Modern American Asceticism

I got home late last night, ate dinner over a Friends rerun. I was too tired to get up and move to the closet when North Shore started. I still can’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

It’s a tough call because I realized something. There are a lot of terribly written TV shows. I mean horrible shows, shows with no redeeming value. Not only is North Shore utter shit, I felt like I was writing it in my head as I was watching. A character would say something, and I could tell, more or less verbatim, how the next however many lines of dialogue were going to go.

For a while I just thought I’d just built up a pretty good understanding of the TV drama formula over the years. I eventually realized that I knew what was coming next because I’d heard the lines before, more or less verbatim, on other shows, other movies, whatever.

The big wedding climax:

Girl: Dad, I never felt that way about Morgan, I felt
that way about Jason.
Girl’s Rich Asshole Dad: Morgan is good for you.
Girl: No, Dad, Morgan is good for you. Why don’t you marry him?

I had the frame of mind to write that little exchange down, I’ve forgotten the rest.

If you’re having trouble placing that last little sentence, you heard it at every recess, everyday of your elementary school life.

I really wish I could remember some more of the conversations leading up to that, the entire hour was bloated with rehashed crap, dialogue that sucked the first time I heard it. Worse, the situations were entirely unbelievable, with two separate staged sex scenes—one of which involved characters who’d never talked before. More or less like this:

Slut who ends up being Rich Asshole Dad’s girlfriend: Blah blah blah, this is the first time I’ve felt free in years, blah blah blah, is there room under that blanket for two?
Guy She Found Sleeping on the Beach: (Feigned surprise) bwa ha (thrust).

That room under the blanket line I actually do remember. Idiotic. Later, there was an instance of fisticuffs between the daughter of the asshole’s fiancée and the man who really loves her. God.

There is a word for this: Cliche. There are really many words for this, but that one sums them all up pretty nicely.

Afterward, I watched The Casino. It also sucked, even for reality TV. It was still better than North Shore by quite a bit.

So I guess that’s the missing link to why reality TV is so popular among executives. It’s not simply cheaper, it's actually better than the end product of some hack writer. You don’t have to pay shit writers to write shit stories around shit dialogue and you get roughly the same sex and violence quotient in more believable surroundings.

Like the Cottontail Ranch.

This is why I stopped watching TV in the first place.

Apropos of the Little Black Book trailer, why does Britney Murphy--in her movies--always look like she’s been chasing Quaaludes with a punch in the face? I mean she's attractive, but she always looks haggard and a little strung-out, like the producers keep her locked in a root cellar when they're not shooting.

Thankfully, Ron Livingston looks like a dream, as always. He remains the celebrity who most closely approximates the nonchalant elegance of arch-friend Ben Kromer.