Put the Real Back in My Reality TV!

Or, How Courtney Caused the Bachelor to Jump the Shark...

Here's the simple truth of it. If I want fiction, I'll watch a fictional scripted TV show. If I want truth, I'll watch a reality show. You want DANCING? Watch Dancing With the Stars. You want to see how a bunch of different people cope when they are put together on an island to fend for themselves? Watch Survivor. That's the purity of reality TV.

Cause sometimes real people are way more interesting than scripted stuff. Truth, reality, the way people interact with each other in real ways is quite fascinating stuff. And the good reality shows play off this.

Somewhere along the way, as the moment lulled, and reality TV became huge, those writers whose jobs had been displaced (now that reality TV was so cheap to make) wanted their jobs back. They wanted part of this new phenomenon.

So we have this mixture that we have now (with some shows). Survivor will not admit to being scripted. (I actually believe them.) The most a reality show writer/producer should do is create the arcs of a show (where in the world The Amazing Race travels to, for example; and what they encounter when they are there). But the way the people themselves react to it, is the fun of watching it.

But the real rub is that you have to get 30, 15, 20 whatever schlubs every season who are willing to put up with whatever you put them through. Why would they do this? Simple. It's not just the cash prize they could win at the end. It has become, more and more, that they just want to be on TV.

Let us examine, for a moment, the two WORST examples of that, the two who have burned out my eyes from ever watching The Bachelor again: Ben F. and Courtney.

I think one can generalize at this point (and so I shall): Ben never wanted to get married, find true love, all that wooha he signed up for. He just wanted to have a TV show about himself. Every girl along the way who was going along with what the show was about ("sure, I could see myself with you," "sure, I could marry you," "Sure, I'm falling in love with you..."), once they went down that path, he kissed them goodbye.

But every girl, and I do mean every girl, starting at the very beginning of the season, who was willing to kiss, to cuddle, to snuggle, to put her sex on the line, he was down with it.

Courtney, on the other hand, who was completely open about the fact that she wanted to "WIN" this Bachelor thing, and screw everyone else who was in her way, spent the first half of the season showing her true colors. She was mean, she was condescending, she was judgmental, she was downright cruel. She was the most horrible person that the show has ever had on. Which, of course, in the cold cruel world of television, makes for great TV.

Vicious Courtney. What is Courtney gonna say next? Everyone talked about her at the water coolers. Bachelor producers must've been rubbing their hands in glee.

Except for one little thing. Ben dug her. Or, perhaps, he just saw a similar snake in front of him.

In any case, when little Miss Break the Rules showed up at his suite in Puerto Rico, and they ended up frolicking (insert the other F word here) in the ocean, it was really game over.

What I wish they HAD done, if this had really been REAL reality TV, and they were honest, was to put it back on the table. "Yeah, Courtney and I had sex. What are you girls gonna do about it?"

Although they probably would've all walked out (or most of them), it sure would've made for more interesting TV than what they tried to shovel at us next.

Because once Miss Courtney started becoming Ben's favorite, the producers had to back pedal. Furiously. They had to put words in her mouth that made me choke to listen to them.

How even though she'd been trashing everyone left, right and sideways all season, suddenly now she was "interested in falling in love." Whereas before she "had a hard time trusting people," now she was "ready for love."

It was a joke, and she was/is a bad actress. That whole nonsense of a fake wedding that they did on the hometown dates was laughable.

I won't bore you with too many details, it was painful enough to sit through as is.

My point, though, is that I was one of those who at least tried to invest in The Bachelor and Bachelorette for the romance of it.

And sure, I knew when City Hall is all cleared out and there's a band in there, for them to dance by themselves, that it wasn't Ben F. who did all that "for Lindsi." It was a team of people at ABC who pulled that and everything together. Sure, I knew there were lies (in that regard).

(And then they had Lindsi's parents say, "Oh we got married there!" (As if their 27-year-old daughter didn't know where her parents got married... I could puke...)

Anyway...

Starting from the fake ski slopes in San Francisco on, everything about this season just got worse and worse and worse.

