Thoughts?

donna723

Well-Known Member
Another one I will admit to watching is "Hoarders"! I guess everybody needs someone to feel superior to. I can watch these people who haven't taken the garbage out in decades and tell myself, "Well, at least my house isn't THAT bad!" Some of them are rather pitiful though. Many of those people are obviously mentally ill and some of them only started hoarding after some great trauma they couldn't deal with like the death of a child or a spouse. You really have to admire the patience of those professional counselors who work with these people! Can you imagine trying to deal with someone who wants to keep a 20 year old magazine covered in rat poop because they might want to read it again!
 

1905

Well-Known Member
Witz, my husband also says I am trying to figure out how to get away with killing him! I love the crime shows. I was watching Princess of Long Island (wow, insanity) and in one really big drama scene I noticed the girl's nailpolish ( I always look at nailpolish on people, I notice it) from one angle she had no polish on. That means they must have done a "take" and she put polish on. The same big scene, all yelling and drama, one angle no polish, the other angle polish. That scene had to be done twice....a lunchbeak...a different day..but not reality. I don't care if those shows are fake, they're still good. I love Honey Boo Boo, and Bering Sea Gold. I have never seen Duck Dynasty, but I cannot stand Sister Wives, everything about that is wrong. Of course they're all scripted, networks want people to watch and certain elements are needed for people to watch.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Toddlers and Tiaras is my dirty little secret. Dance Moms would be even better but they only showed first season around here and it is not in the Netflix (T&T hasn't been shown here at all, I heard about it in this board and found it from Netflix.) They are of course totally awful, but after 15 years of being mom of competitive junior athletes, kind of therapeutic. It wasn't only crazy here; and it could had been even worse.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
My thought on the 'dumb southerners' is more along the lines of remembering a college friend brag about how expensive his BMW was to his girlfriend's parents. Her folks are ranchers. Her dad commented that he just spent a quarter of a million bucks on a combine or harvester or some such piece of equipment and would only take it out of the barn maybe 30 days a year, max. The guy's eyes practically got dollar signs thinking of all that $$. He thought her family was poor because she drove a second hand older American made car and had scholarships and grants and loans to pay for college. The idea of that much $$ for a vehicle you rarely use made him rethink it ALL. His Beamer wasn't such hot snot after that, now was it.

I loathe Duck Dynasty. I fail to find anything funny in it, or even punny in it. Of course around here the Vicar of Dibley and Red Green are more the comedy we like. I think Dance Moms is child abuse and those people should be in jail for treating kids that way, and for allowing a coach/teacher to treat their kids that way. Someone would speak to my child like that ONCE. A soccer coach tried it, then tried to tell me I was 'just' a housewife and didn't know what I was talking about. Yeah, he regretted that one.

I enjoy some of the shows that seem less scripted, but mostly if I want tv I want fiction. If I want reality I will go meet my neighbors. The ones upstairs that spend at least an hour and a half each day screaming at each other and their kids. Well, the mom does all the screaming. She throws stuff too. I'm about to call the cops on her the next time it starts before seven am or after ten pm. Drives me batty. I don't' need that on my tv too.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
For all who watch any reality shows, I think you will find this hilarious. Tom Hanks and his daughter Sophie did a parody of Toddlers and Tiaras that is flat out hilarious.


I hope you enjoy, esp the ending!
 

flutterby

Fly away!
My daughter and I love So You Think You Can Dance. I also like the crime ones - Cold Justice, Cold Case Files, a lot of the shows on ID and Bio - channels I don't get anymore. I miss Deadly Women. I haven't watched any of the reality shows like Duck Dynasty or Swamp People, or even The Bachelor or whatever else is on these days. I feel so embarrassed for the people that it makes me uncomfortable. I did like Ice Road Truckers, but it has become too scripted - when I first started watching it, it didn't seem so scripted.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
Oh...and it took me a few years to lose my southern accent after moving out of the south, and the men at least really liked it. I got hit on all the time - over the phone (clients and vendors), by men who never saw me, just because of the accent.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I am not fond of the shows that make southerners look dumb but I think my least favorite right now is Myrtle Manor. I think I dont like it is because it is shot in Myrtle Beach and I hear all the time how much the folks dont like it being shot down there!
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
That's funny, Janet. I have a friend here that has stayed there and gotten to know the folks on Myrtle Manor. She loves it, lol!
 

svengandhi

Well-Known Member
I can't watch Hoarders, it makes me want to puke. I'm not at all a neat freak and I think that my house could easily resemble a hoarder's home due to H. I have a friend whose H is a hoarder. She used to drive all over town throwing his stuff away and he'd go retrieve it. She finally figured out he had a tracker on her car!

My son has made up some new reality show titles - there's one called Wives with Knives. He came up with "sons with guns," "daughters who slaughter" and "hammered hubbies."

I live on Long Island and know some of those princess types, though not the ones that are on the show because they are older than my kids. I could easily recast that show with girls from my area. My friends and I said we should have a reality show called "Train Mamas" which would feature us gossiping on the train, eating out with our friends and show us at our jobs (we are lawyers, doctors, etc.) and with our families. We said it should be shown late at night because it would put people to sleep.

