I hadn't updated the blog until now because, quite frankly, making a direct transition from blogging about Glorious Senate Campaign to Man, Can You Believe That Fox Dating Show With The Little People? felt a little abrupt.
So, instead, let's just note a few items, and then normal blogging will resume soon enough.
ITEM! Let's face it -- despite an historically bad group of eight on American Idol this week, we nevertheless are living in a golden season for reality tv. Between Top Model's imminent Camille expulsion (with a likely final showdown between Yoanna and April), The Apprentice's and Survivor's weekly backstabbing and Average Joe 2's . . . okay, total guilty pleasure, and it's a dumb show, but still a pleasure, well, we live in interesting times. And that's leaving out all the stuff I'm not watching that others are, like Newlyweds, Surreal Life and The Bachelorette.
And even better: Nashville Star 2 debuts March 6.
ITEM! All hail the TiVolator!
ITEM! We (and Matt) called it weeks ago: The Hollywood Apprentice is coming.
ITEM! Let me make my prediction: Carrie doesn't choose Aleksander, who is in many ways her mirror image -- narcissistic, the hub of a large social network outsiders could hardly penetrate, speaking a cultural language difficult to decipher and, did I mention, narcissistic?
But she can't choose Big either. If the series wants to demonstrate that Carrie has learned anything since season one, episode one, she can't just run back into Big's arms again at the slightest hint of a possible-but-Big-is-Big-and-men-don't-change deathbed conversion to fidelity. At the very least, we don't know yet how reformed he is, if at all. Anyone can give the speech; it's harder to live it. Fact is, when Miranda commanded to Big, "Bring back our girl!", it was for the friends' sake much more than his.
So, in the cliche you've been fearing, Carrie chooses Carrie, her old life, old city, old apartment, old friends, and love will come down the road, maybe, but as long as she's got her friends, her laptop and her New York, life's okay. It's all about the sisterhood, and that's what the series has always been all about.
ITEM! Okay, with that out of my system, to The Littlest Groom, which Jen and I watched Monday night with mouths fully agape.
Now if you've been following this blog for a bit, you know that I'm not really a fan of reality dating shows. I just find them phony, because no one can really find love within the artificial cocoon of a televised dating paradise.
What these shows are really about is humiliation, about seeing people's heart's broken while we enjoy it at home -- it's that great Simpsons line where Bart says to Lisa, apropos of her dumping Ralph on the Krusty show, "Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half" -- and the only show I've enjoyed was the one that acknowledged its own complicity and essentially trashy nature -- Joe Millionaire.
So when the humiliation is applied to a community already the butt of too many jokes, it stinks extra. For Glen Foster, the "star" of the show, this isn't the first time he's exploited his dimunitive status for personal fame -- 76ers fans remember him well as "Li'l G", the hip-hop loving midget who handed out balloons and excited the crowd along with Thugz Bunny, the official team mascot. (And, yes, I know his real name is Hip-Hop, but I like mine better.) Basically, a Mini-Me with "street attitude," and it always made me uncomfortable.
Forget about the serious tone the show ostensibly takes. It's exploitation, plain and simple. Whether or not Foster and the ladies have a right to exploit themselves for fame, we can choose not to become complicit in the exploitation by choosing not to watch. That is our right, and it's the only way to prevent FOX from going further downhill ("But what our bachelorettes don't know is . . . . he's actually homeless!").
That is, of course, unless there's nothing better on.
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