Why the hell do I do this? Episode III: I am TV Masochist.

TV Masochist: (n.) One who purposely watches television programs (esp. reality shows) that contain elements that make one feel upset, perhaps to somehow replace one's lack of feeling or otherwise boring life with a safe experience of extreme emotion.

All you reality show haters out there, well, sorry, but when it comes to reality TV, I often get hooked. I guess I'm into the vicarious living. (Cindy's got a great blog, by the way, and posts a hell of a lot more often than me)

Here's a few shows, in no particular order, that range from me being hugely devoted to(read: TiVo Season Pass, never miss an episode, even when I do I download it off the Internet), or the show at least at some point moved me.

Aside: Now, this certainly doesn't embody all the TV I watch, (boy is that a scary preamble..) but this list includes all the shows that I remember finding myself getting teary at. And yes, I'm a guy and I cry at the TV when no one else is around. I'll never successfully feign machoness, so I might as well embrace the fact that I'm a sensitive doughboy.

• The Amazing Race
• Survivor
  
• Intervention
• The First 48
  
• 30 Days
• The Apprentice
  
• The Contender
• Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
• The Biggest Loser
• Eco-Challenge
• Joe Schmo
• American Idol
• The Ultimate Fighter

And unfortunately, the list doesn't end there. I don't know what it is, but if someone's on TV and there's real emotions involved, they can get me goin'. I've been known to get into such crap as Wife Swap and Boot Camp. It's pretty sad.

Aside: If the show is an "elimination" type of show that has seasons and a real episode order, I tend to follow my normal M.O. for watching fictional TV Shows, which is to binge on these shows. I watch several episodes back-to-back in a sitting. Of course, you need a TiVo or other DVR, or a large collection of shows on your computer or on DVD to do this, but it's my favorite way to get my fix. :)

Now, you may recall that I had a disclaimer for the "reality show haters" in the beginning. Why do some people just hate reality shows? Now, there certainly are some shows that are ill-conceived at best, and blatantly bad rip-offs at worst, but if a show can convince me that the people involved are really emotionally changed, I get into it.

Holy Crap This is a Huge Aside: You also might recall that I put Joe Schmo up there as one of the shows. This definitely wasn't a popular show, it was on Spike TV, and the premise was a sort of "Truman Show" spin: They made a fake "live in a house and do stupid shit while trying not to get eliminated" reality show, with all actors playing stereotypical reality show people, like "The Bitch," "The Gay Guy," "The Asshole," etc, Except forone guy, who was a real guy thinking he was on a reality show.

For that guy, they went and found the nicest, most unassuming, naive, yet charmingly sincere guy they could find. They really couldn't have picked a better guy.

Now, you'd think that the show would be all about this guy and his emotional roller coaster as the show was SO over-the-top doing crazy things to mess with this guy's head, and the actors were playing such wacked characters that he might be suspecting that something wasn't right. And for the most part, that was what the show was about; and that stuff was VERY interesting.

But what it really came down to that made the show great was that all of the actors, writers, and staff just totally fell in love with this guy, and the people that were scripted to do mean things to him really didn't want to, the actors that were his "friends" really became really close with him, it was really great stuff. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth it.

Anyways, getting back to the topic of the post; the biggest tearjerker on the list for me has to be Intervention. Seeing people hit rockbottom is emotionally jarring, and makes me appreciate what I have, but at the same time reminds me of how sheltered I am.

I've never been really addicted to anything, and to see these people give up everything that they care about to get high; it's hypnotic. I'm glad that they keep it real (sigh, can't believe I used that phrase) and show the people that punk out on the Interventions too. It keeps with the show's theme about being brutally honest.

Aside: Crystal Meth is FUCKED UP. Just about every other show has some young guy or gal who's f'd up on Crystal Meth, and they just don't care about anything else; they're totally different people.

Well, at least my pantheon of emotion by osmosis is only limited to reality shows. At least I'm not watching soap operas, or soap operas for men, also known as professional wrestling. And at least I'm not watching Merideth Baxter Birney movies on Lifetime about strung-out women that get abused and have to stand trial about something usually involving a baby.

Off to bed now; but this weekend I'll probably binge out on Survivor or The Amazing Race. I have about 6 episodes of each sitting on my TiVo. So no spoiling! :D