Emotional "Reality"

What is it about reality television that just sucks you in and doesn’t let you stop watching until the very end?

I’ve been sucked into many a reality television show unknowingly at first and become a loyal watcher of a handful of reality dramas. I’ve even been channel surfing and stopped on a reality show I’ve never watched before and been completely drawn into a weigh-in or a rose ceremony or a beauty queen crowning for people whose names and stories I know nothing about. People I shouldn’t think twice about take over my TV screen. What’s up with that?

I’m a loyal So You Think You Can Dance watcher (I don’t think I’ve missed but a handful of episodes from over five seasons). Tonight, as I watched the Top 20 dancers being announced for this season’s show, I felt myself unconsciously smiling with a dancer who got emotional when the judges announced he would be in the Top 20. And when a dancer got that look of disappointment for not making the show, I, too felt a little sad. I can understand feeling happy or sad further into the season because I spent weeks emotionally invested in the show and feel attached to certain contestants. But I hardly know anything about any of the dancers this early on in the season.

Another, even stranger example: The other day I started watching The Biggest Loser. I’ve never watched the show in my life, and there I was saying a little “Yeah!” in my head when one of the contestants lost five pounds and another fifteen. What is it about these reality shows that makes them so fascinating that someone would tune-in for a brief moment and feel unwarranted emotion for a reality star?

I don’t believe it’s that I can relate to all these reality contestants. But I do think there’s some satisfaction in sharing in their joy and sadness. I watched So You Think You Can Dance this evening to see who was going to be on the show for the next couple of months. I went into the viewing experience pretty passively, but found myself feeling happy and sad as if I was the dancer on stage learning the fate of my career in reality television.

So do I want to live vicariously through reality television? No. I definitely have no desire to ride around in an RV with drunken co-eds or eat creepy crawlies or even be crowned Miss I’ve Never Heard of This Small Town but What the Heck I Love Any Kind of Be-Jeweled Headgear. But it is nice to sit down, flip on the TV, and lose myself in the suspense and emotion of “reality.”