My Reality TV Summer Slide

I hate reality TV.  There, I said it.  I hate it.  But, even more than hating the reality shows themselves, I hate myself for loving them.

I’m a moderate TV watcher.  I don’t watch a ton of TV, but I also don’t shun it.  When I do have something on, I try to make it something worthwhile that wouldn’t make me horrified if my kids wander in and catch a few minutes of the action.  Typically, HGTV and Food Network are the channels that remain on for background noise while I’m folding laundry, checking emails or paying bills.

Thanks to the DVR now, I’m able to watch shows with actual plot lines while I tackle the mundane tasks.  I love great dramas more than anything else.  ABC’s Revenge, and Grey’s Anatomy, Lifetime’s Army Wives, and USA Network’s Suits, Covert Affairs, White Collar, and Necessary Roughness, are my favorites.  I’m anxiously awaiting the premier of ABC’s 666 Park Avenue, too.

However, every summer, I find myself doing the reality TV Summer Slide.

This year, it started with The Bachelorette on ABC.  I told myself that the only reason I was tuning in this season was because it was Emily.  I remembered Emily as “Ricki’sMom” from an online mommy’s community forum years ago.  I was living in Charlotte then, with my first baby, going through that cloistered feeling all new moms get as they lose touch with the outside world while balancing feedings and naps and trying not to lose their minds.  I remembered reading some of her posts then about the tragic death of her fiance and her new daughter, Ricki.

So when I found out that Emily was this season’s Bachelorette, I had to watch.  However remote my connection to her was, it was still a connection.  I got sucked in from the start, fell in love with Sean (who didn’t?) and watched as she made her decision to begin her life with Jef with one F.

Now that the show is over, that should be it, right?  I got my reality TV fix, and that’s it?  Nope!  Thanks to the timely reminder from a girlfriend that Big Brother 14 has begun, I’m now tuning in to that summer escape, too.

I figure I’ll watch that between catching the ends of HGTV’s Design Star and The Next Food Network Star.

As if my list of reality shows wasn’t already embarrassing and depressing enough, there is one more.  It is, perhaps, the trashiest, most embarrassing member of my line-up.  It’s pretty much the equivalent of admitting that I not only read all three books in the Fifty Shades series, but really liked them, too.

My DVR is programmed to record ABC’s Bachelor Pad.  And I’m looking forward to every low-brow, tawdry, cheap-thrills moment.

When this summer is over, I may have forgotten how to appreciate anything of quality ever again.  I have only one saving grace left.

I have set my DVR for one last summer reality series and I can’t wait for it. Thank God that the world’s greatest reality show is also about to begin at the end of this week.  Where real people get their shot at fame and world-wide recognition.  Only these reality stars have actually earned their parts from years of hard work, rather than pretty faces and a lack of judgement.

Here’s to watching the 2012 Summer Olympics.

I just hope I have what it takes when my DVR is full and it’s decision time over what to delete.