One of my friends is part Persian and she says she's ashamed to admit it since Shahs of Sunset came on TV, but that she also can't stop watching it.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I have never really found the appeal to so called Reality Shows, that are anything but reality.

How can anyone possibly think it's real?? Do they really believe people "forget" there are tv camera's focused on them, on their every movement? Seriously?

Reality shows are the end result of the media business inability or just plain laziness to come up with anything new......or even just a great new twist on the old. If we were back to the days of 3 main stations......the public would be pounding their doors down demanding quality programming instead of garbage. But there are so many endless channels flooding viewers with the same crud.......what is the point?

I watched the one with the Amish. I wish I hadn't. All it did was make me angry. Bogus is all I can say. They may not be perfect any more than the rest of us......but the persons they chose had left the Amish years prior to producers having approached them. Everything else was made up. And then the Amish mofia crappola??? Oh, give me a break! Amish are pacifists, strict pacifist. You don't get mafias with pacifists. They'd be thrown out of the community faster than they could blink. But they can say whatever they want and claim whatever they want because the Amish community won't fight back and won't be seen on tv.

I have enjoyed american pickers on occasion but that is only because I like old stuff.......and finding it much the same way they do.

If just one station could come up with really creative and good programming......the public wouldn't need 500 or more stations to try to fight off boredom.

I haven't had tv in many months. I only miss it when I want to see the weather. Says a lot, I think. phht
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
You're absolutely right about the show about the Amish. There were a couple of them but the only one I watched was the one with the young people meeting up and living together. Those people in no way resembled the Amish and Mennonites that live in our area. I can't even imagine the ones I know doing some of the things those people were doing! And even if they were away from their home communities for a while, there is no way all those 4-letter words would just come effortlessly rolling off their tongues like the people on that show - no way!
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
husband and I call all of that stuff "HFTV", short for horrified-fascination television.
I watch Princess, Money Moron, and Love It or List It all the time. Mainly, because they are shot locally and husband and I love playing "spot the neighbourhood" in places we know fairly well. They also feature a different person, couple or family each episode, so it's not the same people over and over.

Funny...thinking about it, I'm not sure that any of you will know what I'm talking about. I don't know whether any of those shows even has a following outside Canada...
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
Janet it's been widely documented that DWTS was easily rigged, at least up until Bristol Palin was on the first time. There was a page that showed people how to vote 300 at a pop and there were people in their chat rooms that would post "Just spent an hour putting in 300 votes 30 times for our Bristol! Can got to bed happy tonight!" Maybe they did, and maybe they were just trying to ruffle feathers. Either way I find it difficult to get invested in any of them. There is good episodic television out there that I seek out and am happy with.

ABC says they fixed that little voting bug, but I find it hard to believe that someone didn't find another work-around. If people don't care that it might be rigged, I'm sure it doesn't matter.

My point was more that the daughter people are not at all who they pretend to be on tv. They're yuppies who dress and act like swamp people for money. in my humble opinion, it's pretty sad that you can't seem get a successful (or not) group of Southerners into a reality show unless you costume and cast them as a bunch of backwards hicks. They sell people who live down here short.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I agree that daughter was meant to portray people from the South as backwards. The amazing thing is how the positively public responded to the "hokey old values" espoused on that show.

And I find it interesting that it was Phil Robertson, principle expounder of those hokey old values, who was going to be let go. I am not talking about his views on homosexuality. I think I must have missed that episode. I am talking about the way he loves his wife, their relationship to each other and to family, the advice he gives his grandson about dating.

Yeah. I like that show.

So, I don't watch so much television? But I do like to catch daughter every once in awhile. I love it when they gather around the table for dinner at the end of the day, no matter whatever else happened. It's like a present day "The Waltons." I liked the show where Willie decided to take Sadie in for her prom dress, too.

I am totally surprising everyone who knows me with the way I love The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderpump Rules. I swear, those shows are teaching me how, simply and easily, to stand up for myself.

Well, okay. So I did buy a set of false eyelashes.

Well, okay. And a pair of really high heels.

:O)

Cedar
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
Cedar, I LOVE that you are finding such positive lessons in such "trashy" television shows. It really does exemplify the idea that there's some good in all of us.

As for the appeal of the show, I have a feeling that the hokey-ness and bumpkin-esque behaviour is exactly it, and I don't think it's a criticism or a negative either. People get tired of having to be smart and sophisticated and on their best behaviour all the time. They relish the idea of kicking back and acting like a buffoon sometimes.

Here's a perfect example. The mayor of my hometown (yes, THAT guy, the crack-smoking drunk fellow) was all over the news last fall with scandal after scandal. But his popularity remains strong as ever, and he gets mobbed by adoring fans wherever he goes in the city. People love him because he's rough around the edges, a bit of a slob, he makes spectacular gaffes in public and he says out loud all the stuff that people think but don't dare actually speak.

And on a personal note, that same mayor lives just around the corner from me and I've met him at many social functions, and he is The. Nicest. Guy. In. The World. Flawed, yes. A buffoon, ABSOLUTELY. But he is such a loveable guy nonetheless, warts and all.

I think THAT is the appeal of the daughter crowd. They're like everyone's embarrassing uncle, the one who always wore a lampshade on his head at parties, but he was so much fun and not so stuffy.
 
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