, any person living homeless in the USofA, or any third world country for that matter? Don't you think Rosie could do better than buying Honey Boo Boo a house?
While I don't really like spending time talking about Reality Television shows, I'm finding a new disturbing trend. Remember back in the early 90's when reality shows were just beginning to find their niche, like The Real World on MTV? How the show was based on lets just get a bunch of people in one house and see what happens? That was great at first, it was actual reality. But then Hollywood Land noticed that they could make a bunch of money off of doing these cheap reality shows. All you need is a good producer, some camera crew, and people to film. Certainly is a lot cheaper than paying for a writer, director, actors, sets, locations, etc. And of course I could probably do a whole post on reality TV, but I'm not going to do that, I'm already like two paragraphs into this post, and I haven't even tackled the title of it yet, false advertising or what? What I will say, is I'm beginning to see a new trend on reality TV, and it makes me sick. Instead of just finding normal people, it seems like every reality show is just looking for someone who is mentally disabled, or deranged, or borderline psychotic. Now if done in the right way, this can be extremely entertaining, and yet thought provoking as well. If you don't believe me, watch the documentary Heroes, on HBO. But for now, it just seems like producers will look for people they can just straight up exploit so that viewers can watch and laugh at them. Is that really where we want our viewing direction to head? Sure it's fun to make fun of people, but don't parade this shit around television and then show us a commercial about how bullying is bad. Gee Hollywood, haven't you bullied women, gays, minorities, and others enough?
I'm not making this up either, if you don't believe me, just wait. I'm sure you've heard of Nat Geo's show Doomsday Preppers. Is that one or two words? Anyway, in like a week or two, they are having an end of the world special, and one of those shows, is about how people believe that a zombie outbreak is a real thing, and preparing for! Really? A zombie apocalypse is a real thing? Give me a break, break me off a piece of that....Zombies are going to rise, and eat brains! Now of course, everyone imagines what they are going to do if there was an actual zombie outbreak, hell when I worked at Meijer, I and another manager came up with a plan of what to do to lock down the store and survive. No shit, seriously, but not once did it ever come up as a real thing, it was just something to talk about to entertain each other. But in this special they have people who ACTUALLY BELIEVE this is going to happen. Recently, a boyfriend shot his girlfriend in the back with a rifle, because she argued with him that a zombie outbreak would never really happen after watching an episode of The Walking Dead. I kid you not!
I think the problem is, that the reality shows have hit a roadblock. They've done all they pretty much can with the whole reality show spectrum. I mean you can only do so much with reality! No wonder people are starting to go back to shows with original ideas and story lines. It just goes to show people, if it's a shitty product, don't watch it, and they will stop making it. If you find something that is good, and support it, you can have an absolute smash hit. The Walking Dead is a great show that highlights this point. The only mistake AMC ever made with this show, is thinking it wasn't going to make it past season one, that and letting Frank Darabont go. Really? You get the guy who did one of the best movies of all time (I don't actually think it's the best movie of all time), and you let him go after season one? We all saw what happened with season 2 of TWD, after Darabont left, I think it left Mazarra and the other producer chick, scrambling trying to come up with an idea of what the hell to do, and ended up spending way too much time on that farm, debating philosophy and morality. Really? Did you really think that that's what people watched TWD for? The good thing is, it seemed like the showrunners actually listened to the fans, and season 3 has been just what it should have been, following the comic! Now I'm not one of those fan boy types that thinks you should follow every frame right from the comic. When transitioning from one medium, such as comics or novels, to movies or television, it's a new product that needs to be presented in a different way while still remaining loyal to the original content.
I should have a point to this whole post right? Well I guess ultimately, stop watching shitty reality shows. Watch something that people in the industry put their time and passion into. Don't waste your time watching schlock about borderline mentally retarded people (Mtv's Teen Mom 2, Ke$ha is like my idol), who have no business in front of a camera. You want to know the reason why good episodic shows like The Walking Dead or Arrested Development never get love from networks? Because they don't fit the formula, they don't fit into the mold of 24 plus episodes a season, so that they can get to episode 100 and begin running it in syndication. That's really all the networks care about, can a show get to 100 plus episodes, so we can just cash in on the royalties. So stop pandering to the system, watch original content. Just because a show is only ten episodes, doesn't mean its bad, it just means its usually way better than a hundred episodes of a schlock show combined.
