Why is This Not Popular?

It’s hard to find a TV show to love. A lot of TV shows on the air just seem to be like all the other TV shows that are already airing—all just variations of the same theme. So when something different and intelligent and surprising suddenly appears, it feels like you just got lucky (because there’s a lot of crap to sift through to find those TV show gems).

Sometimes everyone seems to realize that a show good so the show has strong ratings and stays on the air for many years. Yet other times a fantastic show (for whatever reason) doesn’t have a large audience and either continually struggles to stay on the air year after year or it may just quickly get the axe. It always depresses me when a show I love doesn’t get the recognition it deserves because good ought to be rewarded, yet so often it seems as though stupid shows are rewarded (which just seems so wrong).

Over the years quite a few of my beloved TV show have been unceremoniously cancelled and are generally replaced by TV shows that are vastly lower in quality (and this irritates me greatly). If my awesome TV show with its interesting storylines and amusing characters is given the axe, then at the very least it should be replaced by something good. Yet usually it’s replaced by something crappy—just more stupid people being stupid. [Sigh.] It’s a bitter pill to swallow when a “successful” TV show is based upon high ratings rather than its content.

The Slap-Happy Circus

Many reality TV shows I would classify under the “guilty pleasure” category, but really, it’s come to the point where I find little pleasure in them and far too much guilt. I used to half-pay attention to some of the “people living their lives” reality TV shows, but eventually I found myself just not terribly interested in the “drama” of it all. And “love” competition reality TV shows I’ve always avoided like the plague (as contestants have a better chance of winning the lottery jackpot than finding love, marrying and staying married to the person everyone is competing for).

The main problem I have with a good chunk of these shows is the meanness of it all; I don’t want to watch people being terrible to each other with the name-calling, backstabbing and throwdowns (both verbal and physical). This is not a good time for me. [Pause.] But I guess it’s a good time for many people. A friend once told me that it makes her feel better about her life to watch the people in these shows, and I could see how it might make people feel smug and superior that that’s not them. But it doesn’t make me feel better about myself or about the world around me. It makes me feel sad. Sad that these people are acting the way they are. Sad that these people are on TV. Sad that people watch them on TV. And sad that people care.

I realize that not all reality TV shows have the slap-happy characters that I find so distasteful (some really are just fairly normal people living their lives). But I would hazard a guess that it’s the stupid, violent, rude, petty and mean individuals that people are more apt to watch—because people are always curious about the car wreck that is someone else’s life. I guess not much has changed over the centuries; the Romans had their circus’ where people fought to the death for the public’s entertainment—and we have reality TV shows. And while reality TV stars don’t actually fight to their deaths, their fifteen minutes of fame may die off—which may be just as devastating to them.