As Opposed to Shinola

I don’t do a lot of ‘reality TV’ and not because I have a problem with reality. I dislike the synthetic drama in what little of it I’ve ever watched because I know if I weren’t watching it, actually if none of us were watching it, both the drama and the show itself would be gone.

To me, reality TV is the wealthy cousin of talk radio. And I hate talk radio. It’s the cheapest form of broadcasting in terms of cost, which is partially why it’s so popular with the douche nozzles who own 500 watt day-timers. I blame sports radio for getting it started and showing by example millionaires who owned TV transmitters how to become billionaires by sticking talk radio to the inside of picture tubes.

I fell across a show not that long ago Amish Mafia that I’m still trying to sort out. At first I feared I’d dreamt I’d watched it because it was so beyond ‘out there’ it couldn’t possibly be real. But I don’t think all of us had the same dream. Who watches this crap? The same people who think pro-wrestling isn’t scripted and staged? Except that there’s less spandex, the Amish Mafia could be brought to us by a grant from the Haystacks Calhoun Foundation located just beyond the city limits of Credulity.

I just finished an article on a show set to debut tonight on Animal Planet (do NOT try to see a connection between the network and the program; your brain will cramp up) called The Pool Master. I wonder if anybody connected with Bunim-Murray who brought us “The Real World” back in the Dark Ages on MTV wondered why they couldn’t patent an idea but only a program based on an idea. If they could have, they’d have never needed to work again. I’m sorry they started.

Is there a show currently on TV on the discarded treasures that trash collectors find? Not extreme or offensive enough? How about one on what gastroenterologists bring home with them after performing colonoscopies? Both could be called “Finders, Keepers!” (I’d like the latter to have a reference somehow to innuendo for the hipsters in the audience).

What do you think? We could get the folks with clipboards and Pavlov’s dogs from research in here to see if we’d score better with 18-49 year-olds if we seeded the cast with some bi-racial, transgendered, little people who own dogs and ‘green cars’ living in an urban setting (advertisers just eat that 18-49 demographic with a spoon). Or maybe not.

By now, someone surely has developed an application that will create the cast for us once the research is done. You know, like a cooking recipe.  And if lives get ruined, well, that’s show biz, kids. Speaking of recipes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs-just ask Pat and Bill Loud. So stay tuned!

-bill kenny