Reality is Relative

I watch a number of television shows on the Lifetime Network, and one thing I find most annoying is the repetitive commercials advertising other shows on that same channel. Especially when I think that show is loud and extremely irritating. That sounds very opinionated, but come on, have you seen the ads for the show ‘True Tori’?

Tori Spelling, from 90210 fame, has a new docu-drama during which the cameras document, in almost real time, the inside look at a Hollywood marriage in crisis. Apparently the husband, Dean McDermott, cheated on Tori, and was recently in treatment for his…issues. The show is about their everyday life and how they are dealing with the stress on their relationship. The ads show these show biz parents crying, screaming and fighting on camera, while their kids sit in the background to watch and listen.

Who would do something like this to their children? Was their other show not enough to inflict on the viewing public?

I never watched the other show, titled 'Tori and Dean: Inn Love' which aired on the Oxygen channel. I had to look it up on the internet.

This show was to follow the couple in a business venture as Innkeepers. They were to purchase, renovate and run a B&B, outside of Hollywood somewhere. When the show started in 2007 they were newlyweds, hence the too cutesy name. I read one article that said they never actually purchased the inn, but leased it. I’m wondering how much of the show was staged and scripted; they are both actors after all.

When the original premise didn’t work they walked away from the inn and returned to Hollywood. By the time the show ended in 2012 it had been all about pregnancies and babies, and the couple’s lifestyle with four children.

‘Tori and Dean’ was cancelled by one network and has resurfaced on another as ‘True Tori’, which I would think doesn’t bode well for Dean’s future on the show.

I don’t like reality shows like this, can’t seem to understand why people would want cameras following their every move, or why viewers would want to watch. I guess it’s much like watching a video of a behind the scenes story, straight out of the Enquirer. Smut and more smut about famous people with too much time on their hands and too much money.

Or maybe it’s Hollywood types who just crave the limelight, and need to be in front of a camera, no matter what it’s filming.

Myself, I like a good fictionalized crime story, and will watch a re-run of an old favourite before I’d waste my time on some faked diva drama. But I suppose I’m in the minority, or there would not be shows like this or ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ on TV.

Thank goodness for my PVR, where I have hour upon hour of crime shows I can play to my heart’s content.

Don’t get me started on the Maury Povich who’s-cheating-and-who’s-the-daddy type of shows, I’ll tell you what I think and you won’t need a lie detector test to know it’s the truth.