Is it me, or is the number of reality shows on TV growing exponentially? I remember when the only reality shows used to be People’s Court and Cops, but now there’s Last Comic Standing and The Restaurant, not to mention Cheaters, Blind Date and For Love or Money. I honestly don’t see the attraction. Truly, I don’t.

People who love reality shows complain that sitcoms and dramas are contrived. Well, duh. Of course they’re contrived; they are plotted and written, and that takes planning and thought. Writers have to think about their characters’ motivations, their backgrounds and their arcs. Directors have to think about how best to shoot and light the scenes, how best to bring all the elements together. Actors have to flesh out their characters and give them life and depth. All of that takes craft. Done well, your suspension of disbelief is strong, and you lose yourself in the world created for you. So of course it’s contrived.

What are reality shows compared to that? First of all, there’s very little craft involved; elements that would never by nature be found in the same arena are suddenly and sloppily thrown together, and the ending is unpredictable—completely unpredictable. That, of course, is the attraction for people who watch reality shows, the unpredictability—that is, until some angry Cheater pulls out a gun and starts shooting folks in anger.

Hey, have you seen Cheaters? It’s bound to happen.

See, most of the people featured in these shows aren’t exactly the cream of the crop. H.E.’s words for them are (to be said in a television announcer’s deep voice): “When good trailer trash goes bad!” But that’s because he believes the casting calls for these things involve dragging a $100 bill through the trailer park. Me, I see these people as media whores, people trying to get their 15 minutes of fame, in the worst way possible—and I do mean the worst way possible.

Why do the networks make so many reality shows? Because people lap it up and because reality shows are cheap to make. No writers to pay, no directors to hire, no actors with whom to negotiate back end deals. The audience is getting cheated out of a show made with actual craft and real funding. For the same amount of advertising dollars and a fraction of the usual production cost, the audience gets Christians and lions, bums fighting in the streets, a handful of no-name folks at whom you wouldn’t look twice while walking on the street, all placed in unnatural situations and made to perform for the audience like a bunch of lab rats beneath glass. Sure, you get unpredictability, but it’s still just as much “contrived,” only this time in the “artificial” sense of the word and not in the “create in an artistic manner” sense.

I write this only because I was once criticized for liking Frasier and for finding Big Brother boring as hell (why should I care about all these whiny, conniving people anyway?)—that, and someone close to me writes television screenplays for a living (because reality shows are all the rage, it’s ten times harder for that person to get a good project going).

If you like reality shows, that’s fine; it’s your life, and you hold the remote. Me, I’m boycotting them. I want the networks to actually work at entertaining me and to give me a story that can engage my mind for half an hour to an hour or so. I want good fiction brought to life, to enthrall me and to teach me, to move me and to make me laugh. I don’t want a fake “reality” played by non-actors acting “natural” in front of a camera for love, for money or for fame.

Because frankly, the reality in reality shows bites. Just bites.

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