Published: August 18, 2009 11:00 pm      

GESENHUES: Reality TV has bite

Oprah is hosting Bear Grylls this week when she reruns an episode about surviving disasters, like avalanches, lightning strikes and plane crashes. There is no way in all of heaven, purgatory and earth that I would survive a day in Bear’s world. I can barely survive his show, “Man vs. Wild.”

As my husband is a Discovery Channel addict, I am forced to watch all the survival shows that usually end up with someone cold, wet and eating something that I’d be too scared to kill with a stick, much less eat. “American Loggers,” “Deadliest Catch” and now “Verminators” are all on his DVR list.

I will never in a million years understand how the “Verminators” show got picked up. What must the producers of that show promised the executive heads?

“It’s going to be outrageous. We will be filming homes so infested with rodents that wives who are watching will have to leave their own homes just to get as far away from their TV as possible.”

The only show on Discovery I can stomach is “Dirty Jobs,” and that’s because of its host. (Now if Mike Rowe was a verminator, that I may be able to handle.)

While my husband’s TV viewing habits fall snugly into the Discovery Channel’s target audience, I fall closer into Bravo’s target audience of gay males age 30 to 45. I could spend an entire day watching any of the “Real Housewives” franchises; although, Atlanta has quickly become my favorite.

And soon, “Flipping Out” will start with my most beloved obsessive-compulsive, overachieving and sometimes mean perfectionist Jeff Lewis. As ridiculous as he is, he’s got a way about him that makes me want to invite him for sushi and talk about why everyone is so fascinated with Tori and Dean, who aren’t even on Bravo, but have the gay male and 30-something female target audience nailed.

Personally, I can’t get enough of Tori. Part of me admires her working mother prowess, while another part of me — buried about 20 years deep inside my unconscious brain matter — still wants to go to the Peach Pit with Donna Martin. Either way, she’s got me hooked on her show and her books.

I wish I was more of the kill-your-TV set, but that’s just not who I am. We are a TV family.

I was raised on “Gilligan’s Island,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Happy Days,” “Dukes of Hazzard,” “Little House on the Prairie” and “Welcome Back Kotter.”

All the great classics are part of my memory list and primed me to be an active member of today’s TV-watching club so fueled by voyeurism. While there are worthwhile drama-driven shows written by actual writers (most of them on HBO), the modern day attraction to reality television is what I consider a cultural phenomena.

The curious tendencies of modern TV-watching audiences have propelled the reality-TV genre to unbelievable heights. (Or is it lows? There are actually shows about parking-ticket traffic cops and car-repo guys — and, again, verminators). Although, I don’t think it’s as much of a curiosity as a natural result of our consumer-driven culture.

Not to get all esoteric, but the emptiness left from trying to fill ourselves with stuff we buy from Target only creates a deeper void that causes us to judge others in an attempt to gain some type of happiness for ourselves. Or, at least, that’s my excuse for calling out Sheree from Atlanta as possibly the craziest of all the housewives.

We feel much better about ourselves when we can watch tiny, semifictional characters in a box in our living room making choices we presume we would never make.

Of course, who knows what I would do if a camera crew was following me around and the guy who was supposed to be planning my Independence Party went mad and got all in my face when he knew he was supposed to have my poet on the line with me days ago to write the perfect poem that was going be read over loud speakers as I entered my party on a throne being carried on the shoulders of buff, topless men.

Yes, that may make me the craziest of all housewives, too.

Amy Gesenhues is a freelance writer who lives in Floyd County. You can read her daily commentaries at www.AmyWroteIt.Wordpress.com. E-mail her directly at amy@amywroteit.com.