The disease of daytime TV

Due to my daughter being ill, I spent some time at home last week watching daytime television. To say it is a sign of the coming apocalypse may be an overstatement, but I doubt it.

First off, what is with all of the reality shows? Everyone is fighting or screaming or looking for someone to eventually fight or scream at. Housewives are fighting their husbands and each other.

Old television stars are fighting with older television stars. Young hip-hop artists are fighting with people who want to be hiphop artists. Lots of folks finding contention with each other evidently is what people want to watch during the day.

Then there are the various doctors, psychiatrists and counselors who say they are helping the people on their shows. Help came in the form of DNA tests to determine the father of a young woman’s child. The episode I watched had four different men tested because she couldn’t be sure who could have been the father. As each of the first three men were told he was not the father, they proceeded to do dances that I could envision being done by million dollar lottery winners. Then the last young man was told he was the father. This was followed by a loud “ooooowwwwww” from the studio audience. After which the 28-year-old man said he would now go out and get a job to support his 3-year-old son.

Next on the list of mind-numbing daytime television are the soap operas. There used to be many of these on each channel, but it seems that the years have thinned the herd. But the ones that remain do not disappoint when it comes to scruple and believability testing.

The example I saw had a beautiful woman having flashbacks to killer bee attacks. Another woman attacked her husband with a sword while pushing his lover into the river. Then there appeared to be another branch of the family that invaded a young woman’s baby shower and sonogram with the intentions of making sure the next heir will be brought up in the right atmosphere. I guess that is an atmosphere of invading other people’s privacy.

Finally, after much searching, I came across an oasis in the desert. I found old reruns of “Gunsmoke.” I settled in and was taken back to times of my youth with Matt, Festus, Doc and Kitty.

But the good times didn’t last very long. Each commercial break I was reminded that I would be dying soon, so I better get more life insurance. Or I was told that I was clumsy and could fall and lay there until I die if I didn’t get a security necklace. I guess the most uplifting commercial I saw during “Gunsmoke” told me I needed to buy a walk-in bathtub because it would be easier on my joints, but at the end it did throw in that it would cut down on the likelihood that I would fall out of the tub and lay there until I die.

The best thing about daytime television for me was that it gave me lots of incentive to get my daughter healthy and keep myself illness free. Even with that, I think I did leave daytime television with a fairly severe and hopefully nonterminal case of brain rot.