The Reality of Reality Television

I am pretty much a sucker any really bad reality television.

Sara Gilbert

                My daughter Kyrie and I have become addicted to a few reality shows.  You can often find us tuning into to boo the former “Yup” man, Dave Hester from Storage Wars, laughing seriously at the incredibly silly Beard brothers of Duck Dynasty, or becoming very frustrated with the arrogance of the “Legend” Captain Junior of the Seabrooke on Deadliest Catch. So it was no huge leap to add the newcomer Preacher’s Daughters.  For those who have never seen it, you can catch it on Lifetime on Tuesday nights at nine CST.  In truth, I do not highly recommend it.  It so far from real that it makes me want to throw things at the television but yet we are still recording it on DVR every Tuesday night.   So like Sara Gilbert, I am the sucker.        

                I am cynical of reality television. I have grown to enjoy the laughter of watching Barry’s antics, rooting Brandi and Jared to get a locker it is like rooting for the underdog in a game, and in truth, I was seriously relieved when Dave Hester was fired because I feel he suffers from little man complex.  Deadliest Catch was something my oldest son watched. I felt that I got to know the characters as much as one can from a television show.  The Robertson family make me laugh mostly because I know I have family like that, some of which are reading my blog saying she does not mean me. They provided me with a sarcastic view of life and even taught me a thing or two along the way.  I have to be straightforward; I did some serious research on how crab traps work.

                So the story is based on three families, the Colemans, the Koloffs, and the Perry family.  All of them have some individual issues and odd dynamics but as a collective whole, they are far from real. Even their anger is passive aggressive.  I feel like they are so busy with the Christian aspects of life that they really cannot deal with normal people. I am disconcerted that their “reality” does more to disparage Christians than to inspire them.  They coerce the daughters not behaving and harass their non-church friends.  They treat the world as if it is full of nothing but Satan beyond the church’s hallowed walls.  They live for the contradictions they present between what I say and what they do.  The walk is a little more talk for the most part.

                The Colemans are a black family. The father Ken is a preacher in a Pentecostal church and the daughter is eighteen-year-old Taylor.  The strict disciplinarian father has three sets of children by three different women and one marriage.  Taylor is rebellious.  She wants to model and act .  They tell her she is beautiful but when she tries to be normal, they tell her she is ugly. He says you are doing things behind my back  but every time she tried to talk to him about herself, ken basically shuts her down and says I will tell you what you are going to do and when. Seriously?  She is eighteen.

                Now Kolby, the daughter of the Koloff family is Kyrie’s favorite.  She is sixteen and comes from two Preacher parents.  The mother is a nurse and teaches abstinence in the church to its young members. The father is a reformed (retired) wrestler. He is by far the most “real “one of the bunch.  The mother gave a young man a four-page application to date her daughter and predetermined they were never to be alone together, no touching, and no activities that did not include group chaperones of adult age.  Seriously?  She was so paranoid that she broke up with the young man (a preacher’s son) because he was evil and would hurt her.

                The Perry’s are so fake. Father Mark, the pastor, is so proud of his reformed drug addict, partying daughter who has a baby because God gave him a vision of how powerful her faith will be and  where it will take her.  He was ever so sweet about being shocked that she lied about knowing who the baby’s father was.  He was so supportive while she went through three possibilities on air anyway to find him. He was not cross; he simply said it is the right thing to do for Eden, the baby. Seriously? No one is that cool, calm, and collected in a crisis. 

                I am so sadly disappointed that in scope of reality television a show like this could have been powerful but instead we have a man that I feel is borderline emotionally abusive, a mother that is creating a totally dysfunctional daughter, and  a set of parents that cannot even act. The testimony they had to offer about faith is lost in transition.  The most real thing I have seen was when the Kolby’s father had the young man in a head lock lightly and said,” you know son if you hurt my daughter I might have to hurt you.” This statement, of course, sent viewers into outrage.  I really am undecided as to whether I feel more dissatisfaction with the show itself or the cast.

                It is easy to be caught up into entertainment that is piped into your living room. Every year, we find that easier.   I know that I often DVR a show so that I do not have to watch commercials because they are often the same one over and over, usually it is the one that annoys me the most.  I am completely content to fast forward through the entire BS.  We all have our favorites and we like certain actors so we watch them.  Our minds want to be lifted up from our everyday problems and the drudgery that is our daily routine.  We are swept away for a bit into a new time and a different place. Reality television was designed to give you a look into the other people’s lives and help you to strive for something more.  I mean who does not want to have the life of a Kardashian or the home of a real housewife.  Wealth, fame, power they are the ever-illusive grass that is greener in someone else’s backyard. Success for the hard working person on television inspires us to do more, want more, and buy more in our own lives. If it is a positive influence then that is a great factor.  

                Faith is not entertainment. In my humble opinion, faith is a deeply personal journey to spirituality that leads us to believe in something far bigger than ourselves. That cannot be bought or sold. It certainly cannot be influenced by charade.  Therefore, what purpose is there for this show?  The reality of these families is that they are not bad people, heck; they are not even terribly original. People all over the country even the world are experiencing the same problems. Their irrational approach to dealing with daily life is not either but it is disappointing.  I expect more from my leaders especially my spiritual leaders. 

                I am the mother of four children.  They turned out pretty well.  They went to college. They are strong, caring people. They did not do drugs or go to jail. It was not an accident. It was because I instilled good values in them. I trusted them and I told them they could always come to me with any problem. There are some things I did not want to hear, things I did not want to have to explain but in the end, we all made it through.  I learned early on that if I treated them with respect and trust, that for the most part, their actions proved that my faith in them was appreciated.  When it was not, we corrected the path and went on down the road.  I was not by any means, perfect.  I made my share of mistakes.  With our oldest child, his father and I predestined that college was THE PATH. Anything else, he wanted to do would have to come after he achieved his associate’s degree, which he did.  However, he floundered a great deal. Eventually he found a home in the Air Force working on planes. The lesson was that it really was not our decision to make.  He needed to find his own way to fly.  Control works when they are small not when they are young adults.

                What you offer your children is what they will understand.  If you teach them nothing but fear and pessimism, then they will lead sheltered lives as children and experience great devastations as adults or fail to thrive all together.  If you are strict, then they will rebel and when they get freedom, they will over use it.  When they fall down and get back up, it is our job to help them up but not to sugar coat the situation.  We are all human.  We all make our share of mistakes. The best we can offer is to love them, show them tolerance, and pick them up when they fall because eventually they will need it.

                I also have to advise you at this point, that reality television is entertainment.  It is edited to entice you to watch more.  There is seldom much reality in it.  Mostly, it’s good editing. If you find yourself the sucker for a bad show, I hope you try not to bust the television.  I also hope you will find a voice and question, why it is necessary to have such dribble on the air.  When the aggravation gets to be to trying, use the power button, turn it off and find something more constructive to settle your mind on.  On the flip side though if you find a valuable lesson or a purpose or it inspires you to something good be grateful for the lesson.  Whichever way the crow flies it’s still just television.