Friends! The new issue of Peripheral Surveys is live, and if you click at the end of this post, you might just find an essay by someone you know. Go!
26 Tuesday Jul 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
Tag Archives: Reality TV
I can't hear you – my ears are full of fat
29 Tuesday Dec 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
It's time to grow up now, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Pizza rolls, Reality TV, Television, The benefit of friends, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, The Real Housewives of New York City, The Real Housewives of Orange County, Toddlers & Tiaras
Hello from Laura and Caitlin’s living room. You can’t see what I can see, so let me tell you about it. This, my friends, is a grownup house. First, it’s actually a house, not an apartment. Second, there is a guest bedroom. And an office. And paintings. Like I can see one right now of a lake. There are Christmas decorations. And a real dining room set. I just don’t even know what to do with this besides take comfort in the fact that the coffee table is the same one that Cait and I had in our apartment four years ago. (And that her dog has calmed way the hell down.)
I’m also pretty sure that, Sunday, we didn’t move from the couch (them) and the chair (me) at all. It’s hard to move when you’re glued to a marathon of various reality TV shows. Also, Caitlin and I have revived our pizza roll tradition, which perhaps cognitively mesh with hanging quilts of snowmen. For those of you who didn’t spend that kind of time in the meth apartment or the one I moved into after I peaced out on that lease, the pizza roll tradition is where we make the entire giant bag of pizza rolls and eat them. All. Sometimes it includes a mid-eating re-heat. Before Saturday, I hadn’t had a pizza roll since August of 2006, after Little Ashley and I kept the tradition alive the summer she lived in my dining room. There comes a point where there can be no more pizza rolls.
But then there comes a time when the pizza rolls must come back. Round one? Caitlin couldn’t hold up her end. But, as a direct result, learned that you can reheat them the next morning for breakfast. Good to know.
As I said previously when I first ventured over into Jon and Kate territory, I’ve never made the reality TV tour. We eased our way with the episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8 where the family goes to Hawaii. Then we took a tour of Toddlers & Tiaras.
I have never felt so gross in my entire life. Have you ever been to a dance recital or a cheerleading competition and the youngest set of girls crosses that imaginary line of what’s age-appropriate and you feel like you a) might get arrested and b) need a shower that involves bleach and a brillo pad? The entire show feels like that. I was waiting for the FBI to bust into the house and arrest us. That was horrifying. One episode turned out to be way more than enough for me.
Which led us to The Real Housewives of New York City. I’ll go ahead and own the fact that I now love (love) this show. I’m serious. That is the most delightful experience. We were watching from the second season, so I’m not entirely caught up on the backstory of the women involved, but there are few things I enjoy more than over-privileged women who don’t have back fat. And I do appreciate all of their philanthropy. It’s nice to do things for other people while you fight with your friends.
I’m debating on how I feel about The Real Housewives of New Jersey. It’s interesting that the New Jersey women are actual-sized human beings. And cleverly covering whatever mob activity might be happening off camera. (Also, if you could forget some of that cash on my front stoop, I wouldn’t cry about it.) The Real Housewives of Orange County is a little too California for me, but I did enjoy the mother-daughter plastic surgery recovery. And that the poor economy does, in fact, hurt every level of our society. (Laura: “They literally say nothing in an entire episode.”) The Real Housewives of Atlanta actually has women who aren’t white. Also, one of the women says that she’s the mother and her children are the children. NO ONE ELSE DOES THAT ON THESE SHOWS. They are all sisters or best friends. Quiz question: why do women in Atlanta wear more clothing than women who are living in New Jersey and New York? (No one in Orange County wears clothes at all. It’s just nakedness and screaming.)
Overall, normally I don’t like when TV shows treat me like I’m a moron, but I love that, with each character change, we’re reminded who she is. Mostly because I can’t tell anyone apart, especially in New York and Orange County. Thanks for the hook-up, Bravo!
Had I not seen any of these, I’d still grab a seat for The Real Housewives of Washington, DC. Why would I not? If I were to ever live in a parallel universe in which I would be part of one of these shows, I’m on the ball with the Washingtonian lifestyle. Everyday millionaires. Check. I will not, however, keep my cell phone on perpetual speaker phone. Just a boundary I’d like to keep in place. I’d finally get the boobs I’ve always dreamed of, too.
(Caitlin requests that she and Laura get a reality show as a direct result of this blog entry. Maybe their neighbor with the tricked out van of Redskins paraphernalia will get the spinoff series.)
You’re just jealous.
Drawing and erasing lines
18 Thursday Jun 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Brothers and Sisters, Celebrity cruising, E!, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Kathryn Harrison, Lindsay Lohan, memoir, Online writing, Reality TV, Sally Field, Samantha Ronson, Twitter, Us Weekly
I didn’t intend to repeat this subject so soon, but this teaser begged to be written about:
This, really, can only be three things. A_ divorce. B_ end of the show. C_ (as Matt and I have both decided would be the best option) selling of the children.
So, it’s not a terrific secret that I’m not the nicest person in the world. One of my all-time favorite activities is reading sad girl memoirs and cheering the narrator on toward self-destruction. I want her to be as absolutely close to the edge as possible before she makes the miraculous turn toward recovery, health, happiness, whatever.
I know it’s sick. But I also know she turns out fairly okay because she was able to write the book. Mostly, these authors have gone through extensive therapy, and then I get to feel all warm and fuzzy over their success.
In my real life, I never wish that same kind of dynamite destruction on my friends who are going through hard times. I wish for their betterment with great immediacy. The same goes for people I don’t know whose blogs I read. One woman whose blog I read recently relapsed into her eating disorder, and I wish for her to have a speedy recovery and that this will be the last time she has to go through this process.