It was almost like the rest of the country was watching the real show, with our sweetheart, Kacie B., and Ben and wench-o-matic Courtney were off doing their own "Screw everyone" show on the side.

At the end of it all, I feel manipulated. By Courtney, yes, but more by the producers and "writers" who created this fiasco. If I see one more helicopter ride, I swear I'll throw up. If I have to watch one more couple climb atop something high (bridges, Aztec ruins, gorges) and then make some LAME metaphor about how going through this together (even if you're terrified of heights) makes your relationship that much stronger, I swear I will heave.

It really was a morass of bad writing thrown at you all this season: Leap lists, and fakeness and unreality. At every rose ceremony (and I DO mean every rose ceremony), the entire country, in unison (or anyone who still cared enough to watch this madness) screaming at their TVs: GET RID OF COURTNEY!

To have to march through, like some twisted romance from hell, as one by one of the most amazing women are dumped, and the black widow spider is still standing at the end, is really beyond the pale.

And I really feel it's cured me of my desire to ever watch this show again. There's too much reality to live. I don't want fake scripted "reality."

I feel used, abused and stepped on, by suffering through as much of this season as I did. EVERY SINGLE PERSON AT ABC who was associated with this show this season SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. Ashamed.

You will never live down the Ben-Courtney fiasco. You have jumped the Swiss shark.

*WRETCH*

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On Not Getting It versus Insight

Two recent examples of this phenomenon crossed my view stream recently, and I wanted to comment upon them.

The phenomenon, visible all around you (especially if you look at Republicans and Democrats these days) is that of people who stubbornly, blindly, furiously, simply DON'T GET IT. You tell them or give them the information, and they do not or cannot see it. They persist in their stubbornness in seeing only their way, the right way. They blather on about their way, having totally and completely missed the actual point.

BLACK SWAN SPOILER BELOW

The two glaring examples of this that crossed my desk have to do with some (male) reviewers watching my favorite film of the year, "Black Swan," and a female reporter interviewing John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Let's examine "Black Swan" first. I acknowledge that all art is subjective. People see what they want to see, based on their own set of experiences and life paths. The problem in the translation of "Black Swan," IMHO, has to do with the maleness versus the femaleness.

My perception of "Black Swan" is very much encased in the female mindset. I see it as a dream. Nina dreams of being the best ballerina ever. She shares this with her mother (who perhaps at one time had similar dreams). She sees the path to this dream resting in her ability to conquer perfection. So she studies technique, and becomes the best technical ballerina she can be.

But her male director tells her, NO! To really conquer the "Black Swan"/dark side of your personality/shadow side, you have to release the perfection. You have to be willing to risk, to feel, to experience life, in all its imperfection.

I think everyone is pretty much down with the story through these parts (male and female). But increasingly toward the end, the movie takes on flights of fancy/dream sequences/explorations of the creative mind. This is where many male reviewers seem to fall off. They resort to trying to take this movie literally.

Oh my God, she's turning into a swan. Oh my God, she kills herself at the end! Well, yes and no.

The way I saw it, from the middle of the movie on, she is still a little girl with dreams, trying to experience her own dark side. She is still trying to attain the perfection that she started out trying to attain. And if the director tells her she must be more sexual, she endeavors to do that.

Is it really a "lesbian sex scene" with Mila Kunis as one male reviewer crassly puts it? Or is it actually the bubbling of her subconscious? Her femaleness laid bare in trying to conquer her own sexuality? Did the experience with Kunis really happen? The director leaves you to wondering. THAT is the beauty of it.

Was she, in the end, enticed by Kunis? Enraptured by her? Wanting to sleep with her? Or was Kunis just the free spirit part of herself that she was trying to catch? Was she then, in essence, sleeping with herself, as the director had instructed her to do? Capturing through fantasy what she perhaps couldn't really capture?

