My Latest Television Outrage: Bridalplasty

[bjarvis]

I've been meaning to write this for a while but I was busy focusing my outrage at other television obscenities like "Tabitha's Salon Takeover," "Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares," "Jersey Shore" and many others.

I'm largely out of higher priority targets at the moment so I'm going to rant on the obscenity that is "Bridalplasty."

If you haven't been exposed and/or tortured by this program yet, the basic premise is too bizarre for me to describe effectively. Let me quote from the producers: "brides-to-be compete in challenges to earn plastic surgery procedures in a quest to win their ultimate dream wedding."

What. The. Hell.

How sad & pathetic does one have to be to design a competition like this? Hey, let's get a bunch of women together to perform in arbitrary and degrading competitions. Better yet, the prize won't be money 'cause that would give them an 'out' by letting them say on camera that they'd use the winnings to pay for great-aunt Martha's dialysis or something like that. Nah, let's make the grand prize plastic surgery! That'll ensure no one can even think of weaseling out of confessing before the entire planet they are so incredibly vain that they'll do anything for a crack at liposuction, bigger boobs and a facelift! And just to ensure the audience doesn't miss what horrible people these contestants are, we'll make them brides-to-be so we can compete with the bridezilla reality programs too!

If you watched more than ten minutes of an episode and didn't experience an overwhelming sense of nausea and/or a compulsion to immediately take a shower, then forcibly toss your television through your living room picture window into the front yard, you should seriously consider therapy. Lord knows these contestants should be forcibly hospitalized & medicated. The producers, however, are beyond help: they should be exiled to a small island in the northern arctic so their remaining families can recover their dignity & hope by telling themselves they're orphans.

Comments

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

as one whose teevee is on for maybe 30min a week (half of which is getting the weather data), maybe I'm not the best person to respond. Not that I'm going to let that stop me.

I suggest a much less hard-on-yourself attitude to take when these things are onscreen is to play Margaret Mead, and marvel at the odd and unusual folk customs this foreign society has.

and if that fails, there's always the ever-reliable laugh-and-point approach. Carried me through many a (otherwise potentially) tense moment.

[bootedintexas.livejournal.com]

you are making my decision not to have cable better and better.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's even more crazy than you wrote… the grand prize is plastic surgery and a huge sum to have a hollywood-garish wedding, but EACH CHALLENGE RESULTS IN A MINI PLASTIC SURGERY REWARD WHICH IS PERFORMED IMMEDIATELY.

Words cannot describe how low I think TV producers have gone.

[wescobear.livejournal.com]

I think they should combine this with "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and/or "The Jersey Shore" if they really want to reach the nadir of vulgarity. Proof again that television is a vast wasteland.

I'm glad to see the "sanctity of marriage" the right espouses getting such considerate treatment.

/ sarcasm

[omero-hassan.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine how they manage the potential liability issues. What lawyer in his or her right mind signed off on this?

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

Yeah really. Let's compete for the chance to have surgery with potentially serious consequences! Not to mention the ethical issues for the docs.

Sadly, one does not expect TV producers to have any ethics whatsoever, and the brides are ... well ... vulnerable, to put it nicely.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it would be awesome if the winning bride used the prize to turn herself into a Klingon.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

Where have you been for the last ten years since Survivor premiered? People like this "reality" shit which has nothing to do with reality. Queer Eye, Project Runway, Ace of Cakes, Housewives of _________ (fill in the blank)etc. etc. ad nauseum. The networks looooooooooooove this kind of programming since it's dirt cheap. People watch this chit the same way they love to see a train wreck. You're not helping by encouraging people to watch :)

If it was so bad why did you continue to watch it? :)

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

Not to pick on one of your favourite shows, but all "reality" shows including Project Runway have some of the same elements though not as tacky as the one in this "reality" programme.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course they do. However, at least on PR, it's simply a bunch of (variably) talented folk doing what they do, in hopes that they will win a prize associated with their vocation. It's not any more 'real' than The Price is Right to be sure.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I'm not aware of any other reality program which rewards its participants with surgery or medical procedures.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Actually, I could kinda understand their in-house counsel signing off on this --after first repeatedly saying no and then caving in with advice on how to manage the risk. It's the doctors I seriously wonder about... are they insane? That's a rhetorical question... everything about reality television is patently insane.