Reality TV Watchers Anonymous – Guest Clack

Julia Hass is back Guest-clacking for us again, after she kicked some ass with her post, the 15 most kickass women on television.

Hi, my name is Julia Hass, and I have an addiction to bad reality television.

It started, in a truly Freudian manner, with my mother. She got me in my prime adolescent years hooked first to The Bachelor and then Beauty and the Geek, using them as a bonding mechanism and conversation starter, which is the kind of parenting through television I think more people should get behind. I learned a lot of things from those formative television-watching hours, but the most important thing I learned was that no matter how badly complicated my life was, it was never as truly, completely ridiculous as the lives of people on television. It was a thrilling and wonderful realization. I was hooked.

It was a quick and slippery slope downhill from there. Soon I became indoctrinated into the Real World (the gift that just keeps giving, as far as stupidity is concerned),  the entire Bravo line-up of The World’s Best Insert-Gay-Friendly-Occupation-Here, America’s Next Top Model, So You Think You Can Dance, and basically anything on MTV and VH1. I shamefully adore each and every one of these shows. I can spend hours watching Next on MTV and shrieking in laughter at all the terrible pick-up lines.

My sister and I will lie awake at night dreaming up challenge ideas for Project Runway and hours the next morning sketching out exactly what we would have done. Heaven forbid I get the urge to re-watch a routine from So You Think You Can Dance, because the sidebar on Youtube will inevitably remind me of another eight billion I have a sudden, pressing desire to see, and before I know it I’ve been sitting there for two hours doing nothing. And if there’s any sort of marathon on, well, forget it. Whatever I had planned that day gets thrown out in favor of watching and re-watching Tyra become increasingly crazy and self-obsessed as each season of America’s Next Top Model progresses.

Look, everyone, I’m a good person. I’m a good person who watches good television. Like, stuff that wins Emmys and everything. I am not the likeliest candidate for these shows. To most people, I swear I appear as a very intelligent, well-informed, and cultured young person. But God help me if these exact same people mention a bad reality show that causes me to spontaneously shriek “Oh my God, I know! And did you see what so-and-so was wearing last week?!?!” Bang. My veneer of relative maturity gone. I am just lucky that this subject rarely comes up in, say, job interviews. I classify this addiction under “embarrassing facts about myself to never bring up on purpose” like, for instance, how I think “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis legitimately qualifies as good music and that trashy romance novels are a hilarious and highly entertaining read.

And I can’t stop either. I’ve tried to resist NBC’s new show, The Superstars of Dance, on the grounds that it’s culturally exploitative, the judging is arbitrary and random at best, the idea of one culture’s traditional dance being “better” than another’s is inherently flawed, and that the South African judge makes me want to rip his piercings out in as painful a manner as possible. And yet I still was inexplicably glued to the television cheering along tap goddess Dormishia Sumbry-Edwards after she bitched out the judging panel for her criminally low scores (you go, girl!).

But this show seems positively high-class compared to my long and eagerly awaited new show, Tool Academy, whose premise is to take nine tools (all sent in by their frustrated girlfriends) into true gentlemen, earning them the title of “Mr. Awesome” and, of course, a sizable portion of cash. It’s a train-wreck in the making, having nine douchebags live in a house together. And yet, you know what the only thing I had written in my planner for Sunday was? Watching this show. And you know what? It was even more delightfully awful than I anticipated. My sister felt like she needed to take a shower after watching these guys and me? I wanted more, more, more.

So I’ve decided to take an educational approach to this whole thing. After watching this many reality TV shows, I decided that they had to somehow be useful. Because truly, I’ve learned things — valuable life lessons, if you will. Of course, each of these rules has a notable exception. This is reality, after all. No rule is truly absolute.

One: You don’t find true love when you’re looking for it. (But you may find it when you’re not.)
Dating shows just don’t work, kids. You can have all the romantic set-ups you want, but when real life sets in,  and there are demands on your time and money is the sparkle going to be there? Reality television rules no. So go on, eight billionth season of The Bachelor, you keep trying, keep setting up those dates in botanical gardens with choirs of cherubim serenading the couple as they sip champagne and feed each other fondue, because it just ain’t gonna happen. (If it couldn’t happen for such fine specimens of humanity like Flavor Flav and Bret Michaels, what chance do the rest of us have, really?)

