I Love Reality TV 

20 Replies

A Blast From My Past                  Originally posted in April 2017.

Now don’t judge, let me explain. I love Reality TV; you know, what is ‘Real’ not some half-baked version of reality. Seriously some of this “Reality” TV is not my reality!

Now don’t get me wrong. I know how wildly popular these shows are. I personally do not enjoy watching people backstab, scream at each other and generally act like jerks for entertainment. It’s just not my thing. The ‘reality’ programs I do enjoy are the cooking shows. I have never cooked at that level but I’m fascinated by the people that do. Some of them are average people off the street. I find them interesting and supportive of each other. Yes, there are the occasional jerks, but I do try to ignore them and usually they’re booted off the show relatively early.

I even started watching a program, well a game show actually, where they are forging weapons. Seriously! But the passion they show for creating something beautiful and deadly it’s fascinating to me. The other kind of reality I enjoy watching are actually called documentaries. Now that is as real as it gets. I watched a program on the letters Queen Victoria wrote during her more than six decades of reign in England. It was a little bit history, a little romance and a lot of a strong woman. That’s a reality I can get behind.

I’m not sure I understand why some of these “programs” are designated as reality when they’re really just live-action game shows. A group of people are put in a box and live together. I have never watched the program so I’m probably not qualified to judge but to be honest I could never get past the ads for them. It simply looks like a group of people who want to see who can be the meanest or the most obnoxious to gain a questionable prize. I probably don’t understand the concept.

I did watch for a while the game show where people are deserted on an island but when it deteriorated into ‘how badly people can treat each other’, I lost interest. It was fascinating to watch the culture of the island as it was often interwoven into the contest. But that too became unwatchable.

When was the last time you saw something absolutely new on TV?  Everything seems to be a remake of a program from decades ago, even the movies. And then when something interesting does pop up it shows up on other channels with different actors but a similar premise. Have we grown so stale, so jaded that we can’t handle innovation? I find it amusing when I’m watching a show and enjoying it only to recognize something I saw in my childhood in the new program. I guess each new generation has to experience what we did decades ago in the entertainment field. Perhaps if we didn’t continue to live so long, we wouldn’t be noticing all the rehashes.

Still, I watch what’s on TV, some I enjoy some I don’t. And I think I’ll keep watching the reality TV that I enjoy. Parfait anyone?

 

20 thoughts on “I Love Reality TV ”

  1. Murphy's Law

    It’s enough living my own reality, I’m not interested in watching someone else’s “supposed” reality. When these reality shows took over all tv stations, I watched one….once. That show was clearly more scripted than the regular shows!

    When I watch a TV show, I want to laugh until I cry. I want to be caught up in the fantasy and transported to another place.

    I agree with you Pam that documentaries are great. I get to see places and people and animals and things I would never otherwise have seen. I may not remember everything from those documentaries, but I will have remembered some and therefore learned that much.

    My husband will watch anything stupid that’s on the boob tube! I read instead!
    Ginger

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓
  2. joylennick

    I do agree, Pamela. I dislike TV shows where viewers are made to feel like voyeurs.. To screen disadvantaged people with health or mental problems in personal situations is, to me, demeaning for them. That’s not saying that disadvantaged people shouldn’t be on TV. Far from it.,but they should be portrayed in a different manner. ‘Embarrassing bodies’ they can also keep, thank you..I love the serious travel/nature/animal/food/art/literature, photographic and historical programmes, and the present series where they cover different country’s food habits and dishes (especially Venice last week…) Aah! x.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
    1. quiall Post author

      Oh I love it when they combine cooking and travel! Stanley Tucci had a wonderful program on recently. He travels all over Italy talking about food. It made my mouth water. I am convinced that the opportunity to get money overrides many peoples feelings of shame. That is so sad.

      Like

      Reply ↓
  3. Mark Lanesbury

    I’m afraid that nothing is on tv unless it is ‘wound up’ many times over its ordinary value to try to ‘impress’. But as you said Pam, it is that ‘natural’ ability of documentaries to make it interesting. One day they will understand that it is the ‘truth’ that sets us free, not the lies that they apply to everything 😀

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
    1. quiall Post author

      I love to learn and watching documentaries means I have all kinds of information in the back of my brain. It’s sometimes amazes people when I come up with arcane answers. I just say I watch ‘real’ TV.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
  4. Dale

    I watched Forged in Fire, too! It is fascinating to watch how these men and women create their weapons out of trash metal!
    I am a fan of the cooking shows – especially the MasterChef series and I miss Iron Chef because they simply amazed me.
    I will admit to being a diehard Survivor fan, though I mocked my sister during the first half of the first season. It was such an original idea and while it’s been going on for twenty years, it is fascinating to watch how the people react. Yes, there are cameras, but I am sure after a while, they don’t see them.
    I watched one half of Big Brother and said nope. Never gonna happen.
    Nothing wrong with having this guilty pleasure, I say 🙂 It would be nice if we didn’t have to go to Korea to see innovative films like “Parasite”… so many movies feel like rehashes of existing ones.
    Boy, you sure got me chatty this morn!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
  5. Sorryless

    Reality TV is a misnomer. There is precious little reality to these shows, because as we all know, as soon as that little red light in the camera is fired up, people change. It’s not reality, what they’re selling. Add to this all the scripted nonsense these faux-celebs are given. Nope.

    But yes, there are some shows I will check out. I like the home shows, where they renovate old homes . .and yes, some cooking shows.

    I haven’t ever watched Survivor. My then wife and friends would have get togethers, but I wasn’t buying in. It never interested me.

    And you’re right about the derivative quality to most of the stuff we watch. It’s everywhere!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
    1. quiall Post author

      This past year I have watched a lot more television but I find I’m watching shows they were on air 10 and 20 years ago. They are far more interesting and enjoyable.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
  8. Sun Hesper Jansen

    I’ll have to search for that one on Queen Victoria – history + romance are my jam! It’s been a while since I regularly watched TV but I would always gravitate to the “Create” channel on our Public Broadcasting System and watch the cooking shows. I think you not only learn things, but there’s comfort in watching other people cook, and draw, and other things that take time. Instagram is kind of my TV these days and 90% of my feed consists of cooks and artists just doing their thing. You’ve got us thinking about an interesting phenomenon!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.