The Cold Dish on Reality TV

The simple truth of my business—truth-telling—is that there's not enough column space and enough interest for me to write more often to tell all the unsettling truths out there. The answer for me is to prioritize what gets told, which means I use my column space for only the most dire of conspiracies and the occasional request for summarizing books for my book club reading for me. Which means some of my revelations are late in coming—like the truth about reality TV.

I have never liked so-called "reality TV," ever since the farce that was Cops first debuted, but it seemed generally harmless and not worthy of my attention, just a distraction and nothing more. But as I reach a dry spell in my material, it seems necessary now to reveal the truth about that distraction and allow people to start focusing on the horrible truths of real life, like the story behind the snakehead fish and Craig Kilborn.

To cut to the truth quick and early, reality TV is no more real than Everybody Loves Raymond, and only slightly funnier. In fact, shows like Friends hold more truth than a "reality show" like Big Brother—at least the characters on Friends are based on real friends of the creator (except for Chandler, who could never exist in our world). The Big Brother "contestants" are simply poorly-written cardboard stereotypes that live up to people's expectations so thoroughly they seem real.

Like the "real people" on Cops, every reality show character is portrayed by unknown actors with strong improvisational skills, but poorly-constructed characters. It's amazing they've gotten away with it for this long, given the exceptionally-ridiculous paper-thin characters on talk shows like Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer.

I first became convinced of the truth while watching old repeats of Cops, which air 24-hours on independent local stations almost everywhere in the country. I distinctly saw then-unemployed actors Edward Norton, Eriq LaSalle, and John Travolta—after Look Who's Talking and before Pulp Fiction brought him back. In fact, I think I saw every member of the cast of Welcome Back, Kotter somewhere in the episode, even the guy who played Mr. Woodman. It soon dawned on me that reality TV has become a port for actors yet to make it big or weathering a bad storm. Any day now I expect to see actors with troubled careers like Larry Wilcox and Alf turning up as contestants on Survivor.

This use of destitute actors has reached its height with recent shows The Osbournes and The Anna Nicole Show. It turns out Osbournes star Ozzy Osbourne was a former singer of some kind of band, as well as an actor who has appeared in films like The Jerky Boys and Little Nicky. I'm not sure about the rest of his "family," but Osbourne himself is not a real person, just another down-on-his-luck performer. Anna Nicole, whose real name is Anna Nicole Smith, is actually nothing more than a failed actress and former Playboy playmate, again, not a "real" person. I have done so much independent research on her that I knew who she was without having to look further into it.

In all likelihood, reality TV is another fad, like space travel and feeding starving people in Africa. And besides the fact it is trivial and mindless entertainment watching self-obsessed "real people" going about their day-to-day business or competing ruthlessly for unearned money, I have nothing against it. Still, I implore producers of so-called "reality TV" to quit lying to us and presenting something as true when it's not—that's a job best left to the president.

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