When will reality TV shows disappear?

We’re now well into season 6 of The Walking Dead; episode 10, entitled The Next World, aired on Monday evening here in Norway. Fear the Walking Dead starts up again in April, and tomorrow night the sixth (and final so far) episode of The X-Files airs. I’ve been watching them all and loving them. The return of The X-Files after so many years (it went off the air in 2002) made me very happy; I looked forward to getting involved with Mulder and Scully’s cases and their relationship all over again. And these episodes didn’t disappoint; despite mixed reviews (as always), they managed to hold my attention and left me wanting more. It’s not just that all these shows are sci-fi, horror, apocalyptic, or fantasy shows that appeal to me because I find those genres interesting. It’s that we get involved with the characters at the same time, characters that are dealing with life and death situations, survival, family matters, sickness and death. The zombies have to be dealt with and/or dispatched on The Walking Dead; likewise the mutants and monsters on The X-Files. No matter how fantastic it all becomes, no matter that the survival of the main characters is sometimes very surprising or even unthinkable, I am rooting for all of them to make it. This is television at its best—series that I enjoy following, that give me something to think about and look forward to each week; that entertain me, surprise me, shock me, and involve me. There are other good series too; Sleepy Hollow, Game of Thrones, Wayward Pines, and American Horror Story are just a few that come to mind. I’ve watched them too, but The Walking Dead and The X-Files remain my favorites. I’m just thankful that they exist at all, because most of what is available to watch is reality TV. I wish someone would take a hatchet to anything that even remotely smacks of reality TV, and put all these shows out of their misery forever. They include The Kardashians, all the cooking competition shows, all the lip-syncing competition shows, all the ‘how to survive on a desert island or on a mountain-top’ shows, all the shows about bratty children who fall in line when a nanny appears, all the shows about spoiled adults whose credit cards are maxed-out and who suddenly need professional help to get them out of debt, all the shows about presumably fashionable (not) women telling other women how to dress, all the shows about pawn shop users or those who go scrounging through other people’s garage possessions, and rich men’s wives. The list goes on ad nauseum.

I don’t know what I’d do without the TCM channel that serves up films from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, that even at their worst, are one hundred times better than anything offered me by reality TV shows. Most of the old films had real substance; a few were fluff, but the majority were not. These were films made about characters you wanted to get to know, involved in life dramas that mattered. Not so for reality TV shows. I wonder how our Western culture became so obsessed with the latter, and with one family in particular; that family’s every move is reported in the media. How did that happen, and why? Or is it just a matter of watching them because there is nothing else on? Why do I not care what happens to a single one of them? Why do I wish they would all crash and burn? All I know is that I am glad I grew up when watching television was an enjoyable experience, when shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maya, Bonanza, Kojak, Sanford and Son, Bewitched, The Bionic Woman, The Bob Newhart Show, The Partridge Family, The Waltons, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, Dallas, Knot’s Landing, All in the Family, MASH, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, Night Gallery, The Night Stalker, Columbo, Cheers, Miami Vice, Magnum PI, Married With Children, Murder She Wrote, St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, and Remington Steele, among many others, were popular. I watched them all and followed them all. They made an impression on me that has lasted. They were funny, sad, moving, provocative, entertaining, scary, intelligent, but above all, memorable. That cannot be said for reality TV programs. I feel sorry for this generation that has grown up with these shows; they have no real idea of what good television is, except perhaps when they sit down to watch the TV series that we grew up with. It is no wonder that streaming has become so popular; I can watch the shows I’m interested in and ignore the junk. That’s progress.  

The wisdom of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver intrigues me with her simple wisdom that goes right to the heart of things. She writes about the things that matter in life. There is no way that you can read her words without being affected by them, without some part of you knowing that you've been touched by the truth. And having been touched by the truth, that you know that you must abide by it. Here are some of her words of wisdom in the form of quotes and poems........

·         Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

·         Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

·         Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

·         Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

•   To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

·         Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

·         The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

·         You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

·         Still, what I want in my life

is to be willing

to be dazzled—

to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

·         to live in this world

you must be able

to do three things

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go

·         When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

One of those poems that you just recognize intuitively as truth

The Journey

by Mary Oliver


One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – - -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – - -
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – - – determined to save
the only life you could save.

All My Friends by Snakehips (feat. Tinashe & Chance The Rapper)

This song is catchy and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big song...........





"All My Friends"  by Snakehips
(feat. Tinashe & Chance The Rapper)

[Tinashe:]
We open with the vultures, kissing the cannibals
Sure I get lonely, when I'm the only
Only human in the heaving heat of the animals
Bitter brown salt, stinging on my tongue and I
I will not waiver, I will not wait its turn
It will beat, it will burn, burn, burn your love into the ground
With the lips of another
'Til you get lonely, sure I get lonely, sometimes

[All:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

[Chance The Rapper:]
I hate the bar
Pharmacy addict hit a Wall Street traffic, took the car
We reinvent the wheel just to fall asleep at it, skrrr
Crash on the floor, catch the zzz's
Popping the polar opposite to the NZT
Hip hop and the propaganda say they name brand
But I done seen how the xan did my main man
The nights we won't remember
Are the nights we won't remember
I'll be gone 'till November
All my city calls me Simba
Dreams are made for cages, nigga
Lions are for real, nigga
Dying is for real, niggas dying off of pills, nigga
Friday's are for chill and I escaped the treachery
I just had to rest in peace the recipe
The rest of us are praying that the sand will leave a tan
If you're up right now, hope you hear what I'm saying (Hope you hear what I'm...)

[All:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

[Tinashe:]
Do you get lonely?
Sure I get lonely some nights
When the angels on my shoulder
Slump my head
I'm stuck here with the vultures
Hissing and circling
You didn't call me, call me, call me, call me
I'm crawling, crawling, crawling back to you

[All x2:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

The poem Funeral Blues, by WH Auden

A good friend sent me this poem recently because he had been watching the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and this is the poem that is recited during the funeral service in that film. He also knows that I like Auden's poetry, as did my father. There have been so many artists and musicians who have died recently, but today is also the one-year anniversary of my brother's death. I know there are others reading this who will understand the feelings expressed in this poem. 

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.