Reality

It looks like marrying millionaires and midgets were not the rock bottom of reality TV programming. A Dutch show has pushed the genre to a new low where contestants vie for a kidney.

While I tend to question laws that prevent people from doing what they want to do with their own bodies, including profiting from them any way they see fit, the thing that bugs me most about this show isn't the moral or legal issues - it's the medical ones. You can't just pick who gets your kidney because you like them the best. It doesn't take more than a few episodes of E.R. to know it doesn't work that way. You can love your husband, sister, child all you want and it doesn't make your tissue match. How often do you hear about searches for out of state organ donors because they can't find a match for little Timmy and he's running out of time? How often do bodies reject the donated organ weeks after a "successful" transplant operation?

All this ranting about stupid reality TV has got me thinking about my own TV watching habits. Over the last few years it's been pretty much impossible to watch TV without getting sucked in by one of the many reality shows. I'll admit to sinking to the gutter-level with Temptation Tuesdays, during which me and my girlfriends would get together to gossip while watching Temptation Island. There may have been alcohol involved. That was probably my lowest point in the reality show addiction, though a seriously unhealthy allegiance to America's Next Top Model signaled the start of my downward spiral. Shhhhhh! There is NO TALKING during ANTM!!!

It all started innocently enough with Survivor and the Amazing Race. I caught the odd episode of the Bachelor and American Idol, but never really got into following either show closely. After a couple of seasons of actually turning down plans with friends to feed my TV addiction ("Ohhhh, sorry. Can we make it Wednesday instead? I have, uh...other plans."), I decided enough was enough. I went cold turkey and didn't watch the season premiere of Survivor. Gasp!

Happily, I discovered kicking the reality TV habit was as simple as ripping off a band-aid. If I didn't watch the first one, I didn't care about the water cooler talk of who got voted off each week because I had no idea who those people were. It doesn't take more than 1 or 2 episodes to pick your favorites to root for and alternatively, your villains to root off. Like reading a good book, you want to find out what happens to the characters, so you tune in week after week. But if you don't take that first hit watch that first episode, you don't care that the hot Latina was almost voted off or that the guy from Boston might be forming an alliance with the wrong girl. Who?

I'm proud to report that bolstered by kicking my Survivor habit, I successfully tackled my biggest demon. I didn't watch a single episode of America's Next Top Model's last cycle and though I did catch a couple of episodes of the one before that, I have no idea who won or even who ended up being the last girls standing. Woohoo! I should get some kind of 1 cycle chip for that, right?

I was worried that moving to a new city where I don't know a lot of people combined with dipping my toe back into the reality show wading pool while staying at Trixie's house a couple of months ago would be enough to trigger a relapse, but so far so good. I didn't watch American Idol again after leaving Trixie's and though I totally would've watched every sequined minute of that trashy Pussycat Dolls show, the only time I seemed to catch it on TV was always playing a repeat.

Really, I shouldn't allow strong character or show of willpower to take credit here. Watching at home paled in comparison to watching TiVo-ed Idol in bed with Trixie while eating a yummy dinner that Tucker cooked for us, pausing to pass snarky snap judgments on the contestants' outfits, sexual perversions and performances. Fun!