The Downhill Spiral of the Glass Babysitter

I've known or awhile that TV sucks. It dawned on me when I got digital cable with roughly 900 channels...and nothing but crap is on. The same rotated crap, on the same stories, on every channel.

Seriously, though. What happened to tv? It seems like if it's not a spinoff from Law and Order, or a show about death, it's a reality show, or a reality show about reality show, or a reality show starring reality show stars. Half of what's on tv has the same damn 30 people in it.

I don't want to watch MTV anymore. It makes me sad, angry and confused. I remember when it used to have...music television. Then the Real World took a nice stinking dump on it, and it's never been the same. I never really got into the Real World thing, it seemed too contrived and lame. If I wanted to watch the same small group of people fight, hook up and pretend to get along-- I would have taped my time in college and watched that.

Besides, that Jesse guy from years back made me want to tackle him and wash his hair, and duct tape his mouth shut. Don't get me started on TRL. MTV should have never cancelled Fear-- it was the best show they've ever had.

I admit that I watch some stupid shows, and that I get caught up in some of the reality buzz stuff once in a while. But it's pretty rare for me. I has to catch my attention and keep it. I watched one season of Survivor in it's entirety. I thought it was cool, but that people were taking it too seriously. Lo and behold-- 54 seasons of Survivor later, it's gone too far. Time for a new idea.

Where are the ideas for shows coming from? Is someone feeding psychotropic drugs to monkeys in labs, and handing them sheets of paper to scribble on? Really, I think that's where American Idol came from. Except that the monkeys wrote, "just kidding" on the bottom of the paper and were ignored.

Ok. I love CSI and it's spinoffs-- it's hasn't jumped the shark for me yet. I also like Crossing Jordan, Family Guy (American Dad is a pile of garbage though) South Park, The West Wing... and most of the silly countdown shows on Vh1. I'll watch Cold Case Files, but you can only watch so much of that before you start to learn all the famous cases better than the lawyers. I like the paranormal shows on ghost hunting and haunted hotel stories. My latest favorite shows are Dirty Jobs and Going Tribal on the Discovery Channel. Every once in a while a really good show gets through the filters, but it's usually canned once it proves to be too smart or funny for the average tv viewer-- who prefers their tv in the form of Cops and watching Rob and Amber get married.

I don't think it's bad if someone wants to watch the shows I think must have come from the bottom of the television trash heap... but I don't get how they caught on. For example-- Growing Up Gotti, Gastineau Girls, Filthy Rich Cattle Drive, 7th Heaven, Dr. Phil, The Swan, Wife Swap, Punk'd, The OC, all the makeover shows (with the exception of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, that's an amazing show) What Not To Wear, and Andy Milonakis...to name a few. No big deal if people watch them, I'm just curious as to where the hell the ideas came from. My only guess would be that they were ripped from the nightmares of those drug-addled monkeys.

As Hollywood seems to be striving to put out increasingly more expensive bad movies lately, maybe tv is just following suit. Yes, television is primarily, and for most, solely entertainment...but wow, I'm worried about what's next in line for new tv shows. I figure the ideas will mostly revolve around watching the newest crop of reality attention-addicted stars aging, through plastic surgeries and failed marriages. Hey, maybe Vh1 will foot the bill for Ricardo and Slavco's wedding, once it's legal, as long as they have sole rights to tape it and turn it into a Britney & Kevin-esque disaster documentary. Either that, or every new show will be all about surgery-- closeups of colonscopies and stomach-staplings, with before and after interviews and pictures. Everything is to be "Extreme," whether it be Extremely sappy, stupid, expensive, unlikely, painful to watch, or just plain bad, remains to be seen.

Any bets?