My prerogative

When I was a young girl, I remember loving the coming of fall because it meant that summer television reruns were over. Would Mallory give Skippy a pity date? Would Rudy get her final comeuppance? Would Pa Ingalls finally move his family out of Walnut Grove? Now, what’s to make of seasonless television? We have a landscape where network television is stagnant, too beholden to their parent conglomerate companies to produce interesting (read: expensive) programming so reality television, with neither star salaries to pay nor licensing agreements to share, has blossomed like so many daffodils on a spring day. Cable television has taken up some of the slack, but the majority of cable channels specialize in reality programming too. Even channels that do have some original programming (AMC, USA, TBS, etc.) for the most part show old movies. Pay cable has too small a subscriber base to afford a 7 night primetime lineup. Reality television is here (duh)...and I LA-LA-LOVE it.

This comes as some surprise to me and a great surprise to Sparks. I used to be a much more interesting conversationalist before reality television and childbirth. It started out very innocently with Dancing with the Stars. Then Top Chef. Then Project Runway. Then American Idol. WTF? I’ve got a year-long rotating crew of chumps who are sambaing, chopping, sewing and singing their hearts out for my silly amusement. I tivo all this crap and the only original scripted programming we tivo is The Office and 30 Rock, and from what I’ve seen this season, Michael Scott and Liz Lemon are only a few episodes away from jumping over the shark on a motorbike. I think I might have to go back to reading books again. But they should really cut Ty Murray and can’t wait to see what Anoop is going to sing tonight.