two-twenty

meta is as meta does

This afternoon, while pausing to watch MSNBC for 15 minutes over a bowl of reheated Indian food, two-twenty learned that Sam, of “The Apprentice” infamy, proposed to his girlfriend this morning on The Today Show. She inexplicably said yes. We are pleased that Sam and his hat were fired by Trump; we are saddened that this poor woman is going to have to put up with Sam until her therapist makes her understand that everything wrong in her life stems from her involvement with him.

(Speaking of Sam’s getting fired, we heard what was going through his head as he glared his intensely evil glare at Trump: “I am shooting laser beams out of my eyes! You are nothing! I am reducing you to a pile of… no! No! The Donald’s bionic hair is too strong! Oh, okay, I’m getting up. I’m leaving, already, I’m leaving!”)

The Sam engagement bit led into, in all seriousness, the following on-air discussion topic: “Reality TV: Here To Stay?” The Real World has been around for over a decade, Survivor is heading into its eighth season (or else Les Moonves gets a mullet), we are forced to re-live The Bachelor and The Bachelorette; even one-trick-pony schlockfests (mmm… schlock) like Average Joe and Joe Millionaire have had multiple seasons. If “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire” couldn't kill reality TV, what can? So obviously the question is not, “Is reality TV here to stay?” but “Will it ever die?”

The folks at MSNBC could not figure this out, not even with the help of their own talking head from The Center for the Study of Popular TV, Robert Thompson. Two-twenty has seen this character around before, in fact he is rather ubiquitous. Nearly three years ago Salon did a piece on his overexposure, and today not much has changed. Thompson was recently profiled here and quoted here.

Thompson does, however, make us contemplate some of the implications of living in a purely referential culture: "We are clear-cutting the pop cultural past a lot faster than we are reforesting it... Now we're getting to the point where some of the most distinctive and memorable culture is repackaged culture."

Hey, wait, check this out! Adam Mesh from Average Joe 1 is getting his own show!