Reality TV is Reality, Really

Like It Or Not, Reality TV is Reality, Really:
Of Bachelors, Their Pad, and the Decline and Fall of America
By Camille LeCrow
September 13, 2011

I’m the only one here at Red Crow corporate headquarters who watches TV with any regularity. Occasionally, I try to find reasons why the others should check in with the tube, but my attempts fall on deaf ears. I’ve tried the anyone-who-calls-himself/herself-a–contemporary-journalist-needs-to-know-how-contemporary-minds-are-being-shaped argument. But no go.

I’ve tried the there’s-some-incredibly-good-work-being-done-by-writers-and-actors-these-days-on-TV pitch, but they could care less.

And the weird thing is, they didn’t even go to the Steiner School. They have their own non-denominational contempt for television.

 

Anyway, the only way they agreed to let me write this column is if I promised not to mention the new Fall Season anymore to anyone here, nor suggest we owed it to our readers to do a special Preview Section.

Oh, well.

Most of you know that the Summer Season is coming to a close, and some of the best shows are offering their Season Finales. It’s sad to think I won’t have “Suits” for a while. I’ve grown to love their quirky look at corporate law and things have taken a very dark turn.

I’ll miss local actor Scott Cohen’s terrific all-purpose fixer, Nico, on “Necesssary Roughness.” Scott Cohen has been doing such good work on television for many years now, including his outstanding work in “Street Time” about a decade ago, and I hope the show has a long life.

I appreciate Alfre Woodard and Jason Lee’s commitment to tackle the continuing realities of racism while offering a wry take on the difficulties of humane policing. Plus, I love the music of Memphis and seeing a city on TV other than New York, LA and Chicago.

“Rookie Blue” and “Flashpoint” have managed to remain compelling for another year. Let’s hear it for our Canadian brothers and sisters for bringing us some really good TV. “Flashpoint” is about a tactical police unit that responds to a wide range of emergency situations. Trying always to find a negotiated and peaceful resolution, the team is prepared and sometimes required to use lethal force. What I find more impressive is that the writers and cast manage to humanize everyone involved – while each episode is highly charged with extreme life-and-death dilemmas, it is always complex and very moving.

In the midst of my catch-up sessions with TIVO, checking in with “Haven” and “The Closer” and “Rizzoli and Isles,” I took a side-trip to the “Bachelor Pad.”

Now if you want a look at what’s going on in the country today, you can spend some time flipping from Fox News to MSNBC and watch an army of paid political consultants and politicians talk and talk and talk. MSNBC becomes ever more Fox-like with each passing day, oddly giving the discredited Al Sharpton precious air-time.

In normal times, all that might scare you straight. But I’m guessing you’ve already developed a powerful immunity to political blather.

I have another suggestion. Now I don’t want to pretend it’s going to be easy. You’re going to want flee within the first few minutes. I suggest you have a supportive and loving guide with you. To remind you, it’s not really you. It’s them. Probably the only way to pull this off is to hide the remote.

By now I’ve watched a total of seven hours. I’ve recently checked my blood pressure, had a blood test, and so far, so good. No permanent damage to speak off. But I have been to the mountaintop and great God Almighty I can see. I mean really see.

Now here are a few things you need to know before you try this at home. “Bachelor Pad” airs on ABC-TV on Mondays from 8 to 10 PM. I can feel the doubt rising. Hang on. This is no wild goose chase. No scam. This is Monday’s most watched TV program. In the U.S. of A.

“Bachelor Pad” is a spin-off from ABC’s very popular shows: “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” where young eligible singles are presented with either a bevy of single women or single men all looking for permanent indelible love. You don’t play unless you’re prepared to propose or be proposed to.

“Bachelor Pad” is where a lot of the losers go for a second chance at love and $250,000. A place where roses are everything. Get a rose, you live for another episode.

There is always a luxurious house where they all frolic and back-stab and strategize about who they can evict, and how they can get one rose closer to the dough.

Now in normal times, I’d say “what the heck” or “live and let live.” But, even with all the TV I watch, I don’t think these are normal times.

Last I looked the official unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. For whites, and the bachelor pad is very white, the rate is 8 percent. Those unemployed for 27 weeks and longer was 6 million, 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

We’re actively involved in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and marginally in a third, Libya.

But the remarkable thing is in the land of “Bachelor Pad,” you’d never know it. Never a mention of the wars. Never a mention of the jobless. Of the Tea Party or deficit. Nothing. Nada. Forget global warming.

Last week, I watched as President Obama went to the Midwest to remind everyone that even though we have problems – the debt, unemployment, etc. – we are still the greatest country on Earth. Yup, the Earth. In the entire world. It’s comforting to know that both the Democrats and Republicans can agree on this one proposition: American exceptionalism.

No matter how many people go without work. No matter the fact that 21 percent of American children live in poverty. No matter how many trillion of dollars we owe. No matter how many wars we can’t win, we’re still Number One.

You see the real problem is President Obama hasn’t been watching “Bachelor Pad.” Spend even five minutes with Vienna, and you’d immediately bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq and divert those billions to education.

 

Spend a minute with her boyfriend, Kasey, and you’ll immediately want to divert billions for comprehensive mental health clinics.

ABC is performing an enormous public service. The “Bachelor Pad” is worth a hundred depressing documentaries. One episode is worth a thousand hours of Keith Olbermann tossing crumpled paper at the television camera.

All of you who have scoffed at reality TV. Well, the joke is on you. The reality is that reality TV is reality. You can pretend not to care. You can decide not to watch. But, if you ask me, Camille LeCrow, your humble entertainment editor, you’re missing the boat. The Boat. The Big Boat. The Titanic that is now our Noah’s Ark.

This is America. And it’s scary. Very scary. And far from exceptional.

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Editor’s Note:
Camille LeCrow’s ancestors came to the continent on the Santa Maria, then walked north all the way to Philadelphia. Her great, great etc. grandfather and grandmother, Ebenezer and Emilia LeCrow, established the very first Red LeCrow News in 1756. Phineas Bogg, the unauthorized biographer of Emilia, wrote that she was known to spend hours each day staring at the fireplace, occasionally painting rocks in an attempt to capture the very essence of the changing America.

Years later, Camille gave up her work as an astronomer to read screenplays in Hollywood, then very successfully wrote a few under a pseudonym. Three agents and too many meetings later, a few failed romances with producers and leading men all in her rearview mirror, Camille has driven east to the Berkshires for rest and rehabilitation. We are pleased to offer her insights, especially because she has enough in the bank and we don’t have to pay her.