And the end of the movie, that so horrified several male critics, who again WRONGLY take it literally, isn't really her dying. At least, that's not how I see it. It was the ballerina on the music box falling off. It was the end of "Swan Lake," as it's supposed to be. It was the grand spectacle of "la petit mort" writ large. Orgasm, the finale, "it was perfect." The end.

And it had to end in a big bloody spectacle, because life is imperfect, and bloody and messy. Life and love and passion and creativity. That's what I saw there.

So what that tells me is that the "Black Swan" haters need to have more orgasms and connect to their passions.

In the other subject, I confess, when I was younger, I was swayed by the tenor of the times, and my father. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were just wacky and crazy with this "Bed In" thing and preaching about peace. Nuts. Off their rockers.

I saw this in the frustrated questioning of the (I think BBC) reporter. She seemed to be perceiving Lennon and Ono as either complete nutcases, or fantasists wasting her time. She kept arguing about the seriousness of people dying in various wars, and they kept talking about how if people really thought about peace, peace could happen.

Yoko made quite an eloquent argument about "how can you shoot someone when you're smiling?" She was actually arguing quite complex spiritual principles. If you embody love, you cannot simultaneously embody hate. Hate is what causes killing. Hatred and fear. So if you choose love, if you choose peace, consciously, we would have no more war.

I understand that now. I sure didn't understand that then. Neither did the frustrated BBC reporter, who actually got up and stormed off at this point. She reacted as though Yoko were completely wasting her time, when in fact, they were both just trying to get her to understand.

And what will it take, as we have an insane stonewalling Congress on the horizon, for people to put down their arms and their stubbornness and finally listen and hear?

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Endurance Cinema: Conviction, The Way Back and 127 Hours

One of my pet theories is that leading Oscar contenders reflect a current mode of our times. Last year's "Up In the Air," for instance, hit hard on the layoffs that touched so many. This year's theme, it seems, is enduring, despite overwhelming odds against you.

In the wonderful "Conviction," Hillary Swank's character battles for years to free her innocent brother from prison. You see her battle setback after setback. And still she hangs on. Believing that she can do it.

In the beautiful "The Way Back," we have prisoners from a Soviet concentration camp, first exiled to Siberia. Then some of them decide they've had enough, and endeavor to escape (all of this being in the trailer, I'm spoiling nothing; also this happens in the beginning of the film). They do escape, and begin their trek. I suppose they are heading toward that nebulous "freedom." Their path seems to go from Siberia to Mongolia to Tibet to India. On foot.

Needless to say, of the ones who start on the journey, not all of them make it, for various reasons. But it's a battle. A struggle to survive. A struggle to make it to the other side. A struggle to be free.

It seems that many of us, with millions of Americans unemployed, are struggling just to survive, too. Hanging on. Trying to make that meager unemployment check last just a little bit longer. Piecing together rent with odd jobs, believing, against all odds that that next job is somewhere around the corner. I really believe that hanging on and believing you'll make it is the new American dream.

No more streets paved with gold, we'd be happy to get a paycheck regularly. And this "endurance cinema" reflects that. Hang on, hang on, hang on, just a little bit longer.

"The Way Back" isn't quite as bleak and despairing as last year's "The Road," but it's a tough go. The ending brought tears to my eyes, but boy! was it a long slog to get there. Mind you, I do love Peter Weir as a director. His "Dead Poet's Society" remains one of my favorite films. And visually (thank you, Russell Boyd), "The Way Back" is stunning to look at. Vast landscapes that include icy snow-covered peaks, as well as vast deserts.

In "Conviction," though, it was clear what the motive and struggle was. In "The Way Back," they put themselves though lots of dangerous situations, and it's kind of unclear why exactly. They talk at the beginning about how "there's a bounty on your heads," from neighboring villagers, but this threat is never bourne out, or even hinted at, once they escape.

It's enough of a stretch to believe that people one day just say, "Hey! Let's walk across Mongolia!" but that they do it without ANY help from villagers along the way strains credulity a bit.*

I watch "Survivor" pretty much every week since it started (a few missed seasons here and there). The parts I love the most are the way people interact with each other (there is much of that in this movie). The parts I REALLY dislike vehemently (OK, I admit, I'm a city girl, and I'd never survive in the wild) are the parts where chicken's heads are lopped off, or animals are otherwise killed for food. Sadly, there is also a lot of that in this movie.