Which is why I feel weird about this Jon and Kate Plus Eight thing. Because it’s TV, it doesn’t feel quite real, and I kind of almost maybe want to watch shit hit the fan as it does on, say, Brothers and Sisters. And because it involves real people and not Sally Field playing a fictionally fantastic grandmother, when do you say, contract or no contract, this has to stop? When do we, as an audience, say, we have to turn this off? Or do we not because they chose to be on television?
I wonder what our limits are.
I’ve recently become train-wreck enamored with Lindsay Lohan’s Twitter. Within minutes of an update, there’s inevitably an update on Us Weekly’s or E!’s website that deconstructs what Lohan wrote. Which leads me to think that Twitter is taking the fun out of celebrity gossip. If Lindsay Lohan writes thinly veiled tweets about Samantha Ronson, then where’s the challenge? And, if you’re Lindsey Lohan, do you have the right to ask the media to stay out of your life if you’re posting it free-for-all on a public website?
Having been part of the write-about-your-feelings-online brigade for the better part of the last eleven years, I’ve been witness and participant to my fair share of who-cares debates. The same goes for being involved in a nonfiction program wherein most people veer toward memoir or memoir-ish. Online writing, really, has its limits. Unless you’re something special, you don’t have that many people reading. You also have the power to make the entire enterprise stop. I’ve seen many a person disappear entirely from the Internet, never to be heard from again. And, unless you’re famous, your memoir probably isn’t going to get you noticed on the street. I have no basis whatsoever to make this argument, but I’m willing to bet Kathryn Harrison walks unnoticed down most streets.
So you put yourself on TV, you’re famous and you Tweet, do you merely get what you ask for? And why do we answer?
Dad's in the kitchen!
10 Wednesday Jun 2009
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Ties, Gender is awesome, Growing Pains, I Love Lucy, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Leave It to Beaver, Reality TV, Road Rules, Roseanne, Sitcoms, Survivor, Television, The Cosby Show, The Donna Reed Show, The Real World
On the whole, I missed out on the reality TV rush. Never managed to get into The Real World/Road Rules in middle school/high school with everyone else. Not out of any sense of superiority, I just didn’t. Shows like Survivor brought up my inner upturned nose at first, but then they, too, just faded into the background noise of my life.
What fascinates me about the whole concept is not that it took off – it happened, after all, not too long after the most intense phase of the over-share memoir – but what it took the place of.
During the previous two more conservative eras since the dawn of TV, there’s been an influx of family sitcoms. Think back to the late 1950s/early 1960s – Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show; think back to the ‘80s – The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains. It’s not that the shows were necessarily plugging a conservative ideology – Roseanne, the parents in Family Ties – but they most assuredly pushed the nuclear family, the importance of values, blah, blah, blah.
Not long after 9/11 came all of the stories about how we had entered a conservative era once more. That wasn’t a terrific surprise. And it’s also not like the family sitcom disappeared completely – Everybody Loves Raymond ended its ninth season in 2005. It just didn’t seem to have the stronghold that previous social cycles would have suggested.
We were just way too invested in the reality TV business.
So this is what occupied precious brain space as I tuned in to the latest episodes of Jon and Kate Plus Eight Monday night.
And it was the 9:30 episode that gave me the best family sitcom trope of all: the husband doing wifely work.
Yes.
While often overshadowed by the candy factory scenes, the “Job Switching” episode of I Love Lucy features a kitchen full of exploding chicken and rice as Ricky and Fred show off their domestic prowess. I love it. I love the iron burn on the blouse, the starched pantyhose. I love that Ricky attached a music stand to the vacuum. I sometimes even love the similar, but different, episode of The Cosby Show when the men were pregnant. It’s just so much fun to play with gender roles!
So, perhaps, you were excited, too, when the theme of the 9:30 episode was Jon makes a traditional Korean meal while Kate freaks the hell out that he’s in the kitchen.
Issues about the children aside, I’m interested in Jon and Kate because it sometimes reflects the sitcom in a way not unlike how nonfiction sometimes reflects the novel. Characters grow and change over time, there are episodic moments, etcetera. With tabloid fun of Jon and Kate’s impending marriage doom, there is quite possibly even a plot arc to follow. That’s a format I know, love, and understand.
What baffles me is the commentary left on Kate’s blog. From a comment left earlier this afternoon: “Now as I learn more and more about your ‘blessings’ (large payments for your show, talks, books, free trips, free products, free services, etc) I realize that you are not a regular family in today’s world, like mine. I realize that you don’t budget in trips and try to cut corners as I have to to survive even with 2 children. I realize that you are no different from me except that you have more children, but I don’t want to have to put my children on display in order to gain the ‘blessings’ you now have.”
This woman isn’t alone in her feelings. I didn’t even realize the money and the free stuff were concepts unknown. They’re the stars of a massively popular TV show. Of course they get money, of course people want them to hawk wares. That’s what happens.
No one on TV is real whether it’s reality TV or the traditional sitcom. That’s why it’s fun. I thought we knew that by now. The best shows get as close to real (or as far away from real) as we’ll allow them before we’re not entertained (because our life isn’t terribly entertaining, so we’re not going to take the time for a carbon copy) or we’re totally disgusted (the suspension of disbelief can only last for so long).
And something resembling real won the episode on Monday night when Jon’s kitchen adventure was nothing but a success (the one screw up was by Kate). Another little tidbit of real came as the kids argued over who was the most Asian, and I pictured my friend and his three siblings, who have a similar genetic jumble, as small children having the same argument. It was the best laugh I had all night.
