Weird Stuff on Cable

I have seen Top Chef before and I actually enjoy that. I never can keep up when it all comes on though.

I am sure reality tv is scripted. Which makes it more like - alternative reality or faux reality - or maybe make-believe reality. Goofy - but sometimes I can see where it is sadly fascinating. Kind of like Charlie Sheen and his stint of reality television lately. I can't help but listen. It's amazing.

Fear Factor was another show that annoyed the heck out of me. $25,000 is not enough money to make me eat a raw bull nut and puke my guts up on tv. You'd have to pay me at least $100,000

farmerman, I like shark week. Sometimes they actually provide something interesting.

I also love shows about dinosaurs. This interest started the first time I went to the Museum of Natural History. Wow! I don't know enough to recognize mistakes, but I do notice contradictions.

mimsi, Top Chef is on Wednesday nights at 10 on Bravo here in the Big Apple. A lot of reality tv is like staring at something ooky. It's not good to look at but it's interesting in an unattractive way.

Fear Factor is on in reruns. I look in occasionally. Feh, ugh, yuck.

There are lots of competitions. We've discussed food. What about hair?

Shear Genius. People compete cutting hair.
There was also a competition for extreme hairstyles. People walking around with a house on their head. A house made of hair.
Dog grooming competition. The judges are grooming experts. There's a lot of technical stuff to do. Hey, expoits. Shut up. Let the dogs judge.

Do you get the feeling that I'm watching WAY too much tv?

I watched Man vs. Wild for a bit last night. I found it highly irritating.

The expertise stuff was cool. (For example, he built a platform shelter in the jungle. That was interesting and fun to watch.) The ridiculous risks part was not. And I completely understood dadpad's comment about the cameraman being Ginger Rogers (backwards and holding a camera).

There seemed to be fair amount of staging, too. He ran across a boa constrictor that I highly doubt was just there (I'd guess an advance team of some sort located it and put it there a la "Wild Kingdom"), and which didn't look threatening to me at all until he started poking at it. (Just leave.) I get that he needed to find food, but he was going on and on about how scary the boa was when the poor thing looked perfectly sated and fine to me (not an expert but I've spent time with boas, even large ones, and they eat rarely and then lay around and digest -- it's not like they're always on the prowl).

Then when he went hurtling across a deep gorge on his vine (and exclaimed with surprise as he hit the other side hard -- this couldn't have been predicted?), there were both wide shots of him from the other side of the gorge, with nothing above him for a good dozen feet and bare-headed, and jiggly close-up shots from extremely close range. Those were intercut to look like they were happening at the same time but there was no visible way for the close-up shots to be happening.

How I summarized it is that if for some reason, someone was in a dangerous situation and happened to be filmed getting out of it, that's one thing. Or if he kept it to the cool expertise stuff and left out the death-defying stunts. But the fact that he repeatedly chooses to be in these dangerous situations is idiotic. He's already had several near-misses but keeps doing it. E.G. was protesting and I reminded him that I'd said the same thing about Steve Irwin (before he died I mean). I don't enjoy watching people put themselves at risk when there's a real risk of death. (And yes, this is a current problem I'm having with football.)

And if there isn't a real risk of death -- if it's just staged staged to look that way -- that's annoying too.

/rant

I'm of the same opinion on Man vs Wild. I can't get past the phony drama long enough to enjoy any of the technical stuff.
If you were lost in the wild and did the stuff this guy does, you'd be dead in ten minutes.

Hair shows - I love Tabatha, the mean Australian hair salon expert. Love her.

I've seen her show a few times, I like her too. She's quite insightful -- there are times when someone says something and I see her really looking at them and then all of a sudden she gets to the heart of the matter in a really pithy way.

Wayne, that's a good way of putting it, I agree.

The reality shows that worry me are the ones where ordinary people reveal private matters on television. Many people are not emotionally tough enough to handle such public exposure. I am sure many of you have seen news stories about tragedy resulting from an appearance on a television reality show.

I watched a special called "Modify". It was about piercing, tattooing and other body modifications. Let me say I am not a prude and have both piercings and tattoos. But wow.....just wow.

No doubt Bella Dea - I actually saw something like that on Ripley's Believe it or not. The horn implants and split tongue and all - just a little freaky. Makes my spine shiver.

http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/body-modifications

You gotta look...it is once again one of those things that is both horrifying and fascinating.

Bethie mentioned Tabatha. That leads me to the makeover shows.

Tabatha's show is about making over failing hair salons. She is insightful about what the real problem is. It's usually an incompetent owner.

Gordon Ramsey's makeover show is Kitchen Nightmares. He makes over failing restaurants. He too has to figure out what the real problem is. Usually the owner.

Robert Irvine has another restaurant makever show. Problem: owners.

Then there are the people makeover shows. Two that I know of. What Not to Wear. People dressing and grooming themselves inappropriately--like little kids, like slobs, like sluts, and (my favorite) like angels. Yes, a woman was walking around with a pair of wings strapped to her back.

There's another similar show. Not only can I not remember the name of it, but I can't remember the channel. Just not memorable.

I think I figured out the difference between I'm Alive and I Shouldn't Be Alive. The former is related to animal attacks. The latter is related to untoward things that happen.

The issue of remaking yourself with body modifications makes me wanna barf. Another barf-inducing show, IMO, is Taboo. There's some mighty strange and often horrible stuff going on. I watched once for about five minutes. That was enough for me.

