TV is Boring, Too

One thing I will never fully grasp is why people watch TV. As far as I'm concerned, there's never anything worth watching on TV, but even if there were, it would be completely ruined by the format. By which I mean, all TV shows are structured the exact same.

The first and arguably worst part of every show is the introduction/theme song/whatever. Introductions wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that, in the words of Strong Bad, they are essentially an advertisement for something that you're already watching. And they aren't very good advertisements, at that-they tell you nothing about the show except the title and, if you're lucky, the actors starring in it.

You'd think that after wasting your time with self-promotion, they'd give you something substantial to watch, but you'd be wrong: it's time for more advertisements. Buy a car, buy insurance, watch some other show, buy a car, watch a movie, buy a car, visit a website. When the show finally comes on, if you haven't forgotten what you were watching by then, they'll start playing it. The rest of the block is where it varies a bit from show to show.

If it's a half-hour show, there could be anywhere from one to three more breaks where they try to sell you stuff, but if it's an hour show, then God only knows how many advertisements you'll see. The important thing is that there are lots of them, and that all of them are preceded by a "cliffhanger" (which could be anything from an unfinished sentence to the sound of a gun and no idea who just got shot).

Do people not catch onto these suspicious similarities between each individual episode? Do they think that they all just happen to have a story that perfectly fills up a time slot, with suspenseful moments conveniently placed at ten or fifteen minute intervals? Is it just some cosmic coincidence? How is it that nothing important ever happens on 24 during the interval of real time that takes place while we are hypnotized into wanting stuff? Why can't Jack just be killed somehow while we're busy watching commercials about Restless Leg Syndrome?

The problem with TV today is that the advertisements have become the main attraction. The story is secondary and the important thing is that it will fit nicely in a certain period of time with a certain number of products flung at us from our high definition screens. Even shows that are worth watching suffer from this standardization. I don't know if people don't know, don't care, or don't really watch shows and just like watching pictures move on a screen, but the shows on TV exist for no other reason, really, than to sell its viewers crap.

In all honesty, though, I don't really have anything against most TV shows. It's usually just the format that kills them for me. Which is easily avoided by watching illegally uploaded episodes of shows on YouTube. Sure, there are banner advertisements all over the place as well as links to idiots worldwide dancing to songs like "My Humps," but the point is that you can watch the show without the real commercials. And if you haven't noticed, once you take out the introduction, commercials, end credits, and "previously on Whatever" crap, the show lasts for less than half of the time it takes to watch it on TV. Still, the only kind of TV shows that really bothers me are the worst kind of all: reality shows.

First of all, reality shows are neither representative of reality nor are they really shows. There's something I don't think that most reality TV watchers don't understand: reality shows are documentaries. They document real (stupid) people in real situations, like having to transfer cow eyeballs from a vat of blood to a vat of urine using your teeth (Fear Factor) and being trapped on an island where your survival depends on your resourcefulness and how many people vote for you (Survivor). But I honestly think that the worst reality show of all has to be American Idol.

Maybe it's the huge number of people who watch it, maybe it's the way that people assume that I watch it just because it's popular, or maybe it's because it creates everything that I hate about the music industry. Wait, it is. Thinking about it kills me. Why do untalented people with predictable songs, worthless lyrics, and decent-sounding voices catch more attention than all-around amazing musicians? And the way they cover other people's songs to win and once they've won they have a crew of people writing songs for them because they're too stupid to write their own...AHHHHHHHHHH.

Seriously, who the hell is Simon Cowell? Why does anyone care what he has to say? When people tell me that they watch American Idol and I go off about how much I hate it sometimes they just respond "Well, I only like to watch the beginning of the season when everyone is really bad and Simon makes fun of them." What does Simon Cowell know about music? Why is he a judge on the show? According to Wikipedia he's produced some songs by such great artists as the Teletubbies. How can anyone take him seriously?!

American Idol is centered around the idea that there is only one good kind of music and whoever adheres to that style best wins. Why do people want to listen to crap that all sounds the same? The winner of the most recent season is some girl that's my age. I don't know anything about her, I've never heard her music and I never will. But I'm a horrible musician and I think that I can safely say that I'm probably more creative than her. And no, that doesn't mean I'm jealous of her. If anything I feel sorry for her. A few years in the music industry and she might very well be an eating-disorder-laden tabloid frequenter, and her life will be ruined. Stupid music industry...

...Oh, right, TV. Sorry about that. The point is that American Idol sucks and so does reality TV. I think that the only good premise for a reality show would be one where you force 10 random people onto a couch and make them watch reality shows nonstop. The last one to commit suicide wins-and by "wins" I mean "commits suicide and is rewarded with nothing," because the season isn't over until everyone has committed suicide. That's the best part: whoever makes the show doesn't even have to pay the contestants or anything-they can just make a bunch of money by selling stupid t-shirts and suing the people who put episodes on YouTube illegally.

Of course, it wouldn't work if they knew ahead of time what the show was all about, as not that many people are willing to just commit suicide. Once they're on the couch, though, and the TV starts playing, no one will be able to resist. And there can be all kinds of crazy drama going on between the people where one girl can start crying and some of the other couch members can try to comfort her while others just make fun of her more and the rest that have already been eliminated just lie there dead.

And all of this can be interspersed with random clips of the contestants talking after getting off of the show about how at the time they were going crazy and...wait. If they're dead, how are they going to do afterinterviews?

So the concept is a little bit flawed, but with a little work and some big television producers backing it up, it could easily infest the minds of 30 million or so viewers. The only thing left to do is give it a catchy title. Something like Couchikaze, or maybe That Was A Really Bad Joke. No, the title should be: I Took This Hypothetical Reality Show Idea Too Far And Now I Can't Think Of A Way To End This Article. That should do it.

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...Worst article ever.