You know where it does happen? Shows where the aim is to display someone’s true character, like Rob and Amber from Survivor. Ironically enough, I think the show with the greatest track record for churning out couples that tend to stay together for a long haul is The Real World. There was Pam and Judd from the San Francisco season, their cast-mate Rachael married Sean from the Boston season, and Danny and Melinda from Austin recently tied the knot as well. Not all end in marriage, but there are some couples, like Irulan and Alton from Las Vegas and Wes and Johanna from Austin, never made it to the altar, but did have relationships that lasted several years. And then, of course, there was the infamous  relationship in the Seattle season where David, a cast member, ended up falling for (and eventually leaving the show to be with) Kira, a member of the casting crew.

Exception: Trista and Ryan (The Bachelorette)
Who knows how these crazy kids managed it (I watched that season and I still can’t make heads or tails of it), but somehow the two of them went and fell in love. It certainly didn’t seem like it would. Trista always struck me as more high maintenance than low-key Ryan could deal with, but all these years later they’re married with a kid, so I guess they know something the rest of us don’t. And whatever that secret is, Bret Michaels would like to know it. (Flav seems to have just given up — poor lamb.)

Two: No matter how good an actor you are, you cannot disguise the fact that you are a bad person forever.
It’s true. It will always come back and bite you in the ass. If you clean a toilet with a toothbrush, a camera will catch you. The same goes for sabotaging other competitors, hiding pattern-making books under your bed, and generally bad-mouthing anyone and everyone. You might get kept around by the producers as source of drama and excitement, but you always end up third-best and out on your butt, wondering where you went wrong. I’ll give you a hint, Lacey Conner, it wasn’t because you were too nice.

Exception: Jeffery Sebelia (Project Runway)
It didn’t matter that Jeffery came on season three of Project Runway with the self-professed ambition to be the villain. No matter how many moms he made cry, or whatever that strange plaid haute couture creation was, Jeffery ended up at Bryant Park, where it comes down to the designs, not the designer. Luckily for him, Michael, the fan favorite, managed to completely lose his head, creating a line of silky jungle-inspired cocktail dresses that looked like they could only be worn by flight attendants in a very unfortunate rap video. (And I’m not even going into the horror that were his silk hot pants. They made me want to burn my eyes out, and that is all you need to know.)  This left Jeffery neatly walking away with the grand prize.

Three: The real winner is not usually the person who actually wins.
Sure, winning sounds totally awesome on a lot of these shows, but winning comes with all those nasty restrictions along with the prize. You’ve got to be hush-hush, you’ve got to be willing to do things only with certain companies and spotted endorsing certain products. Jumping through hoops like that can really get a young up-and-comer down.

Take Nick from the second season of Project Runway, for example. He didn’t even make it to Bryant Park, yet he was so lovable that he ended up landing a job as the stand-in Tim Gunn in Project Runway Canada. In America’s Next Top Model, most of the runners-up have no restrictions put on them as far as  where they can sign or which companies they can be the face of,  and they often  end up making careers in foreign fashion markets. The biggest winning loser was Toccara, the plus-sized fan favorite from Cycle Three. Toccara’s resume is now huge, not only as a model, but as a television personality. She even appeared with Tyra in Vogue Italia’s all-black issue, becoming the first black plus-sized model to grace the pages of any Vogue publication world wide.

American Idols often are another great example of this. Archuleta beat Cook to get a catchy single out (which, secretly, I love and sing along to all the time). Daughtry didn’t win but still eats up the charts. Clay Aiken, while not what people normally consider a “winner,” is still more popular that Ruben. And who even remembers who Jennifer Hudson lost to? The lesson is this — shoot for the stars, and then once you get there, maybe stop reaching so hard.

Exception(s): I suppose Carrie Underwood counts in this category, but really who I’m here to talk about is my girl Kelly Clarkson. Not only is she completely badass (that’s right, badass, I said it), but she’s multi-platinum, has pipes to die for, and her highly anticipated (at least by me) album is due to be released this March, to which I say GLORY HALLELUJAH. As far as I’m concerned, the girl can simply do no wrong (except for maybe From Justin to Kelly, which I am willing to forgive as a freak aberration).

Four: Smile with your eyes.
There is never an exception to this rule.

Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Jan 15, 2009 @ 16:24 EST5EDT