Real-Life TV

More than 10 million viewers tuned in to watch the sniping, sippy-cup-surrounded Gosselins announce their separation last week on Jon and Kate Plus 8. I was not one of them.

Chronicling life in a house teeming with twins and sextuplets, the show holds no interest for me. It might as well be called Your Life, Only Worse.

I don't like television that depicts normal people slogging through the challenges of daily existence. It doesn't take me anywhere I fantasize about, doesn't tap into that daydreamy place in my heavily subdued subconscious. For that, there's American Idol, whose plucked-from-obscurity premise fuels my fervent secret desire to be a powerhouse chanteuse who can inject irresistible effervescence into doo-wop week, disco week, and everything in between.

There, I said it.

Many of us claim to hate the vast actorless landscape of "reality TV" even as we're privately — religiously — watching one of its unscripted series. Weekly, we track the lofty goals, questionable choices, and predictable disappointments of strangers who would wallpaper the nation's flat screens with their greatest flaws and failings.

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