by Joe Owens

Created on: December 03, 2009   Last Updated: December 04, 2009

When the trend of shows promising reality television began to pop up on various television networks, I expected it to be a passing trend. I thought how gullible can the American public be to think there is any reality to a show with the amount of crew involved to put this display of drama on the air. I mean come on, you cannot convince me anyone is themselves with the knowledge a television camera is in sight. For true reality television, you should think along the lines of Candid Camera or America's Funniest Videos.

Okay, calm down all you reality show lovers that are contemplating commenting on my article to profess your undying support for your favorite drama. I must admit some of the shows that fall into this genre have a smattering of reality to fall back on as a legitimate basis for their show. There is no denying the reality of Survivor and The Incredible Race. These two subject their participants to some unbridled consequences as a fact of the premise.

The group of reality concepts I take issue with are the ones like High School Reunion, Big Brother, the Bachelor and Bachelorette. These are at best lightly scripted dramas where the likelihood of your lasting throughout is highly subject to the ratings received when you become the subject of the attention. There is no way people could truly fall in love in this kind of cradle of forced interaction, as shown by the results of several of the central characters as the s0-called fairy tales fell apart in the true reality of life.

To the article's title, why do we still watch? There are a few reasons. First of all we all enjoy drama. All of us have our own drama and want to know that someone else has more so we feel less overwhelmed by ours. Also, the decline of our morals as a country allows more of these situations where unmarried people can do much more than the majority of us over 40 would ever have tried as we made our way through the dating rituals. Lastly, people will do anything for money. Even eat rats and bugs like they will on Survivor or use to do on the now defunct Fear Factor.

It is interesting to see how far the networks will go to perpetuate this trend of reality shows. Some of the ideas are so preposterous I imagine the bulk of us would do anything to avoid divulging that we had even a slight interest in the concept, let alone allow our precious time to be consumed viewing such crap. I suppose there will always be enough interest to keep this trend going for a while, however.

Two reality offerings I can appreciate are the Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Sure, the Biggest Loser can be a bit cheeky in the workout sessions, but the scales do not lie and the physical transformation of those fortunate enough to survive this elimination style contest are certainly dramatic. I tire of some of the interactions with the contestant as they pour their hearts out to each other, but the weigh-ins truly generates a good amount of suspense.

Extreme Makeover creates a new reality for the families fortunate enough to be selected to be on the show. I am sure many of us have times we would love for someone to come in and start over from scratch to provide our dream home. However, as recently reported, the true reality in our life is that a magical intervention will not keep our bills paid and if we cannot afford the new version, the effort is truly wasted.

The legs underneath this subsection of the television landscape seem to have a good portion of life left in them. Who knows how outlandish the premises will get before we finally say enough is too much. For now it is our best plan to delineate the best from the rest and squeeze the value out of the few shows we can.

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