Reality TV:  the blessing and curse of the 2000’s. My current life comes with the freedom (?) to watch more TV than I used to.  Don’t judge me.  What’s pretty shocking is just how many reality shows are out there.  From home improvement (I’ve lost the stomach to watch these since living through the renovation on our house) to celebrities living through infidelity to driving semis across the Alaskan tundra.  Some are really great — my husband now wants to be Anthony Bourdain and eat his way through parts unknown.  Others are just awful.  Remember when the low point on TV was the bleeped out, chair throwing brawls between wife and girlfriend on the Maury Povich show?  That’s nothing.  To keep up with the cable networks, his guests are going to have to strip and fight in the nude, “Naked and DNA Tested.”

On vacation a few years ago, we met a guy who produced one of the tattoo shows.  We talked a little bit about the oddities of reality TV and I jokingly said that he should do a Real Housewives of the Vail Valley.  He stopped laughing and looked at me squarely.  “No.  Those shows are like napalm for the people on them.  It destroys their lives.”  Interesting that he had his own little reality moral compass.  Tattoo parlors were an acceptable TV subject, but women behaving badly toward each other was not.  And yet, people seem to clamber to be on the shows and the viewing audience can’t seem to get enough of them.

Now we have the chance to watch people watching reality TV with a show called The People’s Couch.  I must admit, it is fun to hear their commentary on these shows, which often mimics my own thoughts.  But it is kind of pathetic.  Let’s switch the channel and see if they’ve found Sasquatch in North Dakota.