I admit to watching Last ...
Question: I admit to watching
Last Comic Standing and the very cheesy
Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, and I caught
Design Star last night, but overall, I wouldn't miss reality shows if they weren't on. When will this trend die? I know they are cheap to produce and apparently have an audience, but I feel like my eyes will fall out from just watching the ads for
Big Brother. It's all so horrible. I would rather they program reruns, second-run movies or documentary-type fare than this junk.
Answer: I'm guessing you're responding to my summer-reality-roundup
Dispatch, written after spending an entire week catching up with many (though certainly not all) of the summer's reality shows. Believe me, I won't make that mistake again, at least not until next summer's glut. The point I was trying to make in that column was that, as always, there is good and bad in every form of TV, and that includes reality. I'm actually looking forward to new episodes each week of
Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance and
Sci Fi's campy but charming
Superhero. I've just gotten hooked on
Design Star, and I'm very curious to see how Monday's finale of
Treasure Hunters will play out. Even so, I can't deny that after pigging out on the genre, I don't exactly feel it was time well spent. But to address your larger question: Reality isn't going to die, on the networks and especially not on cable, where it has consumed networks like Bravo (sometimes for good) and A&E (almost always for bad). As with any other form of TV, the goal is to find and celebrate what works and ignore what doesn't.
