Last night's crapitudinal t.v. (redundant i know), was only worthy because it's the absolute bestest time of the television year: season finales! Even if you've only seen this caca passing for entertainment in a channel-surfing coma, than you well know that even a minuscule amount of it will turn your gray matter into gray cheese whiz. But not for the finales, the crap is gilded, all dream-like, fluffy and wonderous as new love blossoms, suspense is resolved, goodwill for all man-and-woman-kind reigns supreeme and guilty t.v. watchers can feel slightly less horrid for tuning in.
To wit, last night's Bachelor season #49 finale: A Brit with an upper crust accent who looks like a tighty-whitey model emotionally disemboweled some sweet bimba a few seconds before proposing to another on bended knee. The best moment came when the first bimba, after getting brutally rejected, said to the bachelor twit that the other bimba was the "falsest woman in the house." Imagine that, a carefully orchestrated "reality' show about love where a fake pot calls a fake kettle fake. What must it be like to watch yourself on national television horned-out and slobber-boning, psychology destroying someone, or convulsing, blubbering and babbling before millions of rubber-necking Americans? It's all perfect and horrible, treacle and a trainwreck and difficult to avert your gaze from, except that it's the finale!
Then came MTV's The Hills' grand finale, the greatest fake reality show ever ever ever -- impeccably produced, with gauzy shots, city lights, inane contrived dialogue about inconsequential pap with elongated quizzical looks backed by an insidious sad pop alterna-rock balladry. Lo and Audrina can't get along as roommates and L.C.'s caught between the two crying crocodile tears -- who cares? Eveyone, because it looks so damn good. The dark Spencer and his plastic-surgery-victim robotron/fiancee Heidi are in a tiff and she blows the best fake job she'll ever have and what does that mean to anyone? Everything. MTV has done an incredible job gilding the pitiful and dreadfully boring SoCal elite with production gloss and sheen far outweighing the cast's trite existences. It's like an Extreme Makeover for the pathologically uninteresting.
Gossip Girl, on the other hand, is a fictionalized drama about hot-cha-cha upper east sider prep schoolers and on a whole nuh-thuh-lev-el. Last night's episode was the first i'd seen in its entirety. Teen goddess Blake Lively (who my gf and i have an agreement about...) is going through a typical teen rebellion phase -- the kind we all have: being a cheating coke whore, abetting a fatal overdose and ruining your mom's wedding. Yes it's preposterous and disposable and the rich kids are deplorable, but they're all so
damn cute and at least its fictitious. Add in the degenerate underage plot twists that inexplicably make it past FCC censors, and you have a brilliant series that is our collective responsibility to support and love and keep on the air -- at least until next week when the season finale runs.
