MTV started out nice. Music videos. Just music videos.And then MTV started getting creative, giving us what may have been the first reality show, that being The Real World. The Real World may have been MTV's high water mark.
As the decades have passed MTV has slipped deeper and deeper into sewer territory. I don't watch a lot of MTV. A lot of MTV does not seem watchable. But there is this one embarrassingly bad semi-reality show that is so bad a lot of it seems scripted, in that when I've seen it I think to myself, no one really acts like this. Do they?
The bad show I'm talking about is called Parental Control. The premise is that the parents of a guy or a girl are so sick of their kid's choice for a boyfriend or girlfriend that they seek the help of MTV to find a replacement. During the first part of the show we see the parents interview candidates. Then mom and dad each pick one to go on a date with their kid.
The choices show up, then leave for their 'date.' While the parents and the current boyfriend or girlfriend watch the 'date' on their TV. The 'dates' are very lame and painful to watch.
Where it gets appalling and where I think MTV does parents and kids a disservice is the boyfriend or girlfriend who is left behind with the parents is always so over the top rude and disrespectful and annoying. I mean the stuff these kids say to these parents would get a kid kicked out of most people's homes, I would think. Or have I become an old fuddy duddy who has fallen out of touch?
I think MTV and some other spots on the TV dial should do some self-evaluating as to what they are putting out there for impressionable minds to see and hear. If that makes me a fuddy duddy, I'm comfortable with that.
1 comment:
I was just watching this show today (at the laundromat), and I was pretty horrified myself. I can't believe watching people act like dicks is considered entertainment. Also, I noticed that the parents are often just as rude as the S/O. One S/O was criticized, not just for not having a job (fair enough), but for cooking and cleaning around the house (the parents made some snide comments about 'he's the girlfriend'), being short, and having a small bladder. The guy was a dick, but I was like, "Really? He cleans and cooks for her and they're complaining about that?"
Honestly if I was the kid in that situation, I'd be furious with my parents for interfering and being rude to my SO, and pretty ticked at my SO if he was that rude to my parents.
No one in these shows behaves with any grace, poise or consideration.
I guess that makes me a 25-year-old fuddy-duddy, but if the alternative is to be a Jerry Springer reject, I'm good with that.
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