Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Oh, summer TV...


Ah, summer... BBQs, margaritas by the pool... and crappy television. We were just rejoicing about the return of our favorite TV shows (like The Office!!) after the writers' strike, and then our favorite shows went on summer vacay.

Summer TV is never good as TV during the rest of the year... as evidenced by some of this summer's offerings.

Now, I am no TV snob. Those of you who know me well know I watch more lowbrow reality TV shows than the average person. However, some of these shows are even below my standards... and that's pretty bad!

Today I read about this show on ABC called Wipeout, which basically is just a way for us to laugh at people falling and getting hurt. I mean, I know slapstick comedy can be funny, but really... this just seems sad. Says something about humanity, I think... or at least about the execs at ABC.

From USA Today: "The time-honored tradition of watching people falling down is always funny," says Wipeout host John Henson, a 20-year comic vet best known as host of E!'s Talk Soup. "And it's certainly that tradition that this show is following."

Another one that kind of looks interesting, but also crazy, is The Baby Borrowers. Five teenaged couples will be given babies, preschoolers, preteens, young teenagers and even senior citizens to promote one message --- teenage pregnancy is not cool. Hmmm... maybe those pregnancy pact gals should have volunteered for this show.

I do enjoy a cheesy dating reality show... or two (Rock of Love, Flavor of Love, I Love New York... need I go on?). But then my roommates and I found the cheesiest one of them all... Farmer Wants a Wife. A bunch of city chicks travel to the country to fall in love with farmer Matt. Yee-haw? Not so much.

OK, so Matt has a golden god tan and a pretty hot bod, but he is completely asexual. Just like all the other reality shows, the girls are crazy about Matt at first sight, even though he seems as boring as cow poop. I never get how all the girls on the dating reality shows "fall in love" with the guys so fast... it just doesn't work that way.

The absolute best part of this show is how Matt reveals to the girls who is going home. He doesn't give them a rose ala The Bachelor, a clock like Flav or a backstage pass like Bret Michaels (aka my boyfriend). In one episode, they actually watched an old lady stitch the girl who was going home's name into a blanket. Talk about anticipation!! The best was when Matt made the girls each put their hands into a different cow to see if she was pregnant; the girl whose cow wasn't preggers had to get packin'. After she cleaned the excrement off her hand, that is.

One more piece of summer TV junk, coming to you July 6: VH1's I Love Money, which features old VH1 reality stars (the nose-picking Mr. Boston, loogie-hocking Pumkin, lisp-y stripper Nibblz) doing pretty much anything for money. Wait, wasn't that what some of the girls were already doing when they were trying to get with Flav?

Yeah, who am I kidding.... I'm probably gonna watch that show.

Anyway, I hope this possible actors' strike doesn't amount to anything... watching these TV shows, even though some may be guilty pleasures, are serious hazards to my health.

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