Last Night on TV?

MSN.com has a brief video titled “Last Night on TV.” The video recaps shows that aired on TV the previous night. I watched this video for the first time this morning. I have no idea why. This morning’s video highlighted the winner of Hell’s Kitchen, the latest “betrayal” on Survivor, and the end of the contest vomit-fest on MTV’s The Challenge Cutthroat. Literally, the clip highlighted four or five contestants vomiting on the ground, with an off-camera female voice shouting, “You get it out, girl!” This video recap came the morning after the Boss and I, enjoying some couch time after her brief foray to DC this week, flipped through some 250 channels on cable without finding anything we were interested in watching. We settled on Phineas and Ferb on the Disney channel.


I’m not much of a TV watcher. I have a rather large high definition TV hanging on the wall, and if I watch three hours of TV each week, that’s a lot. After football season ends, my viewing time will drop significantly. I’ve seen one episode of Hell’s Kitchen. After you’ve seen Gordon Ramsey verbally decimate one chef, you’ve seen the entire show. I’ve seen one or two episodes of Survivor (years ago), but honestly, wouldn’t it be a better moral and ethical choice to take that million dollar prize and give it to someone who actually survives day-to-day in hellish conditions (Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen not included) rather than awarding that money to pampered Americans who get a wee taste of poor living conditions while revisiting immature drama that they should have escaped when they graduated from high school? Jesus experienced betrayal at the hands of Judas.  Survivor contestants experience disappointment.  Someone will have to explain to me the premise behind The Challenge Cutthroat. MTV lost its allure in the mid 80’s, shortly after I deployed on Westpac. It was fun to watch in the barracks during sub school, but there really wasn’t time for it after that. And, if watching people vomiting is the highlight of television programming, I’m thinking that maybe less is more. If we have so many TV channels and so much programming that we have to resort to watching people vomit to be entertained, I’m thinking that maybe we’ve lost sight of what is important in life.