"American Idol": Please Be Done Now

It's time to move on...the show has run its course.

It's not something I'm proud of, but reality shows always have a way of sucking me in. I watch the good, the bad, and even the ugly. What I don't care for is the boring. I used to watch "American Idol" a good...ten years ago and I loved it. I kept up with it for the first four or five seasons until I realized that it was boring and repetitive.

Randy's "dawg-house" got really old, Paula's way of clapping reminded me of something like a seal, and was honestly kind of irritating, and Simon's bitter remarks just became uninteresting. And, really, I think that is just a product of the show being on for far too long. It was fresh and entertaining at the time, but now I just find it to be dull and should have ended 75 seasons ago.

Even now, this season, JLo and Steven Tyler took the places of Paula and Simon as the new judges. I don't know if that is their way of trying to add a new spark to the show, but I'm not really buying it. Frankly, without Simon, the show loses its appeal completely. That isn't to say that I don't respect a great voice and a good performer. I'm aware that there's a great deal of talent out there and this show is giving people a chance to showcase what they can do, but in my opinion the whole thing has just become kind of monotonous. Yes, it can be funny to watch horrible singers audition and wonder who told them they were any good, but I don't really want to listen to Ryan Seacrest talk anymore.

American Idol really paved the way for all sorts of talent competitions. Several networks jumped on that high-ratings bandwagon and we now have shows like "America's Got Talent," "Dancing With the Stars," and Simon Cowell's most recent creation "The X Factor," debuting this fall. This show's objective: To find the next undiscovered superstar and a chance to win a $5 million recording contract. I'm confused. How is that different from American Idol? To me, that just seems like the same s***, different day.

American Idol was exciting and fun to watch at first, and that may have been in part because I was eleven years old. But now, with the amount of talent competitions on every channel that are essentially the same, I'm bored with it. And that really is saying something because I will watch just about anything.

Yes, I'm a Gleek

When the series "glee" premiered in May of 2009, I remember being bombarded with commercials, advertising a show that I really had no interest in watching. For the next year, as the season went on, people around me would talk about it as if it was the greatest thing in the world, but still, I never tuned in. I guess I just didn't understand its appeal. That is until two of the girls I live with this year came running down the stairs at 8 p.m., full of excitement to watch the "Britney/Brittany" episode when the club performed all Britney Spears songs. So, I decided to give it a shot, and I'm not embarrassed to say I've been a gleek ever since.

One of the characters on glee, and quite possibly my favorite, is the ever so clueless and simple-minded, Brittany S. Pierce, her name having a familiar similarity to Britney Spears. Because of this, Brittany doesn't like when the club tries to convince their advisor, Mr. Shuester, to sing Britney Spears songs for the week. She hates the similarity. I, however, thoroughly enjoyed watching both her and other glee characters reenact the music videos for "Toxic," "Slave 4 U," "Me Against the Music," and "Baby One More Time." They did such a great job of playing Britney, that they were almost better than Spears herself. After seeing that, I was hooked.

The show is so cleverly written and the ensemble cast plays each of their parts almost to perfection. The various relationship dynamics among the group members add to the drama that is high school, and you never know what storyline is going to take a turn for the scandalous, while at the same time you wait in anticipation for what popular song they are going to break out into next.

Those who don't understand the amazingness of glee have most likely never watched it. I told a friend of mine a little while back that I was a fan and he said, "Oh. You're one of those..." Hell yeah, I am. I live vicariously through these glee club-ers, wishing my life was as awesome as theirs. Where was the group of fabulous singers at my high school, and why weren't they putting on outlandish performances at our football games? I feel shafted. Secretly, I wish I was talented and cool enough to be on glee. I wouldn't mind singing a duet with Finn. I wouldn't mind that at all.

"Teen Mom": Life After 16 and Stupid

I'll admit it. I tend to watch a little bit too much television. It's my guilty pleasure and, as a consequence, my rear-end has spent many hours on, well, the floor because frankly, the furniture in Tuscany is harder than a rock and sometimes the floor is just more comfortable. But that's beside the point.

I have my weekly shows that I tune into religiously, whether I'd like to admit it or not, and, of course, I have my own thoughts on them that I'd like to share. After deciding to create a blog that would provide my insights on today's (sometimes trashy) television, I then had to determine which of my regular shows I would begin with. I figured, what better way to start off my ramblings than with some talk about MTV's hit show, "Teen Mom."

For those of you who don't know, "Teen Mom" is a spin off the show, "16 and Pregnant," or as I like to call it, "16 and Stupid." This reality show documents the lives of four teen mothers and the various struggles that they face. We watch them fight with their baby daddy, if he is, in fact, still in the picture. We see them battle to finish high school and move on to college as they try to raise a baby, when really, they are still babies themselves. And we watch as their families attempt to make it work.

Although my dad, and possibly many others believe this show to be "garbage," I actually think the opposite. "Teen Mom" doesn't make teen pregnancy look like rainbows and sunshine. They show the viewer how hard it really is, something that other teen girls could really benefit from. These girls are forced to make life changing decisions at the age of 16 because of something that could have easily been avoided. They don't always make the right choices (clearly), and some of them simply cannot parent well. I feel bad for the babies living in awful environments. For instance, one girl on this season named Jenelle is the mother of a baby boy named Jase. Jenelle still lives with her own mom, and the two of them have a very hostile relationship. Jase hears them scream and watches them hit each other and I can only imagine how he will develop because of it. As far as I can tell, the show features something real. It may be embellished a little (it is MTV), but my hope is that it is helping to prevent teen pregnancy. I know I don't envy their situations.