I'm not much of a television watcher and never really have been. Saturday afternoons—when the mind and body have shut down—are those rare occasions I remain fixed on the couch to channel surf and eat bowl after bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Even then I'm usually unsure of what's happening on the screen in front of me.
Very few shows have kept my attention for more than a season; Will and Grace is the only one that comes to mind. Well, I guess before that was The Rosie O'Donnell Show (hey, don't judge—it was seventh grade, and she and her Koosh balls were there). Although generally, it's difficult for me to stay hooked. I've tried to find a series to call my own the past couple of months, but usually remember to tune in with little success.
Off the bat, I hold a bias against reality TV for its typically poor editing, unoriginal subject matters and tendency to turn a playful wink into an incestuous affair of betrayal and danger. But recently, certain shows have caught my eye for their shallow entertainment value and their shifted spotlight to unconventional main characters, like the underdog.
Take VH1's new I Love New York for example, starring the one and only New York, originally known from Flavor of Love. I admit I laughed when she got the boot as one of the last two finalists during the first season, and then I laughed harder when it happened again next season. Like a bipolar hyena, she cried, cursed and laughed after her harsh rejections.
But out of her humiliating disappointment emerged a blessing in disguise as she now has a dozen of charming gentlemen looking to win over her heart. With names like Romance, 12 Pack and White Boy, you know they're grade-A. (I wonder who comes up with these names anyway. If I were New York, I would make sure to have contestants known as Cilantro, Pond Water and Little Brown Man.)
It's refreshing to see the loser win a little, and I do in fact have love for New York.
Another ""reality"" show I shamefully admire is MTV's Maui Fever—which should not be compared to Laguna Beach or The Hills—for its cast of normal, middle-class kids from Hawaii. They may be good looking, but they're not pushing Cadillac's or partying P. Diddy style right out of high school. Despite their glamorous taste for gossip and drama, they're pretty much just a group of townies that don't know much else besides bikinis and surfboards.
An ordinary day for my favorite character Corbin is searching for tourist girls to party with before they leave two days later. ""Brah, we're gonna be doing this until we're forty!"" Even MTV cannot conceal his hopelessness, or his butt crack for that matter, which makes an appearance at least once an episode.
Their faces are pretty, but wealth and connections have nothing to do with it.
Don't get me wrong, I still love shows like Entourage. More than wanting to date Vince Chase, I want to be Vince Chase. Those guys have it all—the houses, the cars, the hunnies—but it's all pretend. How many useless, freeloading, loudmouth friends like Turtle get to smoke up and play videogames all day, then party with Jessica Alba at night? Worldwide I'd say about four, and as viewers we must remember that.
But at least this new wave of reality TV is taking us a step in the right direction. I think we have a little New York and Corbin's plumber butt in all of us.
If you want to ""hug it out"" with Julia, e-mail her at shiplett@wisc.edu.
