Thank you, Early 2000s Reality Television, for shaping who I am, in a weird, sort of warped way.
Thank you, “Survivor,” for teaching me that you can never trust someone 100% of the time. Thank you for developing my competitive edge, and also my first cuss word. Thanks for being in my life for as long as I’ve been alive. When you started, you were like any newborn: original and full of promise. Then as you eeked into your teens, you had an identity crisis of sorts, trying to gimmick your way back to the top, before finally settling into adulthood, where you realized your place in this world. What was once a social commentary on the human’s reliance on technology and society is now a fun little game show old people watch. But we all sell out eventually. You taught me that.
Thanks, “Fear Factor,” for being the uber-extreme/gross TV show that found a million different ways to make contestants eat cockroaches. You were the early 2000s personified, featuring annoying 20-somethings with frosted tips and bandannas as a primary fashion accessory doing stupid stuff for money, and more importantly, so they could be on TV and disappoint their parents. Watching you with my parents always reminded them how lucky they were to have a kid who would rather watch people on TV eat a cow’s eyeball, then actually go out and eat a cow’s eyeball, therefore making my parents love me more than their parents loved them (probably).
Thanks to you, “Dog Eat Dog,” for basically being the Game Show Network’s illegitimate child of “Survivor” and “Fear Factor,” for taking the worst of both shows and putting it into one. You were terrible at making television, but I loved every second of it.
Thanks to “Amazing Race,” for teaching me very early on in life that a two-month long family road trip wouldn’t be nearly as fun as it sounds.
Thanks to “American Idol,” for bringing my family together for years (except for David Archuleta’s season. Man, I hated that guy.) Simon Cowell’s brutal honesty mixed with the antics of Paula Abdul had everyone, including Randy Jackson, wondering what your show was about, but in a way that made it must-see TV. Plus, you gave us Carrie Underwood.
And finally, thanks to all those one-season, heavily gimmicked weirdo shows like “Kid Nation,” “Pirate Master,” “The Baby Borrowers,” “Treasure Hunters,” “Great American Road Trip,” “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?,” “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” “The Contender,” “American Inventor,” “America’s Next Great Restaurant,” “Celebrity Circus” and “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” (among others), for being a list of shows that I know I watched every episode of, but were all such dumpster fires that I don’t remember anything except for vague details like eight-year-olds chopping off chicken heads or Donny Osmond trying to be a trapeze artist. Without you, America wouldn’t know what good TV was.
Thank you, Early 2000s Reality TV. You truly were barely tolerable trash, and I loved every second of you.