Reality Crap or Where are you Donald Bellisario

It's upfront week for the big networks what this means is all of the big TV networks announce their fall lineups to the advertisers, telling them what stays and what goes and what is coming up. Today Fox announced that Terminator: the Sarah Conner chronicles is officially dead, yet we will get yet another year of are you smarter than a fifth grader and American Karaoke huzzah. There was a time when scripted dramas and sitcoms ruled the nighttime airwaves, now its all about "reality" and crap game shows. My main complaint is the quality of these so called reality shows is crap there is nothing real about any of them, if you want to watch reality TV switch on discovery and watch the deadliest catch, there is nothing real about survivor or American idol. When AI started I liked the premise of the show and although I disliked Simon I could put up with his bullshit, now however its all about showing the worst applicants for the first several weeks just so we can here Simon tear them apart week after week. Not only is his input not helpful to the contestants its flat out mean spirited and at least in my opinion not funny. My wife used to enjoy watching Americas next top model and I would watch it with her from time to time one thing I noticed in the earlier cycles of that show was that the judges always gave constructive criticism they did not try and tear the girls down but gave them tips on how to be a better model. This is something that you wont find the judges of AI doing. Sadly for my wife the last two sessions of ANTM have started to slide into the mold of AI they no longer concentrate on the modeling or the fashion but more on the cat fights between the girls which get old really fast, in the earlier cycles there would always be one real bitch in the group and now they are all bitches it has gotten so bad that my wife stopped watching the show. It is to bad really as she had been a loyal follower for the last several years and now refuses to watch. I know several people that watch every season of survivor and yet I cant stand the show, when it first started years ago I again liked the premise but like every other reality show it just went down hill instead of making these people survive in the remote location of the day its all about who is the best backstabbing piece of crap this time. Here is my idea for a reality show take twelve people that have grown up in overgrown urban centers like LA or NYC and drop them by helicopter into a remote area of the cascade mountains with enough supplies to last them a month or two and the winner is the last person to quit and go home. As an added bonus we could also make these people hunt for their food and see how long it takes them to actually get something to eat. I realize that this would eliminate those of us that grew up in rural areas and actually know how to survive in the woods but I have a solution to that to. Take a dozen country folk and stick them in the middle of Manhattan and the winner is the last person to go insane and walk out. Most people that grew up in the country stay there because they like the lifestyle it offers I know I miss the quiet country life I used to have. Another problem shows like American Idol has caused is if a new series doesn't instantly draw huge ratings its dropped look at what happened to Firefly, Drive, New Amsterdam, Moonlight, Jericho, the list goes on and on all of these shows were well written and had great potential and several of them had big followings yet with the exception of Jericho none of them made a full season before being canceled. Of the above mentioned shows Firefly is the biggest travesty, not only did fox cancel the show before its first season was finished they doomed it to fail from the outset. When the project was first given the green light Joss Whedon mad a two hour pilot that was the perfect opening for a new series, yet the morons running Fox decided that they didn't like it and made him redo the pilot so what was supposed to be the second episode suddenly becomes your introduction. If that wasn't bad enough the programming Nazis at fox then proceeded to run the rest of the series out of order move the show from time slot to time slot and then pre-empted it for several weeks to show baseball. All in all they made sure that this great show failed miserably and left we the fans of Firefly with only one thirteen episode season to remember it by. Drive didn't even get that far before they dropped it lasted just four episodes and then disappeared forever. The heads of fox claimed that 24's ratings were slipping due to the poor lead in from drive to this I say BULLSHIT. the reason the ratings for 24 were dropping was because the show is tired and needs to be put down. Yet as they announced today 24 is coming back for another season of Jack Baurs' shitty life, along with more reality crap. Its a truly sad indicator of this society that shows like Survivor, American Idol, So you think you can dance, and all other "reality shows" do so well, in stead of watching these people have these great adventures why don't you go out and have one of your own. Stop being a lazy bastard and go camping or hit up your local karaoke bar and sing a song or two, be your own idol. The only good news coming out of the Fox upfront meeting was that both Dollhouse and Lie to me were renewed for a second season hooray for scripted television. Bring back the scripted series and leave the reality crap on the cutting room floor, its time we took TV back from the marketing snakes and got our shows back, where is Donald Bellisario when you need him. But what the hell do I know I am just an angry Hillbilly.