Besides the general announcement for WIDE VARIETY THEATRE below, I sent out a few personal messages to people who live in the L.A. area. I wrote to Tyson from BATG 2, but he lives about 6 hours north of there. However, he recommended that I write to Wes and Cher since they’re about 20 minutes away from Hollywood. Their response was one of surprise for a verrrrrry good reason: when writing my recaps during Season 2, I did some serious Cher-bitch-slapping. But the bad part isn’t that I did it in the first place—it’s that I should have known better.
This is a topic I railed upon multiple times while I was up on the screen, but I think I only glazed over it once during the show’s second run: what appears on reality TV and what actually happens can be all across the board. That’s one reason why it takes several months to do the editing for shows like this—they have hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews and camera footage to sift through, trying to create the characters they want.
People can sound smart or stupid; they can perform well or horribly; they can act mature or childish. I know I did all of ‘em at one time or another, though childish had a tendency to dominate my behavior. (Not like you wouldn’t have known by reading everything in here.) But for every episode, the editors decide which character they want each person to be. Episodes 3 and 4, I was a scared little pussy, but when Episode 5 rolled around, I was stunningly heroic and tolerant. Guess what? That was me! All of them! But they were only the little bits and pieces of me that the editors wanted each time.
So like I said, I should have known better for my Season 2 recaps because the same pretense applied. Instead of thinking about the little bits and pieces, I was watching the show like everyone else: sitting in a recliner, eating popcorn and shaving my pubic hair. Okay, maybe that last part was just me, but I wasn’t thinking about the footage that ended up on the cutting room floor, I was thinking about what the producers were showing me on the screen.
During one episode, I’d write, “That person is an asshole!” The next week, “Gosh, that person isn’t so bad after all.” Evil and nice! Still the same person! Every time a “change” like that happened! (Insert sound of slapping myself in the forehead here) Duh… I knew that, but I didn’t put up a disclaimer or anything and I should’ve known better. Thus, to Cher and Chris and everyone else who’s “evil” on reality TV but isn’t in real life:
My bad.
(Good luck editing that out, fuckers!)
