Addicted to Shows About Addicts.

I really like the show Intervention on A&E because it picks me up when I'm feeling low (at least I haven't screwed up my life as bad as the people on the show)... but I can't help but feel aghast at the lengths that Sober House has gone to create interesting television.

I encountered Sober House while channel surfing tonight. The show features recovering drug addicts and alcoholics living together.... and then going to a night club together. I don't know about you, but when I was deeply and thoroughly addicted to methamphetamine I NEVER went to the night club to score, so it was probably the safest place for me when I was recovering.

Funny line from the show:
"Did the cops find heroine on you?"
"Yeah. I was holding. I didn't know they were coming though. If I had known, I would have thrown it out."

If I had known the internet was going to take off like this, I would have totes invested in Google way back in the day. Kind of the same situation.

The show makes me feel genuinely bad for the pseudo-celebs featured on the show; I was so sure that Crazy Town was going places after their smash hit "Butterfly," but it turns out there isn't really much of a market for white guys semi-rapping about insects, or whatever that song was actually about. I think it was probably a lady. bug. ladybug. It was a pretty clever metaphor.

Btdubs, Steve-O isn't on the show, but he went to rehab and lived in a sober house, and this picture made me smile. This also makes me smile.

Lil Mama, Why You Be Trippin?

I've been watching the new season of America's Best Dance Crew, or ABDC (as any dyslexic kid would recite the alphabet), and I've noticed something horrible, even shocking:

Lil Mama is no longer wearing bedazzled baseball hats with holes on the top for her ponytail.

Lil Mama is the songstress who brought us a song solely about stuff that makes lips shiny (I could have written a song about the reflection off my watch that my cat used to chase around that was waaay better). Her signature look on the first two seasons was a sweet flat brimmed hat that inexplicably had a hole at the very top for her to shove her hair through and look like an idiot. For a second I thought she had figured out how silly she looked, but then I examined her current wardrobe and realized she was making entirely new fashion mistakes that I can chuckle to myself about whenever I happen to catch the show.

She's no Paula Abdul, but pill addictions can't afflict every Randy Jackson affiliated television series equally.

Get LOST With Me.

Sooo..... things took a CRAZY turn on the new season of Lost that aired this week. It's in the future, but in the past, but still in the future, they can't change anything but Daniel Faraday does, and he was on the island with the original Dharma peeps, and Sawyer looked weird with his shirt off, and Locke is dead but obviously won't be dead for long, and I'm still pissed that Jin didn't get a proper death so I'm hoping he pops up looking like Two Face at some point, and now we have some Dharma people randomly shooting the Flight 815/Juliet crew with flaming arrows- not the proper way to welcome new neighbors (which, by the way, is a muffin basket).

What a clusterf***.

I'm not sure if I like the new twists, but I'm just happy everyone's gonna eventually be back on the island together again... although it will probably take the entire season.

Also, Clare's not dead right? Sooo, when Daniel asked if it was their whole crew with them, why did Sawyer only mention Locke and not Clare? It's probably some detail that I don't remember from the last season, but I was confused.

While the episode was tons o' fun, and it was nice to see some dead characters again (where's Charlie? I miss Charlie), I really enjoyed Ben's new haircut, very snazzy.

I don't want to date you, but I'll go on a TV show where that's the premise

On my way home from work today, I spotted Alex whatever-his-last-name-is, the bachelor from the first season of, well, The Bachelor (the guy in the picture), and it got me thinking about something that’s been bugging me for a while. I had wanted to write something about the degeneration of reality television, and though I’ve touched on it before, I never really got to the meat of the issue. While The Bachelor was never a fantastic hour of television, and its original concept relied on a sexist premise, it still featured real people on the show to find love (along with the 15-minutes-of-famers). Over the years participants who opt to be on reality shows for anything but some form of fame have since become few and far between, and this shift can best be summed up by what I call the “Love” shows on VH1 and MTV.

