LESSER CRIMES: REALITY TV
Once again, we’re talking about people becoming famous for making public asses of themselves, which is fine, I suppose, because now we know what these idiots look like and can avoid them as we’re going about our lives. How’d you like to be in a restaurant and glance over to see the guy who ate roasted horse anus last week on Fear Factor lining up at the salad bar? Gack. What would you say to a guy like that anyway? “Hey, what wine goes with a good flaming sphincter, dude?”
I’m waiting (praying, really) for the day when someone finally dies on one of these shows. I think it would be great if the contestants who are voted off the island on Survivor were killed and eaten by the other contestants. In fact, let’s make that the whole point of the show. We could call it Darwin Derby, Survival of the Fittest. If you want to eat, you gotta whack another contestant and eat ‘im. Then we could take the deranged winner and drop him or her into the Republican National Convention with nothing but a spoon and a corkscrew and see what happened. Wait . . . isn’t that the plot of a Sylvester Stallone movie?
Better yet, let’s get a bunch of underachievers and pit their greed against their lust for flesh, like on the Bachelor, Bachelorette, Average Joe, etc., etc., etc. We’ll either make ‘em into money-grubbing yet beautifully unscrupulous former models or we’ll crush the souls of the ordinary looking “geeks” whose very appearance actually made the hot woman of their dreams cry on national television. (Shallow, vicious, arrogant tramp. You’ve been marked for life, baby. You’re one of the bad ones.) The latest Bachelor hunk o’ the month ain’t no prize either. You know, the chiseled one they found down in the Valley living on a steady diet of silicon breasts and GQ Magazine, still trying to figure out what shoelaces are for. I hope the next Bachelor drowns in the show’s hot tub with an S&M leash around his neck and a champagne bottle up his ass. Let’s see the producers explain that one, eh?
These shows are slowing creeping their way towards that Running Man/Rollerball concept that we used to consider science fiction. We need to remember that eventually, Max has to go beyond Thunderdome to escape the insanity.
The Swan? My God, can it get any more twisted than this? Please let this be the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Contestants are willing to have their bodies CUT in a Roman circus tribute to vanity and voyeurism. Where are the television equivalents of the Vandals or the Visigoths when we need them to come storming in to purge the bloated Empire with fire and sword?
On a lighter note (nice transition, eh?), the one show that had no gimmick or pseudo-reality but was still a huge hit? The Osbournes. The life of this family was so fascinating (and goddamn hilarious) because it was the truth, oddly enough. Anything short of a nuclear exchange is just another day for these people. They are who they are and they don’t give a flying fuck what you think about them. It was bizarre, raw, funny, gross and, best of all, they weren’t lying to us. I admire that. I will never admire the guy who was willing to chomp on the rhino dick for money.
Since I’m being a cynical bastard here anyway, I think we might as well just push taste and ethics all the way, don’t you? With that in mind, here’s my list of new reality shows we must have:
Herpes Quest
Let’s Make a Redneck Read a Book
Silicone Sisters: Custom Divas
Celebrity Meth-Freaks
What’s Up J-Lo’s Ass?
EnviroWars: Death of a Species
Blammo the Deranged Archbishop
I Need a Bigger Schlong
Bowling for Bosnia
Let’s Blow Up Geraldo
I’m an Ass, You’re an Ass
Fuck You; the Dick Cheney Story
Cops on Crack
The Anthrax Olympics
Modern or Medieval: The Baptist Review
Sell Your Lungs for Profit
Barry Bonds’ Steroid Ho-Down
Bush on Bush: The President’s Sex Education Program