Idiots

Let me begin by establishing my trash TV cred. Thinking about the summer Dylan and Kelly got together on 90210 still makes my heart skip a beat. No matter how far Desperate Housewives takes her, to me Marcia Cross will always be Kimberly, the psychopath of Melrose Place (remember those scars on her scalp when the wig came off?). OK, maybe I’m just getting old.

But I watched the premiere of The O.C. (OK, I watched it because Tate Donovan--the dad--is my friend’s husband’s cousin--another reason for the Jennifer Aniston sympathy, if you can remember that far back--but I liked it, I really liked it, and the only reason I haven’t kept watching is because I have this thing about watching every episode and I knew I wouldn’t be able to, but the DVD of the first season is next on my Netflix queue, right after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). OK, maybe I just like my trash TV fictional.

But I was glued to the first season of Temptation Island (much to S’s scorn), and I’ve seen the Paris Hilton video (that one S was OK with).

So why did my jaw drop so far, and stay dropped, when last night, as I lay in bed with the remote control under my control for once in my life, I happened upon High School Reunion?

I don’t live under a rock. I know people are idiots. I know people go on TV and are even greater idiots. I know the producers are determined to show them as even greater idiots than that. Why, just yesterday afternoon, I was reading about Germaine Greer’s blistering critique of Big Brother.

But somehow, I just wasn’t prepared for the heights of idiocy reached by a bunch of twenty-eight year olds (class of 1994) apparently completely seriously reliving the idiocy of high school, including one adult female kissing another adult female’s boyfriend in the men’s bathroom at a prom, for god’s sake, and the first adult female weeping because she believed they had really had something going, and the boyfriend standing there mute, because, well, you know, he’s a guy, but--he’s willing to confide to the camera--something like that had to happen to help him acknowledge that they didn’t have a future...after two weeks together filming a reality tv show in Hawaii, for god’s sake.

You know, sometimes I don’t wonder at all why we’re in the fix we’re in.

[Note: If you’d like to read today’s post as a subtle commentary on other events that took place yesterday, you’re welcome to.]