12:11 p.m. - 2004-06-24
reality TV bites
Not one word about the frequency of my updates.
Not one word.
I celebrated my �month-aversary�** yesterday. I say celebrated, but as I didn�t recognize the day as such until about 11:30 at night, and by that time I was in my pjs, under the covers and watching Big Brother, it was a mediocre affair at best. It�s hard to believe I�ve been gone a month, it seems so much shorter than that. I think that must be the curse of the procrastinator, the speeding up of time. One gets so busy putting everything off that they suddenly realize that nothing has been achieved and it�s weeks, not just days, later. Not that I have a lot of important, deadlined tasks to achieve, it�s simply going about the chores of getting myself settled. For instance, I have some tax forms to finish filling in and send off, one of which would result in a nice little cash influx that is desperately needed at the moment.
But I digress, it�s been one month in London for me. Yay for me!
One of the things that I�ve come to love about this country is its reality television. Now, anyone back home who knows me well is aware of my distaste for most of the North American tripe we like to call reality TV, so it may come as some surprise to find out that it�s become a little bit of an addiction for me here. In particular, Big Brother. And don�t even try to compare it to the whiny, contrived and completely UNrealistic version in the US, the only thing they have in common is the structure of the show. Beyond that, the one here is, by contrast, ab fab! I will admit that it has something to do with the specific series that�s running now, which they�re calling �Evil BB� round these parts. And it really is evil�at one point they tricked the housemates into believing that two were being evicted one week, when in face they were sent to a bedsit fully equipped with TV and headphones so they could watch their �friends� 24/7. Their return not only caused the need for security guards to break up their celebration, but one of the bedsitters was thrown out. It�s fun watching the housemates squirm.
But it�s not just the same types of shows you see at home either. I became interested in one show called �Poor Little Rich Girls� where they took a young, rich socialite and a young, pretty farm girl and switched their lives around for two weeks. I had quite a laugh watching the rich one stick her hand up a cow�s arse.
I think the main reason why I enjoy the reality TV so much more is that there is a lack of sensationalism in them. Watching a show on emergency room doctors and nurses, I noticed that the pace of the show wasn�t always up and down, with dramatic music and quick cut editing to heighten the tension. It was much more level headed, where the woman who arrived with a severe head injury got the same coverage that the guy with an irritable bowel got. It�s just a different perspective.
On top of that, I�ve also been getting into the English soaps, which are possibly the best example of the different approaches these places take towards their TV. One thing�s for certain, you don�t need to be a beauty queen to be a rocking soap star, and I�m not just talking about the men. The shows are about working class, almost regular people in small communities. Considering my soap of choice back home was �Days of our Lives�, you could look up the phrase �from the sublime to the ridiculous� and you would find me and my soaps.
To be fair, though, there could be quite another explanation for my sudden love of anything UK on TV. I only get four channels, and two are the federally sponsored BBC channels.
Who knows?
**A Note to Kristen: I still think the term is dumb, I just couldn�t get the blasted thing out of my head!
