Reality TV, it’s a love/hate thing
I thought I hated Reality TV. Then I discovered I actually watch Reality TV.
A lot.
All those home improvement and decorating shows I record so I can fast forward to the last five minutes to see the completed fabulousness? Reality TV Category: Renovation.
What, you did not know there are so many different styles of Reality TV they had to divvy them up into categories? Me neither! Wikipedia has a nice summary. Turns out I am a junkie and didn’t even know it.
Documentary style, celebrities: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. You either love Kathy Griffin or you hate her. I am on the love side of the fence because she makes laugh and laugh and laugh. Many of the celebrities she makes fun of in her stand-up act despise her but they should really thank her for showing the world celebrities are normal people who sometimes say and do things that are not perfect. Who else could tell the world Barbara Walters prefers AstroGlide to K-Y Jelly, proving once and for all she is not a Stepford Journalist but in fact an actual human being?
I also used to watch The Osbournes when it was still airing original episodes. A celebrity making millions whose family fights all the time and dogs poop in the house? LOVE IT. It works so well because even with all the yelling and the occasional physical scuffle, they all clearly love each other.
Documentary style, professional activities: DogTown and Dog Whisperer. I just discovered these a few weeks ago. I caught one episode of DogTown and was immediately hooked on seeing neglected pooches get behavior (and sometimes medical) makeovers, then go to a good home. HOOKED.
Dog Whisperer follows DogTown here so I checked it out to see what all the fuss is about. I was skeptical. Some guy who can train a dog in one meeting? I don’t think so.
HOOKED. I love this show not because he is a great trainer – excuse me, pack leader – but because he proves time and time again there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. He trains the owners to be calm, assertive pack leaders. When former MTV deejay Downtown Julie Brown asked if her dog’s behavior was her fault, saying “Tell me, Cesar, I can take it,” Cesar Milan said, “Yes.”
It turned out Julie was not as prepared to hear that answer as she thought she was.
I dabble in the Self Improvement/Makeover category with shows like What Not To Wear and the occasional Supernanny when I am in the mood for watching a train wreck, but since Queer Eye went off the air, my heart just is not in it.
Speaking of Supernanny, if Cesar Milan ever wants to branch out into Child Whispering, his pack leader training techniques are equally suited to training parents to raise well balanced children.
Just a thought.
I have one complaint about the home improvement shows I used to devour like Get it Sold and Sell This House, where they take a house that has been on the market for some time with little buyer interest and transform it on a minimal budget. The goal is to, obviously, sell the house. Sometimes it sells by the end of the show, sometimes it does not but “buyer interest is high.” I think I liked it so much because the makeover did not always result in an immediate sale. You know, like real life.
Then one day these shows – both of them, on different networks – made a seemingly small change that completely ruined things for me. They cleaned and painted and did small renovations like knock down walls or revamp a small bathroom and after all of that was done and everyone was exhausted, they said, “Oh, by the way, we also want you to drop your asking price by $20,000.”
WTF? Okay, that still fits in the guidelines of a show about how to get your house sold but the original format of both shows was all about how to stage your home for a quick sale. They never mentioned the asking price. If the price is an issue, why put in all that work? Lower the price and if it still doesn’t sell, then do the staging. I felt robbed. They sold me this show:
| Hypothesis: staging leads to faster sale of your home. Experiment: stage a home that has been on the market for some time and see if it sells shortly thereafter. Variable: staging. |
Then they added a second variable, asking price, and pretended it was still the same hypothesis. GAH! That is like claiming exercise alone will help you lose weight, but then you exercise AND change your diet, lose weight, and claim it was all due to the exercise.
Did I mention I felt robbed? And don’t even get me started on Hidden Potential, where they show three incredibly crappy houses to potential buyers with computer generated graphics to show how they can be renovated, the buyer chooses which one they would buy, and…the show ends. Did they buy it? Did the renovations really cost what was projected? Did the bank really loan them $50,000 more than the appraised value based solely on renovations they say they are going to make?
Love. Hate. See what I mean?

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