Springer Meets Fear Factor

Tonight was the premier of “I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here!” They call this reality TV. Don’t believe it for a minute. What it amounts to is a cross between “The Jerry Springer Show” and “Fear Factor”. Only not as good. To put it into proper prospective you would have to take the absolute worst elements of Springer and Fear Factor combine them and you would have this monstrosity.

No, this wasn’t reality TV at all. If this wasn’t scripted then Spencer Pratt and his whiney wife Heidi are better actors then I ever would have imagined. Twenty minutes into the show all the other celebrities wanted to kill them. By the end of hour two (yes, it was on for a gut-wrenching two hours) the Pratts were praying with Patti Blagojevich and singing Kumbaya.

It was evident early that this show was gong to be a train wreck. I quickly emailed fellow reality TV aficionado Jamie Cairo to get her take on it. Her comments included, “Thus far it seems stupid but I’ve got nothing better to watch and I love those sisters (Frangela).” and “I’m disturbed most by the fact that they are allowed to disrupt the flora and fauna of the jungle with aerosol hair spray…”

That’s how bad this poor excuse for reality television was. Just to make sure it wasn’t my sophisticated taste in this particular genre of television, I logged onto facebook. I was greeted with the following:

“This is lame. I can't believe I am watching this.”
– Andrea

“This show is really bad. Not sure I can watch much more of this.”
– Julie

“This has got to be staged.”
– Bill

“Seriously! Who ARE these people?????”
– Catherine

Then the media bigwigs arrived on the facebook scene. No less than Tim Cuprisin, the long-time TV and radio critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Steve Dahl, long-time radio personality began offering their educated opinions.

Cuprisin and Dahl provided these pearls:

Cuprisin - "Reality" TV doesn't get more pathetic than Patti Blagojevich's appearance on NBC's "I'm a Celebrity" tonight.”

Dahl – “Sanjaya just swallowed an iguana tail whole. Not the first time he's done that I bet.”

Cuprisin - “I'm betting the second hour of "I'm A Celeb" has lower numbers than the first…”

Dahl – “Patti Blagojevich is explaining Rod's charges to Spencer is hilarious. The celebs believe he's innocent and pray for him!”

Cuprisin - “Now Heidi is praying for the Blagonians…That'll fix everything.”

Dahl - “They are going to waterboard the celebrities. They call it the Trauma Tank. Ha ha ha!”

I think Brent Gohde said it best when made the following comment to Cuprisin, “Tim, whatever they're paying you to watch this stuff, it's not enough.”

I will give it another shot tomorrow night. Until then…from the booth.