Give Them A Real Show

At this point, I don't think anyone expects reality from their "reality" shows. TV viewers have slowly but surely realized that these shows are kind of like life, but a life lived way louder than it ever needs to be. Even the "credible" shows have started to get out of control. That is why hardly anyone batted an eyelash when yesterday afternoon one of the guys from "Storage Wars" sued the A&E Network alleging fraud and saying the producers of the show routinely hid valuable items in the storage lockers after the auctions were over to try and make the show more interesting. You may be wondering why he decided to speak up about this now. Well, it turns out he was not going to be brought back for another season, which has a funny way of inspiring people to decide that now is the time to let the public in on the truth. Unfortunately for this guy he is primarily known as the annoying person on the show, so no one has any sympathy for him. (Let this be a lesson for any fame-whore out there - when you are willing to play any part just to get on TV, it will have consequences.) Plus, I'm not sure he has a leg to stand on - at no point does the show claim to be factual, so announcing that parts of a reality show are faked is a little like saying sports highlights are edited to only show you the good stuff.

For their part the producers maintain the show is authentic, but I'm sure if you cornered them they would begin to explain the various levels of 'authentic'. Personally, I had always had my doubts about these shows and those suspicions only grew the more I watched the show. At first they were finding semi-normal items that may have had some value, but after a while you could see things starting to get out of hand as the items got more and more extravagant. I mean, what kind of person leaves an item worth thousands of dollars in a storage locker, yet can't make the monthly payments on it? That would be like letting the bank take your house with a Picasso hanging over the fireplace. Any straight-thinking person would go get that before they lost control of the locker. Also, there is always a gun. Maybe I just don't want to think there are that many handguns floating around unattended in this country, but those seem like the kind of thing you would want to keep track of. On top of that, the people on these shows always came out on the high end of the negotiations, which doesn't seem logical. The law of averages say they wouldn't get a great deal every time. And the buyers always had the money ready to go. I don't care how well their business is doing, I don't know any business owners who walk around with that kind of money handy. Adding it together it all just seemed too convenient to be true.

Now, I'm not blaming the people who came up with these shows - I blame the nature of television. If anything you want to say they are a victim of their own success. As we know, TV programming is full of copycats. As soon as one of these shows appeared to have a foothold in pop culture, the rip-offs appeared almost overnight. Once that happens people have to go to greater and more extreme lengths to attract eyeballs. Finding coins and comic books may have been good enough for season 1, but once the other shows popped up, the finds had to be more extreme. Next thing you know people have to act like finding a cannon in a storage unit is a perfectly normal occurrence. I'd like to think these producers went into this venture intending to play it straight, but had to adjust in the name of ratings and advertising dollars and once the snowball started rolling it just turned into an avalanche. A&E was probably their own worst enemy because they had three or four versions of this format. As we all know, it is one thing to be competitive with a rival company, but the people you really want to beat work in your office. As soon as these shows had to start fighting people who worked down the hall the gloves were going to come off. Maybe a lawsuit like this will finally show them the entire thing has gotten out of hand.

Still, the main point of this post would be to let the producers of these programs know that everyone was already aware these shows were fake and we're fine with it. Despite their outlandish nature and obviously-staged finds (or maybe because of them) they can still be kind of entertaining. Heck, I was so inspired watching these shows that some of you may remember that I even ventured to a storage auction a few months ago. So, I hope this revelation doesn't lead to the shows getting cancelled (at least not all of them). Now, you may think this will force these programs to dial it back a bit. I find that unlikely. In fact, these producers should look at this as an opportunity to really go nuts. With the curtain pulled back they can start hiding all sorts of crap in these lockers with no sense of shame or obligation to try and keep things appear grounded in a warped sense of reality. If reality shows are supposed to represent real life, just with the volume on 11, unmasked reality shows have the chance to turn the volume up to 15. They could put just about anything and people wouldn't bat an eyelash. The only question is how insane are they going to go. Now it is really a guessing game as to what could be behind the next door and I think not knowing what is going to happen next is as close to real life as we get on TV these days.