Guilty pleasures

I have a confession to make, which you may or may not find surprising, depending on how well you know me. I am totally in love with junk reality tv. Channels like Bravo and E! tend to suck me in, especially when they run marathons. If I find a string of episodes of a show I’ve been missing, oo wee, look out! There goes Saturday. (ha! yeah right, i mean there went saturday. i haven’t been able to sit down and watch a tv marathon in ages)

The top contenders in my tv land would probably have to be My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant (terrible, i know, but i just can’t help myself!), and pretty much a nation-wide blanketing of the Real Housewives. The RH of Orange County are my favorites and Beverly Hills surprised me last season by coming in a close second, but the rest of them I actually can’t stand. New York have just gotten beyond ridiculous (except Bethenny – i love her! oh – all of her shows make the list too, whatever it will be called for the next season. and her skinny girl margaritas aren’t half bad either. anyone tried the sangria yet?), New Jersey are annoying as hell, D.C. were horrendous, Atlanta are now even too ghetto for me, and was there a Miami, too? I never watched that one. I could tell from the start that I would hate them.

Wait what? You haven’t seen My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding?? Holy shit. Well what are you still sitting here for? Go find it! It is seriously crazy. These gypsies (called irish travelers, living mainly in england) all get married super young and have the most extravagantly tacky, lavish weddings I’ve ever seen. It’s awesome! I watch most episodes with my mouth hanging open in incredulity at what these people find “pretty”. And how do they afford this stuff? I’ve even gotten R to watch this one with me because some of them are so mind-boggling. It appears that most of the women on the show are cleaning women of some sort, the guys work in scrap metal, almost no one makes it past grade school, yet they have ginormous weddings and the girls’ dresses cost like $50,000-$100,000. I’m not kidding! And the crowds at these weddings? Unreal. The kids are all grinding on each other in the hopes of finding a mate, yet they’re super strict when it comes to girls “doing anything” before they’re married. I can’t even explain it all – you just have to go watch. I think this one’s actually on TLC.

What’s with the Teen Mom, you ask? Well, that one I’ve actually watched those girls since they were the first season of 16 and Pregnant, so that means I’m automatically hooked. The newer seasons of 16 and Pregnant, though, I haven’t followed at all. And this one isn’t very high up on my list. If it’s on and it happens to be a rare night when R’s already gone to bed and I have free reign of the tv I’ll watch it, but I don’t clear my schedule for it or even put it on the dvr list.

R always chastises me for watching these shows. “This shit is what’s wrong with society,” he will say. “People thinking these shows are real.” Um, hello, I in no way, shape, or form think these shows are anywhere near reality. In fact, I’m always so happy watching them that they are not my reality. That’s part of their appeal – that some people are so far out there that they have shows like these for me to watch. Pure mindless entertainment, plain and simple. I’m definitely not taking notes on how to get my lips that big or hair that bleached or lifestyle so ludicrous, don’t worry. I just like to veg out for half an hour or 47 minutes and watch my trash-fest. So stop hating, Mr. Man Caves, Deadliest Catch, and Man v. Food Nation, among countless others that totally fill our dvr so my little shows have no room to be recorded anyway. (and i always sit through all of his shows with not a peep or complaint. why can’t he just shut up on the very few occasions that he happens to catch 5 minutes of one of mine so i can actually hear it?)

So fess up. How about you? Got any guilty pleasure trash tv shows that you love to watch? Chances are I’ve seen all of them at some point along the way, too, even if I didn’t deem them worthy of repeat viewings.