The Wheel of Outrageous Fortune
My wife is a big fan of CNN. Me, not so much. Firstly, of course, it concerns itself with people and events on the other side of the border. I am of the opinion that as long as those people and those events stay where they belong then they are no concern of mine. But even at that, I find CNN to be something of a one trick pony, the One Note Samba, if you will, of journalism. It does make for an engaging drinking game though. Try this next time you have friends over. Tune in CNN, and every time they say "Trump" take a drink. Have lots of drinks handy.
I have to admit they got my attention big time the other day. While my wife was watching and I wasn't, I happened to glance up from what I was doing and read the crawler at the bottom of the screen. It said, "Last Few Days of Revelations". Finally, I thought, something newsworthy. But if it really was the last few days of Revelations, wouldn't all the other news shows be reporting it? And here we are a few days later and so far no locusts, so I think it was just fake news.
CNN has fallen into the Fahrenheit 451 hole (up north we call it Celsius 232.778) to some degree along with the rest of television. Once upon a time TV consisted of shows that had writers, and news that was on at times chosen so as to likely be after something had happened. Nowadays, news shows abound but news does not, and "Reality TV" is everywhere. The intent of Reality TV is to be unscripted and unstaged, but I'm not sure that's the reality. Maybe they should make a reality TV show about the making of a reality TV show and then we could find out. In any event, gone are the days of gripping dialogue such as "June, don't you think you were a little hard on the Wally last night?", or "Beam me up Scotty" (make sure you're talking to Scotty if you ever say this; an inexperienced redshirt might misunderstand and you'll find yourself on very intimate terms with the real Scotty).
Although in all honesty I do watch an awful lot of reality TV. I just can't get enough of those Kilchers. My wife enjoys "My 600 Pound Life" and "Naked and Afraid". I think there's a great crossover opportunity there for some production company. And then there's food porn. We watch a great deal of "Chopped" and shows in that genre. If you're ever on Chopped avoid the truffle oil, and for Heaven's sake, never make a Mole sauce. I don't get Hell's Kitchen, though. Shouldn't the producers realize that someone keeps getting non-team players on the show? They should get chefs who can cooperate and have even tempers. Or instead of getting the teams to come up with two names of people they despise and would rather not have on the team, they should have the teams come up with all the things they like about each other and the reasons why everyone should stay. It would make for more compelling drama. Of course they would still have to eliminate chefs from time to time; maybe they could let a starving lion loose in the dorm.
But my favourite show has got to be Swamp People . I just can't wait between episodes to see if we'll get another side-boob shot of Bruce, or if this will finally be the episode where the gators realize that everyone is watching gator # 1 leaving gator # 2 free to sneak up from behind. Just once I'd like to see the gators win a round.
I think they should make a puppet show version of Swamp People. Swamp Puppets? Anyhow, Troy would make a great voice for a Muppet gator. I also think BBC Earth should pick up the show. They could spruce it up a bit with stunning cinematography and Sir David Attenborough narrating. Although his name is a bit pretentious for a show like Swamp People so they'll have to give him a more down-to-earth nom-de-plume . Maybe they could have some kind of an internet poll thing to give him a cool name.
Anyhow, this is the point in the story where typically the main theme gets resolved, the protagonist vanquishes the antagonist, gets the girl and grows as a person and the plot slides seamlessly into the denouement while leaving an obvious opening for the sequel. Unfortunately, this story was unstaged and definitely unscripted so it just kind of ends.