The cold, wet weather that lasted into the early part of August didn’t provide much of an incentive to go outdoors. Fortunately, however, this year has offered some very interesting reality TV.
In January and February I found myself watching what I call the Egypt show, a touching soap opera that was on every night. That series ended with a cliff-hanger, but it must have been canceled, because I haven’t seen it since. The same goes for the Japan show, a very moving tragedy that, I suppose, just didn’t get the ratings that were expected.
I’ve tried to watch the Syria show, but it’s such a low-budget production; I’ve never seen such shoddy camera work. I tried to watch the Somalia show, too, but I could never find out when it was on.
The Libya show, on the other hand, kept me hooked. It was a kind of western, with a classic villain. The heroes looked like they were losing, but with some help from their friends, they finally learned how to shoot their bullets at the enemy instead of straight up into the air. The show seems to have just had its season finale, so now I’ve changed channels again.
Too much information?
The latest offering, shown all weekend long, was a repeat of a disaster movie about rain and floods. I’m sure I’ve seen it before: there were very familiar scenes of streets that were underwater and people who weren’t supposed to be there being rescued from the upper floor of their house.
America has had so many natural disasters this year that they’re starting to blur together. There were three major tornado outbreaks, then the flooding of the entire Midwest, a heat wave, and now more flooding — this time of New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut.
I do sympathize with the victims, many of whom have lost their homes or even their lives. In fact, all of the above just proves that, at least to me, real life is far more gripping than any work of fiction. I just wonder about the effects of watching all this news on TV. Is something even news when we’re so used to seeing it?
A never-ending program
There is a channel on American cable TV called The Weather Channel, on which you can watch the weather all day long. If you tune in for more than a few minutes, it will put you in a kind of trance. You’ll begin to think that whatever you see must be important, because it’s being updated every few minutes. The tension builds as you seriously begin to wonder what will happen when that cold front descends from eastern Montana. You react to every change of the wind speed in Omaha and can’t wait for the latest color radar map of Indianapolis.
When The Weather Channel started out in 1982, that was about all you got, but the program directors later discovered that they could attract viewers with severe weather. An event like Hurricane Irene is (if you’ll pardon the expression) a godsend to The Weather Channel, as viewers stay tuned for the latest advisories, footage and information. Between disasters, the Weather Channel now has regular bona-fide TV series about the weather. They follow storm-chasers around, talk to seismologists and meteorologists and give a voyeuristic look at storm damage.
It’s all repeats for now, but I predict the new fall TV season will give us some more variety. I’m hoping that a better director will step in and do a remake of the Syria show. Also, that other miniseries from a couple of weeks ago looks like it will be renewed — you know, that compelling drama called Global Economic Meltdown. It might even be on for several seasons — unless it goes over budget.
