In the vast wasteland of trash TV, addicts lurk

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© St. Petersburg Times
published February 25, 2003

Okay, so what's worse?

Is it the inane, lowbrow, bogus, moronic, exploitive crap they put on the Fox television network?

Or is it that I can't stop watching it?

I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat the other night (okay, since I watch television lying on the floor, I was actually lying on the edge of my rug) waiting to see which woman Joe Millionaire would pick to share his working-class life after having lied to her for weeks saying he was worth $50-million.

Yes, I watched it, and, what's worse, I already knew which one he was going to pick. A co-worker read it on the Associated Press wire and told me.

I think, in the world of addiction, this is what they call "bottoming out." If you are watching a schlock television show with absolutely no redeeming social significance and you already know what the surprise ending is, then you are in trouble.

How all this got started, I'm not sure. I used to have a normal intellect and reasonably good taste (except for the black velvet painting era, but that was a long time ago).

It might have been Cops, the gritty reality show where TV crews ride with real cops and show us the seamy side of life in scenes that frequently end with a woman in a tube top leaning out of a trailer door screaming, "Lock him up," as the cops take away a shirtless guy who is shouting back, "Get my cigarettes, woman, and call the bail bondsman."

Then, in the course of a workday a few years ago, I visited a now-defunct New Port Richey bar where the regulars gathered every day to see the Jerry Springer Show, the show that shows you what the people who are on Cops at night do during the day.

I guess somewhere during my fourth or fifth time watching a bleeped-out battle between incestuous transsexual food-festishests, I got hooked.

To be fair, I do have a friend who works at the Fox affiliate in Tampa, and whose work I respect greatly. When Fox bought her station, I asked her only a few times what Marge Simpson was really like, and she took it well, although come to think of it, she hasn't returned any of my calls in the past year or so.

And, to be fair, although Fox has clearly been the trash-television pathfinder, other networks have been quick to jump on the downhill rolling bandwagon.

The Osbournes, which could easily have found a home on Fox, is MTV's baby, as is Real World. CBS's Survivor is just Real World with better production values, a more scenic locale and slightly less obnoxious people; and if anyone at NBC can look you in the eye and tell you that network's recent fascination with Michael Jackson isn't part of the same trend, then never let that person sell you real estate.

For all of the jokes, these shows seem to reach deep into our psyches and demonstrate how the veneer of intellect, taste and maturity we all believe we have is, in reality, very thin.

Our relationships (and usually our looks) seem better when we watch ugly toothless slobs scream spittle-spattering obscenities at each other on Springer. Our problems seem smaller when we watch the shirtless, shoeless drunk on Cops decide that he is going to fight four burly guys who are armed with pepper spray, Tasers, nightsticks and guns.

And our willingness to suspend disbelief is in very good shape if we think one of a bunch of attractive women living in a castle with a guy who smells his food before he eats it is going to distinguish herself by promising that his lying about being a multimillionaire doesn't make him any less attractive.

The cuddly little girl that lives in all of us -- yes, guys, all of us -- really thinks the glass slipper will fit and that she won't use it to ram through his foot and nail him to the floor of the castle foyer on her way out the door to jump on his white horse and ride it to the nearest jewelry for appraisals on the necklaces and ring he gave her.

But I may recover. I finally weaned myself from American Idol, promising not to watch again until they actually find a man with a baritone or at least tenor voice who can do something besides falsetto renditions of songs written for women.

And I am tapering off the other shows by watching Blind Date on another network. Okay, PBS it's not, but, as we say in recovery, "Baby steps . . . baby steps."

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