Reality Television's Downward Spiral to Idiocracy...starring Luke Wilson

A friend of mine recently ranted about NBCs decision to cancel some of her favorite shows. At first I did not really understand the frustration. Shows get canceled. It's been happening since the very first gray images glowed from the boob tube. Many of my favorite shows have been canceled. Dead Like Me aired on ShowTime for a very short two seasons and saddened me to no end when they decided it would no longer be meant for cuddle time on the couch with my husband. My So Called Life was taken off of MTV when I was in high school and forced me to watch other non music related television on that channel.

I do not indulge in much TV watching, but I do have my favorite shows that I enjoy watching. In fact, on Wednesday nights you will find my butt firmly planted on my couch with no intentions of moving until "TV Night" is over. I am very attached to the few shows that I do watch and realizing that my friend had similar attachments to the recently canceled Studio 60 on NBC, I began to feel sympathetic to her frustration.

After the cancellation of her beloved Studio 60, NBC replaced it with a show called the Black Donelly's. Not wanting to give up her TV time and couch cuddle time with her husband, they began to watch this show and quickly bonded with it. Just as soon as it became a welcome interruption to their busy day, NBC also pulled it. More fuel added to the fire.

Then, my friend heard the worst news she could possibly hear. This news was so shocking that even I was upset when I heard it. Scrubs may not be coming back for a final season. What? How could they pull Scrubs? This is a television sitcom that is so popular that other television networks have shelled out the big bucks to play the reruns from past seasons on their network. How can the hilarious characters of Sacred Heart not be coming back to entertain me? Has NBC gone mad?

But that is not the worst of it. Rumor has it that NBC will be replacing Scrubs, as well as The Black Donnely's, with a "hot new reality show".

How many "hot new reality shows" can there be? The networks are simply copying other networks and their reality shows but adding some silly twist to make it what they think is better. I mean seriously, how many shows can have a housewife go live with another family? How many trivia questions can we manufacture for the eight hundred different shows that offer money if you can answer them correctly?

Reality television has gone way down hill. Not that it was really ever at the top of the hill to begin with, but it has really taken a turn for the worse. Where are these new ideas going to come from? My friend suggested a rather humorous reality show called "Who Blew A**?" where eager contestants vie for the biggest prize by determining who in fact had cut the cheese and blamed the dog. Maybe we will get another mind numbing show where thought and activity is little, but suspense is high. Instead of metallic suitcases in the hands of scantily clad models, we can have some star from a popular 1990's sitcom yell "Which hand is the pebble in?" Then we can wait in suspense to see if the correct hand is chosen until after the commercial break, and maybe the commercial break after that one too. That could easily last a whole half of an hour.

With this downward spiral of reality television on all the networks lately, and the removal of shows that provided fictional entertainment value (it's always better to laugh at the crying model on a fictional show than on a reality show) what is in store for the branches of our family tree? I am sure the flatulent game show is not a far off guess.

The movie Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson, comes to mind when thinking of the fate of reality television in America. In the movie, we are introduced to what television is like in the far off future when society has become conditioned to accept idiocracy as normal and being smart as a terrible thing only to be made fun of. The number one television show is a reality show called "Ow, My Balls". As the title suggests, a man is repeatedly injured in the groin and yells "Ow, my balls!" each and every time. The characters find this show hilarious and refuse to even answer to loud banging on the front door during this show. In fact, they don't even get up to go to the bathroom and have facilites right in their chair. The number one movie of the time is ninety minutes of a naked rear end on a screen that is having some very loud gastric problems. There is no guessing, there is not even dialog. Just a butt, farting continuously. And society in this future time finds it to be absolutely hilarious.

Is that what we have to look forward to? Are all of these "hot new reality shows" turning television into a breeding ground for idiocracy? This writer sure seems to think so.

I beg all of the big wigs over at NBC, and all the other television networks, to really think about what you are doing when you remove a comedy about a subject that all the other networks (including yours) has turned into a tragedy, and replace it with something mindless that everyone has seen before.