Ramblings about TV...

Rambling about TV

Did you know that no one really knows what the entity of ‘TV’ really is. What it means and what it does…

If you ask me: TV is a postmodern religion.

People live by it. Worship it. Follow it. Do what it says. And in the worst cases it rules the entire mind of people. TV is culture. TV watches us as we watch it. How we affect TV and it effects us is not clear (Chicken or Egg?). Today we can interact with TV live. We can vote, Tweet, or email the show. Now TV is merging with the internet, it’s available on our phones and is merging with reality…

Reality TV isn’t real. But it’s also not unreal; “It’s real-like”. Reality TV brings out the worst in us if you ask me. It’s the cheapening of the medium. It cuts us down to the very worst parts and edits together stories that don’t exist. If the people on it aren’t competing for “love” (please), or groveling in the mud (ew), then they selling themselves or their “skin care lines or fashion line” that they (in ‘real’ reality) had no hand in making or creating. But what I can’t stand most is when they are not acting like themselves… they are acting like they think they should, or the other Reality stars who came before them… it’s so fake. Reality TV needs a reality check!

With that said I do like a few Reality shows. “The Amazing Race” is one of my favorites. I also like “Flipping Out” because I feel like ‘Jeff’ (the star) is the same when the camera is on or off: crazy. I also got sucked into “The Real Housewives”. The only season I couldn’t get into was Atlanta. It was too “Jerry Springer”. Bravo is on a roll if you ask me, which is great for NBC (which owns it) because NBC can’t get it’s act together.

NBC lost me when it decided to put Leno on at 10pm five nights a week. If I was Conan O’brien I’d be pissed. But more importantly it’s cheap on their part. How about you develop some real shows NBC!! Stop being so cheap! Make some new shows!! Plus Leno had his run and needs to just be done. Some people don’t know when to let go…

NBC did one thing right and that is hire Joel McHale. The Soup with Joel McHale is easily my favorite show right now, since it brings together the best (i.e. the worst) that TV has to offer. They watch all the shows I never would and give me the best parts. Love it.

Sometimes I feel like there is too much TV. Sometimes I feel like there is nothing to watch. I don’t feel like TV is getting better, per say. But I do feel like it is getting more creative and more informative. TV is finally getting diving into things it never touched before… secrets about the world. They can do this, because they know it’s hard to catch them unless you know what you are looking for. TV knows most of us, as Jean Baudrillard put it:

“You are hypnotized by the tube, by the obscene flow of images. You raised your eyelids. A vampire is kneeling over you – voluptuously – the muscles of her neck, the ivory curve of her shoulders, illuminated as if by cool moonlight. She licks her scarlet lips like an animal, glazing them with a sheen of moisture, her engorged tongue glistening as it laps the white teeth. She leans closer, you feel her cool breath, then the sharpness of incisors penetrating your neck. You close your eyes in a long ecstasy and wait – wait with beating heart.”

TV… Humanity’s Frenemy.