The key reasons why Reality TV Is Great for Us

For eight single professional ladies gathered in Dallas, it can be holy Wednesday - the evening every week that they can gather in one of their houses for the Traveling Bachelorette Party. Munching snacks and passing a bottle of wine, they cheer, cry and cackle as their spiritual leader, Trista Rehn, braves heartache, indecision and also the occasional recitation of bad poetry to pick from among her 25 swains. Yet some thing is unsettling Leah Hudson's stomach, and it is not just the wine. "I hate that we've been drawn in to the Hoover vac of reality TV," says Hudson, 30. "Do we not have anything better to do rather than reside vicariously by means of a number of 15-minute-fame seekers?"

There there is an essence of reality TV's good results: it can be the one mass-entertainment category that thrives because of its audience's contempt for it. It makes us really feel tawdry, dirty, cheap - whether it didn't, we most likely wouldn't bother tuning in. Plus this, for once, the crowd and critics agree. Just pay attention to the raves for America's hottest TV genre:

jersey shore online

"The country is gripped by misanthropy!"--New York Observer

"Ridiculous and pernicious! Many sorts of cruelty are passed off as entertainment!"--Washington Post

"So-called reality television just could be killing the medium!"--San Francisco Chronicle

O.K., we added the exclamation points, however , you get the concept. Yes, viewers are tuning into Joe Millionaire, The Bachelorette and American Idol by the tens of millions. Yet, in other words Winston Churchill, in no way have so many viewed so considerably TV with so little good to say about it.

Properly, that ends here. It could possibly spoil reality producers' advertising and marketing ideas for a TV critic to speak about it, but reality TV is, actually, the very best thing to occur to television in numerous years. It has granted the networks water-cooler buzz again; it has reminded audiences jaded by sitcoms and dramas why TV could be exciting; and at its preferred, it can be teaching TV a new way to tell involving human stories.

A few concessions up front. Very first, yes, you know that there's little reality in reality TV: those "intimate" dates, in particular, are staged in front of banks of cameras and sweltering floodlights. But it is the only phrase we have got, and i am keeping it. Next, I don't pretend to defend the indefensible: Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People isn't acquiring any support from me. And ultimately, I recognize that evaluating a good well-made reality show with, say, The Simpsons just isn't only comparing apples with oranges; it is comparing onions with washing machines - no reality show can match the intelligence and layers of well-constructed fiction.

watch jersey shore

On the actual ratings level, the latest influx of reality hits has worked a sea change for the networks. And it has place them back on the pop-cultural map after losing the buzz conflict to cable for ages. Reality shows don't just reach millions of people but leave them experiencing a part of a communal encounter - what network TV does preferred, but sitcoms and dramas haven't done given that Seinfeld and Twin Peaks. (Just when was the last time CSI made you call your preferred friend or holler back at the TV?) "Reality has verified that network television is nonetheless relevant," says Mike Fleiss, creator of the Bachelor franchise.

This has sitcom and drama writers praying for any reality bust. "The networks have only so considerably time and resources," says Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of Gilmore Girls. "Rather than primarily working on begging the Olsen twins to allow themselves to generally be eaten by bears in prime time, I wish they will focus on coming up with some thing which could really last." TV may seem to be in overkill mode, because the networks have registered tons of dating shows, talent searches as well as other voyeurfests. And like an overheated nasdaq, the reality market is bound to appropriate. But contrary to earlier TV reality booms, this one is maintained by a major, young audience that grew up on mtv's The Real World and looks at reality as genuine as dramas and sitcoms - and that, at the moment, favors it.

And why not? It would be far better to bemoan reality shows' crowding out sitcoms and dramas if the latter wasn't in such a rut. However the new network shows of fall 2002 were a creatively timid mass of remakes, bland family comedies and derivative cop dramas. Network executives dubbed them "comfort"--i.e., familiar and boring - TV. Whereas reality TV - call it "discomfort TV"--lives to rattle viewers' cages. It provokes. It offends. But at least it is trying to do some thing besides support you get to sleep. Some approaching reality ideas are idealistic, like FX's American Candidate, which strives to field a "people's candidate" for President in 2004. Others are lowbrow, like ABC's The Will (relatives battle for an inheritance), FOX's Married by America (viewers vote to assist pair up a bride and groom) and NBC's Around the World in 80 Dates (American bachelor seeks mates around the planet; after all, how better to increase America's image than to send a stud to other countries to defile their ladies?). But all of them make you sit up and pay attention. "I like to make a show where men and women say, 'You can't place that on TV,'" says Fleiss. "Then I place it on TV."

watch jersey shore online