Please Marry My Boy...or break up with him a week after filming. I don't mind.

I didn't think I would be using my blog to vent about TV-related issues, seeing as I seem to have so much else going on in my life at the moment (what, with all the not working and using my spare time to blog about myself going on), but I recently became involved with a TV show that finished a few days ago and I have been left feeling somewhat unsatisfied and, shall I say it...disillusioned.

Now, I'm all for quality television programming, I am. But to be completely honest, at the end of the day, all I want to do is sit down, relax and unwind with a ridiculously premised reality TV show that exploits one or all of the following elements:

1. Singles.

2. Dysfunctional families.

3. Single people with dysfunctional families.

4. Hoarders.


Is that too much to ask?


Not for Channel 7 here in Australia, because they got 1-3 down pat with their show "Please Marry My Boy". I'm sure you can understand why, when I first saw the ads on TV, I may have wet my pants just a little. The idea is simple - Mum gets to pick out 3 girls for their son to "date" (I use quotations because I don't remember the last time I went on a date that involved about 50 cameras coming from all different angles while a prospective future mother-in-law watched on from the comfort of her Nanna recliner at home) and eventually Mum has to choose a girl that she thinks will put up with her controlling and interfering make her boy happy. At the end, she asks the question:


"Will you marry my boy?"


Tears are shed, hugs are exchanged and the rejects are quickly shafted out of the camera's line of view so not to make it uncomfortable. Everyone's happy, there is young love in the air and I am left with the feeling that after nine weeks of commitment and every Wednesday night parked in front of the TV, all is now right with the world.


Cue Thursday morning and the world just got thrown off it's axis and has been sent hurdling through space on a collusion course with the sun. We're all gonna burn.

Diagram 1: Not drawn to scale

I don't mean to sound DRAMATIC...well, actually, I DO mean to sound COMPLETELY dramatic. Like I  said, I committed 9 Wednesday nights to this show and I was expecting results. Ludicrous, romantic, dizzyingly-delightful, fairytale-like RESULTS. These people were meant to live happily ever after! And yet, I have been left disappointed, slightly jaded and a little bit hollow inside. I'm starting to think that maybe I over-invested in this show.


APPARENTLY, all of the couples that the Mum's hooked up have split. Within WEEKS. One couple didn't even last the taping of the final episode, with the douche bag guy dumping the (very nice) girl his Mum picked for him straight after the cameras stopped rolling! Another couple lasted two months, and, my favourite, the couple who I thought were reality TV SOUL MATES because they just seemed to GET each other (and because the other chick was taller than the guy when she wore heels and it just didn't look right) managed to remain soul mates till the END OF THE WEEK and then CHANGED THEIR MINDS!!!


WTF?!?!? It just isn't even logical - I mean, they were the PERFECT height for each other?!?! What ELSE is there that you need????


I am so disenchanted that I had to use the thesaurus on Microsoft Office to find more words for disappointed. 


I tell ya, if reality TV love that is manufactured and continuously intervened with by overbearing, meddling family members purely for the sake of my entertainment can't make it work, then what can I continue to believe in? 


I think, in times like these, there is perhaps one thing, and one thing only:


Season 2 :-)