You've Got A Lot of 'Splaining to Do

Tom’s and my all-time favorite show is “The Amazing Race.” Ever since the kids were little, Tom and I have watched it on Sunday nights and given them the play by play on Monday morning. By the end of the season, the kids have all sorts of opinions of who should win and why, but it’s sort of like old timey radio, since they aren’t actually watching with us.

Now that they are 10 and 8, we hoped we could watch as a family. Tom and I dvr-d the premiere to preview it. This show is modest by reality show standards--none of The Bachelor’s making out, bikinis, and “let’s take it to the next level” stuff --but there is cursing. Lots of frickin’ and freaking and crap and ass and even a bitch thrown in here and there. That was enough for us to veto the kids watching last season.

I know I would curse too if Tom and I were trying to race around the world for a million bucks-- we argue when we try to go downtown for dinner. Put me on a bus in India? I don’t even want to think of my reaction, but that doesn’t mean I want my kids to hear foul language.

Then there are the couples they choose. One year there was a controlling husband who seemed borderline abusive to his former Playmate wife. And each year, it seems, there’s a gay couple. Now before you go and call us haters, let me just say please don’t. We just don’t feel like having to do a lot of ‘splaining during our reality show escape. I didn’t feel like explaining the gravity defying, enormous boobs of several contestants last year, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti-implant.

If you’ve noticed with these reality shows, whichever way a couple has been labeled at the beginning comes back time and again throughout the competition. Last year we had a mother/son team in which the son was deaf. They’d show a competition and then cutaway to the mini-interview: “As a deaf person, how did today’s challenge effect you?”

I think it will be the same this year with an interracial couple, a team who has a member with Asperger’s, and the dating born again Christians. This painfully pretty couple, on one of their mini-interviews said, “We are committed to being chaste so we aren’t going to have sex before marriage.” I imagined sitting there with Jake and Molly. “Well, duh. Of COURSE they aren’t having sex, and none of these other people are either.” I mean, how many times this season will their sex life, or lack thereof, be mentioned?

So, even though the language in the first 5 minutes meant that we probably wouldn’t be watching this season as a family, we were wondering if we’d have more gay contestants. We’ve had the lesbian ministers (boring!), the stereotypical middle-aged gay couple who made a strategic mistake by choosing to stay in a quaint little resort celebrating how far ahead they were but ended up last. Last year we had the gay father/son. They were our faves and we hated to see them eliminated.

As they introduced the couples this season, “Inter-racial couple!” “Best Friends Since Childhood, one of whom has Aspergers!” “Married Yoginis” “Dating On and Off for Years—Will he Commit? (NO.), Professional Poker Players!”… we saw one more couple coming down the pike. They were male. They were young. They were hot and well groomed. Could it be? “Brothers!” Tom and I high-fived.

Cutaway to the mini interview: “So how did it feel to come out to each other as Gay Brothers?”

Oh well.

Thursday Night Sadness

I miss E.R.

Sometimes I'm relieved when a show ends because then I can get part of my life back.

Not feeling that way this time.

The Boob Tube

I’ve been pondering our tv habits. For the first 6 years of life I only let the kids watch PBS, but for the past year I’ve allowed the Disney Channel. During that same year, there has been a marked increase in sassiness, preening in front of the mirror, and eye rolling in our house. I was pretty much ready to blame it on Hannah Montana (whom I personally find very entertaining!), when I started thinking about the tv shows of my youth.

Shortly after the Sesame Street, Electric Company and Wild Kingdom era, I remember watching “grown-up shows.” While the Disney channel focuses on tweens, these shows were more for teens and adults. I’m talking Three's Company, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island. We had a pretty steady diet of these at our house throughout the 70’s.

I missed the more wholesome family fare of The Cosby Show, Family Ties and Growing Pains in the 80’s because by that time my parents had put the kibosh on weeknight tv viewing and I was too swamped with homework to put up a fight.

I think of Three's Company with its bedswapping, boob jiggling and gay mocking. I think of The Love Boat with a whole lotta sex and not a whole lotta love. I mean Doc was terribly unattractive, but he had a different woman in his cabin every night!

And Julie McCoy was a coke-head. Ok, I know that was in her off-screen life, but it’s not as if I couldn’t read the National Enquirer headlines for myself in the grocery store line. Fantasy Island? Super sleazy and super creepy (I’m remembering lots of lightning flashes and voodoo). This doesn’t even include the topics of war, drinking, extramarital affairs-- not to mention cross dressing-- on M*A*S*H.

The show we weren’t allowed to watch was Charlie’s Angels. Our way around that was to have our friends, the Joneses, audiotape episodes for us. Yep, they’d hold a cassette player up to the tv and record the show for us and let us listen to it later. Inspired! We had stacks of Charlie’s Angels trading cards and debated the superiority of one Angel to another. Years later we got to watch the repeats during the summer. Pure bliss.

I’m just wondering if letting my kids watch “kids’” shows, and limiting them to that, is causing them to soak in this weird alternate universe of fashion, bubble gum rock, crushes, and idiotic parents. Would it be better to let them watch some adult tv, such as Tom’s and my favorite reality show The Amazing Race or should we throw the tv out the window altogether? It’s not like I became a bedswapping, coke-snorting voodoo queen by watching the shows of my youth. I doubt any of it rubbed off on me at all. On the other hand, I do see some imitation of these tween shows in my kids and I don’t care for it. Hmmmm.

BTW, who was your favorite “Angel?”