Big Brother and the Pfaffs: the end of reality TV, please

Yesterday, while waiting for the Parelvissers to start on één, my zapping pattern made me stumble upon

• Big Brother: some ‘grown-ups’ were fishing rubber ducks out of a pool with forced enthusiasm
• De Pfaffs: 2 ‘grown-up’ men couldn’t work out how to install a game console and resorted to drinking half a dozen beers out of a home tap, in glasses featuring the face of their father-in-law (Jean-Marie Pfaff, Belgium’s best example of ‘brains don’t matter’)

Ironically, the excellent ‘Parelvissers’ show is about the decay of a formerly successful TV production company that falls apart because they produce more and more shitty stuff. I wonder how many of the people in Endemol (Big Brother) or Eyeworks (de Pfaffs) have a déjà-vu feeling when watching the series. “A show that features old people reading their will on TV and explaining why cousin X doesn’t get anything, hey, we had that idea too!“.

Watching Big Brother for 5 minutes was bad enough, but the Pfaffs episode was really embarrassing. Two guys in their late twenties fruitlessly struggling with a game console and a huge flat screen, a pregnant daughter talking to her doctor about her stool inconsistency, a 50-year ex-goalie talking about the importance of friendship while wearing sponsored shirts, … there’s just that much a sensible person can take. This is Reality television when the genre has outstayed its welcome, when they’re just trying to milk a dead cow. Reality TV is dead. Let’s see what’s on the other channels …