The woes of trying not to watch reality TV

I would hesitate to say that I really hate anything. I rarely have a visceral enough negative reaction to warrant such a word as “hate.”

However, I do believe that “strongly dislike” may adequately describe my feelings towards reality television shows without too much exaggeration.

There are, perhaps, a few reasons for this. One, my exposure to such shows growing up was basically limited to the Ruff Ruffman Show on PBS and watching Master P… dance, I guess we can call it, if we are feeling generous, on Dancing with the Stars, so any long standing connection to any such shows are largely non-existent.

Two, I’m not really one to entirely buy into the reality that is trying to be portrayed. I’m very much someone who will constantly question whether something is scripted or not and I think the fact that the very idea of the show is to pass it all off as entirely authentic just rubs me the wrong way. Whether it’s competition shows like Survivor or some sort of tell-all, pseudo-documentary, the feeling that at least some of what is portrayed on screen has been pre-planned cannot escape me, thus breaking any sort of immersion it might have held.

Three, the drama that many of these shows revolve around is not really what I would call my cup of tea. Watching people yell at each other over some sort of petty problem that could probably be solved with a little common sense or emotional intelligence is not my idea of fun.

Or, at least, that’s what I keep telling myself. My wife puts on a handful of these shows in the background as she cross-stitches and I, wanting to spend time with her, find myself in the unfortunate position of being subjected to them as well. This past weekend, it was the newest season of Love is Blind; a show where people who talk to each other through a wall for 10 days for some reason believe that they know enough about each other to get married. It is the perfect example of a modern streaming dating show, from what I can tell; a ridiculous premise phrased as some sort of deep, philosophical or psychological “experiment” that contains enough cliff hangers and interpersonal drama to drown a fish. Two of my friends from Madison who had come up for a party we had hosted the night before were still hanging out the next day and at some point we had strayed into the living room where Mikaela had put on the show. At first, we were largely making jokes and not really paying too much attention to what was really going on, but as time went on, I could see it happening. I could seem them falling into the same trap that I had somehow found myself in numerous times; they were getting sucked in.

I don’t know how it happens. It sneaks up on you, I think, and ambushes you before you even know what’s happening. One second, I will be joking about how silly the scenario or the people that put themselves into it are and the next I find myself asking Mikaela what happened that made some guy named Jax so angry that he now doesn’t want his supposed best friend Tom at his wedding anymore.

And as I listened to one of my friends get into an in depth conversation with Mikaela about one of the relationships on the show as my other friend looked up songs from the show to add to his Spotify playlist, I knew I had lost them. The dark magic of reality television had sunk its claws into them; a healthy dose of sarcasm and constant references to sports scores on my phone likely kept me safe.

It’s a scary realization to make, to find that I have somehow become, even ever so slightly, invested in some of these shows. When I think about the fact that I still have yet to watch classic films like “The Shawshank Redemption” or “The Godfather” but have consumed numerous hours of a show that I think likes to believe it’s about real estate agents selling extremely expensive abodes in California but is really more about all the love triangles and drama between those real estate agents. It brings me a level of bewilderment that is indescribable.

There’s nothing for it, I suppose. I just really wish I could manually free up some of the brain space I’ve apparently unconsciously dedicated to knowing far too many of these people’s names.

Also, thanks, Cubs. So kind of you to just gift us the division like that. We’ll take good care of it.

Point of

A C ertain V iew