My favorite reality series of all time is/was 'Junk Yard Wars', 'Biker Build-off' at times came close but all bikes all the time becomes tedious. On another hand I like those bad Japanese obstacle course shows with the comic Samurai and Bureaucrat overdubs and a few years ago there was this BBC series on a small number of diverse people trying to survive on a Hebrides Island that I followed.

However, I've come to consider reality TV as an excuse not to hire writers, and good documentaries require writing.

Rap

Did he take his clothes off? ...every second show I've seen.

He found a shipwreck with lots of old bits of rope. you could see how frayed and knotted the rope was... except for one longish piece which just happened to be not knotted up with all the others and conveniently looped over a beam within reach.
Next he finds a dead sheep in a bog conveniently its not flyblown or rotten. Looks to me like it died yesterday Ohh sooo lucky

Too convenient too lucky and most of the "expert stuff" is just common sense and responding to materials available in a given situation.

You'd be amazed what you can achieve with a sharp knife and a pair of boot laces.

maybe you can get onto the "I should have died" show now rap.

Roberta, you haven't been watching Jersey Shore? On that one you sometimes get to see people barf.

I finally decided I didn't want to be the only person in the country who didn't know who "Snooki" was, so one day (or night, I really don't remember) I noticed they were running several hours worth of Jersey Shore episodes back to back. Well, how could I pass up such an opportunity?

People actually get addicted to this show? I kept waiting for it to get interesting. How much partying, drinking, sexual hook-ups (or attempted sexual hook-ups), and sleeping can you watch? Oh, and talk about doing laundry and tanning figures in. I don't wonder that some Italian American organizations got up in arms about this one for portraying negative stereotypes of that ethnic group, although some of the males on Jersey Shore did kept reminding me of Victoria Gotti's sons from that other great reality series. Growing Up Gotti. But Jersey Shore seems to be aiming to be deliberately trashy. Some trashy can be fun, this one just seems to be mindlessly trashy and not much fun. I kept saying to myself, "Why are you watching this?". I think I was determined to discover what makes this show so popular. I didn't discover it. I did get to see Snooki punched in the face by some drunk in a bar. That episode was apparently some kind of highlight of the season.

I did discover Animal Hoarders just today, Roberta. I watched one and a half episodes and then it was beginning to make me feel ill. The people had such obvious psychological problems, but all the attention seem focused on helping the animals. Not that the animals didn't need rescuing, but the people were living in destroyed homes and they didn't seem to have much else to fill their lives except all those dogs and cats. I've watched the other Hoarders program a few times, that one is good for motivating me to clean my house, and the people on that show at least seem better off at the end of the show than they did at the beginning. Fascinating the stuff people accumulate.

I think I watched one episode of Dirty Jobs, and a program called Sensational Sandwiches, about unusual sandwiches all over the country, left me hungry, but amazed people could, or would want to, eat some of those enormous, fat packed creations that looked so unhealthy they seemed downright unappetizing--real food porn. But it did leave me craving something to eat.

Pretty much I avoid all reality TV, along with the weirder offerings on cable.

Oh I like Dirty Jobs!

Mike Rowe has a way with the one-liners. If they're scripted he's a good actor.

dadpad, he didn't get naked this time, no. I can easily imagine it though, fits right into the whole macho showoff thing.

I Love Mike Rowe! He is hilarious. He has also done the voiceover on The Deadliest Catch, and have seen him in some car commercials

rap, I remember seeing those Japanese obstacle courses with the strange dubbing. I've never watched the Junk Yard Wars, but I might give it a try. Reality tv is cheap, yes. It's also everywhere. I'm considering inviting a camera crew in to watch me do nothing. I'm positively fascinating. If I'm not doing nothing, then I'm procrastinating about doing something. It might look the same, but my expression is different. Would you watch?

dadpad, Yeah, it's the Man v. Wild guy that always ends up in in loin cloth. I'd rather see the other wild guy in a loin cloth. Very convenient things to find. But I'm remembering the leeches. They were real. Why do this to yourself for a tv show? They must be paying him the big bucks.

firefly, I've never seen the Jersey Shore, except for when I'm on the west side of Manhattan and glance across the Hudson. I had no idea this show was hot. Of course, even if I did, I wouldn't care. Don't think I wanna watch something with somebody named Snooki. I'm more oriented to shows with guys named Mayhem.

No question in my mind that hoarding is a mental illness. And there's an element of cruelty to it. Certainly the animals could be in a better situation, but I'm thinking of the family members who are crowded out or animaled out. I remember one of the therapists asking one of the animal hoarders what the animals meant to her. "They're my family." The therapist had to remind her that her son and daughters could no longer enter her home or bring the grandchildren to visit--and they they are human. The hoarder seemed only moderately uncomfortable with that.

Never watched Dirty Jobs, and I never heard of Sensational Sandwiches.

soz, I don't know who Mike Rowe is. Looks like I should find out.

Oh...there's a British version (probably the original?) of that with the man I adore forever for playing Baldrick in Blackadder.

It's fabulous!!!!

I haven't seen the American one.

I forgot about Dirty Jobs - I don't think I considered it reality programming...

Mike Rowe is a doll. Very funny. My kids and I both love that one. When we aren't watching sports (very rare).

I was just curious about the show you were talking about dlowan. Worst Jobs in History - which sounds very interesting. Probably very similar to each other. I love the sound of the historical jobs though. I wonder if I can find it on Netflix? According to what I found it started in 2004 - Dirty Jobs November had it's pilot in November 2003.