Everyone has their own opinions on reality shows (do you really need a link for that sentiment? OK, here's the result of a google search for "opinions on reality shows"). And much of the focus of those opinions centers on why reality shows are so popular. Of course, in this era of word-processor stare-at-the-computer-screen communications, the loaded subtext of that question is lost. Some people are asking, "WHY ARE REALITY SHOWS SO POPULAR?!?!!!" while others are just asking, "why are reality shows so popular?" In the context of yesterday's post on the ridiculous overworking and underpaying of our generation of Americans, I began thinking that we, who are so focused on jobs in our regular life, seem to have little interest in jobs on television, or at least the television people seem to have little interest in showing people actually working at their jobs on television. Particularly in non-reality television, if you are not a doctor, lawyer, or in one of the crime-fighting professions (or some combination of those three), then your job probably isn't on the small screen. That isn't to say that characters on TV don't have jobs. Think of any random sampling of popular sitcoms from the last twenty years. I'll just pick out five from the top of my head (honestly)- The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace and The Bernie Mac Show. Think of the jobs that the characters in the shows worked. Think of how much time you saw them working those jobs, and of that time, think of how much of it was actually spent working and how much was spent being involved in wacky sitcom hijinks that happened to take place while the characters were at work. Even Seinfeld and The Bernie Mac Show, whose lead characters perform stand-up comedy, a job whose purpose is to entertain people, spend very little time showing them at work (it was never clear if the Seinfeld interludes, showing a few jokes from Jerry's standup, were meant to represent the character "Jerry" doing standup, or the real comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, doing standup, regardless, they never accounted for more than a couple minutes in the show, and were dropped entirely after the first few seasons). What is my point here? Is it that I would prefer a 30-minute show featuring CPAs doing whatever mind-numbingly boring things CPAs do, or delving into the unexciting workdays of computer programmers whose web-surfing is interrupted by nincompoops like myself who think that nothing bad could possibly happen when you open up an unmarked email attachment from your good friend jzzx424242gyi@pppaoda.vfx. No, that's not my point. My point is, that for some reason, the people who decide the content of TV shows have been singularly uninterested in what happens at 99% of the jobs where normal people work. And this can't be just because 99% of the jobs where people work are boring, because I'm sure 99% of people have family, social and dating lives which, while maybe not uneventful, would not be fodder for TV sitcoms. One big reason, I suppose, that we don't see people working real jobs on TV is that the jobs of the people who make TV shows are the making of TV shows. Most of them have no idea what it's like to work in a fast-food restaurant (if ever there was a job that's potential fodder for a sitcom), or to work in as an actuary, or to work in a research lab. And to find out about that stuff would require doing pain-staking research and probably hiring consultants, which takes a lot of time and effort and money, which I'm sure sounds ludicrous when it is so much easier to write a sitcom about two people, a man and a woman, who have ambiguous white-collar careers (how many advertising executives and freelance journalists/writers can there possibly be?), and who hate each other at first, but engage in such witty banter that we know they must eventually kiss and have sex and fall in love, usually in that order. Meanwhile, all of the poor CPAs and lab technicians out there trudge everyday to their 8 to 6 jobs, trudging home with a night's work of catch-up work tucked under their arm, flipping on the tube and dreaming of how wonderful it must be like to be an out-of-work actor or an executive with the Yankees or a corporate attorney, because apparently people with those jobs, judging from Will and Grace and Seinfeld, have the ability to afford upscale Manhattan apartments while spending many an afternoon lounging around getting involved in complicated mishaps with their attractive group of friends. What does all of this have to do with reality TV? Well, it seems to me that reality TV is just the simple progression of the unreality of TV to a new frontier. People on reality TV, just like people on sitcoms, have no jobs or ridiculously contrived jobs and are put into ridiculously contrived situations for the purposes of maximum entertainment. Instead of the maddening cacophony of everyday decisions that confront us real folk, reality TV show participants are forced to make choices and participate in dramas the result of which will determine their partners in marriage, whether or not they win the million dollar prize, or whether they are awarded their dream job or a big recording contract. Isn't this just what we have always been seeing on TV, except now it's not bad actors portraying the situations, it's bad wannabe-actors trying their best to make an impression? Of course, the standard-bearer profession of TV drama, police officer, has had its own reality show for years, Fox's Cops. I don't know if you can count the recent slew of plastic-surgery reality shows as the doctors' entry into the genre, but I'm sure that they and the lawyers will not be far behind in making their marks in America's new favorite tube diversions. And meanwhile, computer programmers and actuaries must content themselves with the possibility of being contestants on Average Joe.