James is going to hate me for taking this stance, but I’m STILL pissed at Janet Jackson! Yes, there are other parties to be angry at, such as JT and CBS and blah blah blah, but she’s the one who took the heat from the Super Bowl, so she’s the target of my ire. Why am I STILL mad? Because of the effect her little stunt has had on my favorite pastime: Late-nite dating shows.
Since these shows have started new midseason episodes, they SUCK. OK, on Blind Date, which has never been the most conservative of the bunch, they now censor anything involving a tongue. Girl licks a guys chest: censored. Sucks a straw: censored. But the BIGGEST nail in the coffin? AVERAGE PEOPLE.
Blind Date has always been like Fear Factor; they’ve had a knack for finding gorgeous people to perform perfectly mundane, and in some cases extreme, situations. The BD formula was simply: See hot guy. Hot guy goes out with hot girl. Two possibilities: A) they hit it off, end up in hot tub and spend the night together, or B) they hate each other, and proceed to insult each other until the end of the date.
Now, that’s all been thrown to the wind! They’re using average looking, everyday people. The kind of people who are obviously REAL, just like you and me. Now, I don’t know about you, but there are very few people I know whose dates I’d like a peek at. Nothing against my friends, but I simply don’t think anything exciting and “LA” is going on during their dates. The appeal of the dating shows was that you were never sure if the people were “real” or if they were actors trying to have a springboard into a career. This theory was also supported by the fact that several of the daters “did the rounds”, meaning they’ve been on every show from “Extreme Dating”, “Blind Date”, and “Change of Heart” to “5th Wheel” and “elimiDATE”.
Since the Super Bowl, not only is the FCC afraid of breasts, but apparently, hot, fake, shallow people are off the menu as well! It’s only a matter of time before they come after the WWE, and that’s when they I’m gonna take a stand!
