Beauty and the Geek

My first review is about a show that just ended on Wednesday. Thanks to my lovely TiVo, I don't miss much TV that I want to see now. I just set up a season pass and I'm all good to go. I love my TiVo. I heard about this new show by Ashton Kutcher and I didn't really know what to think. All I saw was the typical reality show advertisement. It looked like a dating show. Looked like they were going to try to hook up these bunch of geeks with these hotties. So I set the season pass. Catching every episode, I can saftly say that this wasn't the best reality show in the world, but it was pretty entertaining. What it boiled down to was being able to see Geeks being stupid about stuff like fashion and dancing and the such, and hotties being stupid about.. well. Anything involving their 'brains'. Each 'beauty' was paired with a 'geek' and they competed against the other 7 teams in various activities that tested the girls about geeky stuff (or guy stuff) and tested the guys about chick stuff. They touted it as a 'social experiment', which I think is fair. There was one real 'hookup' and that was it. I think what made this one so special, is that there really wasn't anything special about it. There were no huge twists. There wasn't a whole lot of backstabbing going on. In general, everyone on the show ended up caring more about the 'point' of the show than the $500,000 prize for the winning team. Although my favorite team didn't win, they got to the final and by then both of the teams were pretty likeable, so it was all good. I say bring on season 2.

I personally love reality TV. I don't care how goofy it is. I don't care if everyone thinks it's scripted. Of course there are parts that are scripted. Some of these shows just end too perfectly to not have any sort of influence from the network (Joe Millionaire comes to mind, where 'Joe' actually told her that Fox wanted him to pick her.. So she broke up with him after the show). But regardless of that, reality TV fills that human desire for drama. You get to see people more fucked up than you, and it's not even an act! How wonderful is that?! People always complete about how unreal reality TV is. But all it usually is, a game. Games have rules. Those rules have to be followed. The reality comes in from the 'real' people that are playing the game. Not the situation they are in. In general, I just find Reality TV to be entertaining to say the least and I am always wondering what new weird show is going to come out next.