By Preston Neill
Anyone that knows me will vouch for the fact that I feel the state of television now is deplorable. For every Lost or Heroes there are thirteen The Real Wedding Crashers and Big Brothers. Can we really blame networks for putting on reality television though? What once started as a novelty sociological experiment with MTV’s The Real World and brought to the mainstream with Mark Burnett’s Survivor reality television has proven to be cheap to produce and garners massive ratings. The top four televisions shows the last week of the television season were American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, and Dancing with the Stars in that order. Alternative Programming (or rather Illiterate Programming) has progressively kept pushing the line for decency further and further, and the trend is not just limited to America. So here are the three most deplorable reality television moments of the last week.
1) Big Brother, watching but not caring (Big Brother Australia)
Emma Cornell, a cast member of the current season of Big Brother Australia, just lost her father a few weeks ago. Only she doesn’t know it. The producers of the show have not told her that her father has passed away, maintaining that a major part of the show is that the contestants are completely isolated from the outside world. However pressure is mounting from fans of the show for the producers to cave, with two fans even sitting outside the house with signs trying to tell Cornell about her father. A recent poll was released in Australia where 80% of the people polled felt the producers should tell her, while the other 20% have no heart.
2) “This is the true story, of seven strangers, picked to live in a house, and have their lives…..wait haven’t we been here before?” (Reunited: The Real World: Las Vegas)
Well, I guess we have to give MTV a lot of credit here. If we could pick any one group of cast members to see make poor life decisions on national television again why not this motley crew? From Alton and Irulan, the most dysfunctional couple ever put on television, to Frank, the most awkward white guy in the long history of awkward white guys, and Brynn, whose life aspiration was to be a go-go dancer in a club. And can we really be that upset with a show that gives us mega-slut Trishelle? Go back and watch the first Las Vegas season and just pay attention to Trishelle. It’s like watching Britney Spears career collapse only condensed into 30 minute morsels for easy digestion. Word is Trishelle was the last to commit to the reunion, and its easy to see why! It must have been hard finding time between filming The Dukes of Hazzard 2 and Ninja Cheerleaders to live in a hotel for 2 weeks and try to not acknowledge the fact that all six of your roommates now have syphilis because of you.
3) Forget being voted off an island, you just get to wait and die (Untitled Dutch reality tv show just greenlit)
And here it is, the most deplorable reality tv moment of the week! A new Dutch reality show has three contestants fighting for the grand prize of a kidney donated by a terminally ill cancer patient. It is unclear yet what becomes of the two contestants that don’t win but considering this is to be produced by Endermol, the creators of Big Brother, its safe to say that the losers have the producers film them die.
In the end all I can say is that apparently no idea for reality tv is too bad. So excuse me, but I’m going to go work on the pitch for my new show “Pimp My Sister.”
The Daily Jones 