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.  

Celebrating a network of women

There is a lot of emphasis at present placed on the importance of building networks in the work world, and how employees won’t get very far professionally without them. Women especially are admonished for not working harder to build and maintain their professional networks. You never know when you may need them, and you never know when your network may need you. I’ve reflected upon how this relates to my own life. Most of my professional network contacts are women. Many of my contacts/friends entered my life via my different jobs, others through schools and universities, still others from the neighborhood I grew up in. Those I’ve met via my different jobs have become my friends, and we’ve stayed friends even after we’ve left the jobs where we met.

My professional and personal networks overlap to a large degree; I consider my professional contacts to be my friends. And my friends from outside of work, from my childhood neighborhood and schools, are a support network for me in all ways, sometimes even professionally. One of my friends and I collaborated on a consulting web project together a few years ago, at her initiative. I wrote a report for another friend who was thinking about investing in the building of a private lab for the production of a malaria drug, also her initiative. Another friend--a research scientist—asked for my help in publishing two articles on which we’d collaborated during the past few years, and another friend asked me to provide photos for a scientific writing project she was working on. I have helped a teacher friend who had her grammar school class write letters to me to ask about what’s involved in becoming a scientist. I organized a tour of my hospital laboratory for the high school class of another teacher friend, so that the students could get an idea of what it’s like to work in a lab on a daily basis, and to see the techniques and instrumentation we use in our research. A photographer friend asked me to model for her a couple of times, and has taken some nice portrait photos of me that I have used professionally. Another photographer friend designs and formats the text and covers of my published books.When I think back over the years, we have helped each other in different ways. We’ve stepped up to the plate for each other and gotten involved in interesting projects as a result, all of which have enriched our lives, personally and professionally.

I want to acknowledge these women (of all ages) who are a part of my life and who have enriched it beyond measure. I consider each of them friends, including those who are family. They come from all walks of life, and all of them are wonderfully different and talented women. Many of them have combined work and family life with all of the attendant difficulties and joys. Without naming them personally, I can list their various lines of work here:

1. at least ten scientific researchers, one of whom is an author and consultant , another who is an author and owner of a scientific publishing company
2. two photographers and small business owners
3. two social workers, one who heads a non-profit educational organization
4. two teachers (one retired)
5. supermarket head cashier
6. president of a city university
7. global marketing manager for a scientific company
8. fundraising director
9. a minister
10. conflict resolution counselor, author and coach
11. part-time educational and programming consultant
12. university administrator
13. owner of a scientific consulting company
14. three doctors
15. hospital and health professional
16. soil conservationist
17. paralegal
18. computer services manager
19. writer and editor
20. national scientific liaison manager
21. three librarians
22. obstetrics nurse
23. horseback riding instructor
24. three senior research technicians (now retired; all women in their 70s, one of whom works as a consultant)
25. nurse (retired)
26. apartment superintendant (now retired; a family friend who is in her early 80s)
27. tour guide (now retired, 85 years old)
28. secretary (was my oldest friend from my first job, who passed away last year at the age of 86)

Society should be celebrating the lives of real women in all of the different media formats, instead of focusing ad nausea on worn-out celebrities and celebrity wannabes. There are, dare I say it, things to write about other than the size of this or that celebrity’s engagement ring or who had a wardrobe malfunction. Who cares? Is this what makes women interesting? The answer is no. That’s my take on it, and that’s my challenge to society at large. Celebrate the interesting women--the women on my list. They are the women who are advancing the world, one small step at a time, and they’re doing it without a lot of fanfare.