Sure, I understand, they are starving, they need to eat. Do I really need to watch it, though?

Another endurance movie is looming on the horizon, one that I am distinctly NOT going to see: "127 Hours." People in our office this week spoke again of people fainting at screenings. Know this, anyone who plans to go see this one: the hiker goes by himself into the wild, and ends up CHOPPING OFF HIS OWN ARM. And they show it. GRAPHICALLY. Why are people surprised about this? Every screening has someone fainting.

I don't intend to faint. I don't intend to see it, Oscar-worthy or not. I've had enough of endurance films for this season.

ADDENDUM: * I know it's based on a true story. I know people actually did this. Still...

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Lost: Back to the beginning, and how I hope it ends

Tomorrow is the final episode of six seasons of Lost. I'm rewatching the first episode that they are airing tonight in preparation. I'm reminded again how pure that first season was, and how far off the track they had fallen at times.

The show has a simple and basic theme, not in the sense of "everyone's stranded on an island," but the opening phrases of Lost had a simple message: No one is what you think they are. And, we are all in this together, so we should just learn to get along.

That was the beauty of it. How, in that first episode, as everyone is struggling up from the plane crash, and you, like they, are just getting to know everyone's names, one makes assumptions. Pretty much every assumption made turns out to be wrong, by the end of the first poetic lyrical season.

And how if you really know someone's story, it can make you cry.

Everyone is basically a good person, or think they are, just trying to get along.

The first season, indeed, was filled with philosophy, and poetry, and mysticism, and beauty and magic. But it was squarely grounded in the human heart. Its key moments, closely examined, were like jewels held up to the light, evoking tears.

Then, somewhere along the way, it fell deeply into the dark side, lapsing into the common television themes of torture and imprisonment, and completely lost the magic and the poetry. Completely lost the "everyone is interconnected" poetry, except as a hokey device.

The path became convoluted. Instead of our happy group of survivors, it became us, and then "The Others." Then the Others had others. Then the Dharma Initiative. Then they Dharma Initiative was guided by someone else, and blah blah. Look to fan sites to see the convoluted hokey path.

All I know is, it started with a simple pure, basic premise that was affecting and deeply felt, and veered very far from that. This final season has evolved into some race for the chosen one, that has depressed me more than explained things to me.

So, I don't know how I want tomorrow's finale to wrap up. The very first death of a character we knew was moving. There have been many more along the way, some for inexplicable reasons (why were those two buried alive with diamonds again?).

Then there was the whole "flashback" concept. Used to brilliant effect in Season One, it showed you the castaway on the island, and their former life. Simple. In Desmond's episode, they introduced a "flash forward" concept. In fact, in the same episode. It flashed BACK and forward. The whole next season involved castaways and their FORWARD stories. The season after that involved them going back to the island, after leaving it. Then, they were jumping all around in time, apparently for some important reason.

Now, this season, they are not only on the island, seemingly in this time, but they are also off of it, in what Lost is oh, so coyly calling a "flash sideways." What would happen IF the plane didn't crash. It's seriously enough to make your head spin.

Even watching every episode regularly can leave you scratching your noggin, going, where are they again? What time is this? Are they forward? or back? or sideways?

I guess the simple, "Are we good? or are we evil?" argument was too facile. They had to throw in a little time travel to keep it interesting?

Well, I'm willing to fall down their rabbit hole one more time to see how it's all wrapped up, finally.

I hope for two things. I hope that it ends on a note of hope and optimism, instead of: "Oh, we are all so screwed," as it seemed to intimate so many times in these six seasons. And it's got to end on an eye. Maybe an eye closing. Maybe Jack's eye. The first shot was his right eye. Maybe the last shot could be his left eye? It's got to be an eye. Then all will be right with the world.

Forward, backward, or sideways.


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