Reality Television Is For Geeks

Do you remember the good old days when summer television meant reruns? Back in the day we were perfectly content to catch up on the episodes of Happy Days or Three's Company that we missed. We don't need no stinking original programming. All that I needed in the summer when I was a kid was Cubs games in the afternoon and Sox games in the evening and then it really got good in August when the Bears pre-season games would begin. We were doing fine until several years ago when some genius (I think Mark Burnett) came up with the idea of reality television. He said, "Let's put real people in really bizarre situations and see who can 'survive'". Now we have survived 10, count them 10, Survivor seasons and that particular game is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many reality shows now that you can virtually construct entire paragraphs by just using reality show titles.

(Example: My favorite reality show to date is The Contender and it was produced by Sylvester Stallone who starred in Rocky III and it's theme song was The Eye of the Tiger by the band Survivor. There had to be a Fear Factor for Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard his television Apprentice, after all they ran the risk of falling into the vast wasteland of Maximum Exposure that is The Osbornes and The Anna Nicole Smith Show and other Rich Girls who would say, "I Want a Famous Face." Of course it could be worse they could be like my wife Amy and work for The Biggest Loser, who doesn't know What Not To Wear, could use a makeover on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy that she refers to as My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss. Unfortunately The Benefactor of this lunacy seems to be Paris Hilton who needs an Extreme Makeover on her character because she does not live in The Real World. Forget about Starting Over she should adopt the attitude I Want To Be a Hilton because what she really needs is a Big Brother to whip her into shape.)
Enough already!! Stop it!!

This summer has given us three more ludicrous and pseudo entertaining installments of reality TV. The television "off season" of 2005 has given us Hit Me Baby One More Time, Dancing With the Stars, and the WB's Beauty and the Geek. While I haven't watched it yet this last one has peeked my attention simply with its title. Amy and I began to think about the title. Beauty and the Geek. That is pretty much our life since we met 26 years ago, however if you call Amy a geek one more time I'll rip your lungs out.
Websters Online Dictionary defines geek this way:
1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake
2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of
I know that most of us were not familiar with definition one. Definition number two is the one that we relate to. A geek is a nerd or someone smart who is perhaps a bit socially dysfunctional and therefore disapproved of. By the way, if you were familiar with definition one then you need to stop reading your dictionary and get out more, cause you are a geek.

Which brings me to my point. Mark Burnett, while obviously genius, is just a geek when you get right down to it. He and the others who produce these shows are just reality TV geeks and those of us who watch are geeks too! We all are geeks in some area. Some of us are fantasy sports geeks, and some of us are cyber geeks, and some of us are music geeks which means that we are geeked out on our ipod 24/7. When you get right down to it you cannot avoid being a geek because someone will always disapprove of you even if it is on intellectual grounds.

Craig