The “Love” series, if you don’t know what I’m referring to include the following reality programs: Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, I Love New York, I Love Money, both seasons of Charm School (yes no “love” in the title, but it’s the same cast), Real Chance at Love, A Shot at Love, A Double Shot at Love, and That’s Amore: love, Italian style. Drew Barrymore (yet another reason why I don’t like her) is even Executive Producing a relationship boot camp show called Tough Love currently in production for VH1. In these shows participants compete for “catches” like Flavor Flav, Bret Michaels, Tila Tequila (the internet non-celeb), and Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard (famous for being spit on by ‘Pumpkin’ in the first season of Flavor of Love). What almost shocks me the most is that I’ve heard that cast members have to be STD-free, though I’m pretty sure that anyone who has hooked up with Bret Michaels no longer fits into that category.

The shows demonstrate how far ‘reality’ television has devolved, a seemingly recurrent theme in my musings on this site. All of the programs are scripted to some degree, the challenges are outlandish and frankly, embarrassing for the contestants, and I doubt anyone on the shows is genuinely interested in the stars of the show. Even The Bachelor has changed over the seasons: the women have become younger and Valley Girl speak more common. While the ABC program doesn’t compare to the baseness of the VH1 and MTV counterparts, they both have come to include similar casting choices, and stunts to spike ratings. I understand that from a network perspective, these shows will continue as long as people keep watching them, and while I’ll admit I’ve seen an episode or more of these programs, I certainly can’t tune in for an entire season. The shows might be cheap to produce and easy to stage, but their content is dumbing down television and encouraging negative American stereotypes. I think I’ll stick to scripted fare.

Cribs Are For Babies. My 8 Year Old Need a King Mattress.

While I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons, today I decided to start my day with a little Cribs action on MTV. This week's episodes (yes, plural) featured teenagers with sweeter homes than I can ever hope to own. During this recession it's really great to see parents who have spent money to put movie theaters, tree houses, slides, and elevators in their homes along with other unnecessary, but still really friggin cool, items. Let me just get this out of the way before I continue: of COURSE I'm jealous that I don't have a secret passageway to equally secret rooms that hide pinball machines and 60" flat screen televisions. However, the theme of the episodes, at least the ones featuring 'real' children (rather than celebrities) seemed to be: how to keep your child from ever leaving the house.

I read an article a few months ago in the New York Times about how parents are creating havens for their children at home. Play rooms, video game areas, special toys, ice cream bars, pools, tree houses, go carts, everything to keep their children on the property. According to the article, and messages celebrated in the episode I watched, if your kid's at home, you always know what they're doing. Kids just running around the neighborhood building tree forts has been replaced by structured play time enabled by parental shopping sprees, and pre-fabricated tree houses all ready to safely be played in without any initial effort from the kids. Pick up baseball or basketball games at the local fields are no longer needed because Tommy has a full basketball court in his backyard. While some of this oppulence will probably be tempered by the economy, the fundamental nature of children's play time seems shaped by a new cultural rubric.

I'm not condoning simply letting your child loose on society without a care in the world, but the lengths to which these parents are spending money to cater their home almost solely to the needs of their children seems excessive; and in my opinion, accustoms them to getting everything they want in life, which at least right now, is not a reasonable expectation for anyone to have.

Top Chef? No, Top Simile

Is it just me or is the new Top Chef judge, Toby Young simply rife with poor metaphors and similes? I just felt the need to express how deeply I miss Gail. PLEASE COME BACK, GAIL. I don't care if you miss the end of your honeymoon, I can't stand this British buffoon. Give me Simon Cowell or give me death, which is a phrase I never thought I'd say. I still love the show, don't get me wrong, but I find myself laughing (along with cast members and judge Tom Colicchio) AT this guy, rather than with him. His first week he madea crack about how classically trained British actors equate to good vegetables, and this week told us that meat makes him want to have sex. I don't need him to remind me that British people are awesome, and I certainly don't want to know about his habits in the bedroom (or it looks like in his case, the kitchen).

P.S. If you haven't already seen, my post about Judd Apatow is up on the Paley Center site here.

Bush wants his last 15 minutes of fame.

When I read this article, I found it almost laughable that the President of the United States has trouble securing network airtime, but then I saw that his address would rupture my viewing of The Office. I don't really need to hear that Bush's greatest success as President was his EFFORT to privatize Social Security again, so… please don't ruin The Office for me, and Grey's Anatomy for the people that haven't yet realized that Grey's is a glorified bad soap opera (excuse me, serial). It's not fair!

Note: Doesn't he look super cute with his little American flag? Toss in one of those multi-colored beanies with the propeller on top and this would be my screensaver!