Tragical Realism

"Umm... like... being so far up in the air, so far, far high ... it's like being an angel. It just shows me how much in love I am."

This is one of the inanities that I subjected myself tonight, as I was drawn like a moth to the flame to the finale of "The Bachelor." The bachelorette who formulated the poetic sentence in question was parasailing and, I guess, felt like an angel... in love? Her train of thought was a bit hard to follow.

I didn't even know that "The Bachelor" had another season going, but when I flipped the TV on, there it was, chugging along as merrily as it did when I last watched it, probably about six years ago. All of the requisite ingredients were there ... the Bachelor (who this time, in a shocking twist, has a sexy accent!) a blonde finalist and a brunette finalist. The blonde bard of parasailing "won," an engagement ring and a fiance after six deeply intimate weeks of polygamous dating. The brunette, in her disgust at this outcome, said of the blonde "but... she was the falsest person here!"

To be the "falsest" person on a reality TV show is high praise indeed. When I ask my students to define "reality TV," they often reply that it is "TV programs based on things that really happen." But of course, this is the furthest thing from the truth, because otherwise we would assign the "reality TV" designation to the nightly news, or perhaps to live sporting events. No, to truly gain the "reality TV" label, the situations on the program must be almost entirely contrived. Washed-up celebrities living in the same house, wives being traded from one household to another, Scott Baio seeking out life coaching ... THESE are the "realities" we are presented with on the programs.

"Survivor," the granddaddy of reality TV, presents us with a very interesting take on reality. Sure, the contestants are actually deprived of food to some degree, and are actually living on a tropical beach, but their survival tasks involve answering trivia questions about each other, running obstacle courses, and solving gigantic wooden puzzles. My very favourite part of this reality show is checking in once each season to see how they have designed what I call the "indigenous pen." This is, of course, the ornately decorated Sharpie marker that contestants use when voting each other out of the tribe during the solemnly titled "tribal council." Each season the "indigenous pen" looks as if it was hewn from a sacred tree by the local shaman, and that it therefore must be an accurate representation of the organically harvested Sharpie markers of the region.

But I know that there are "Bachelor" fans and purists out there. So let's take a look at the "reality" elements of "The Bachelor," shall we? Far be it for me to say that you cannot learn anything from reality television! I have compiled a list of life skills that you can acquire by watching "The Bachelor."

1.) How to move into a house with 25 other suckers in order to compete for the attention of one person. Or, if you're a bachelor, it prepares you for that inevitable, golden opportunity when you too get a chance to try to impress 25 fame-seeking, captive women who are constantly being plied with alcohol. This opportunity is not dissimilar to the opportunity to go big game hunting at the Toronto Zoo. Gotta love those odds!

2.) How to go on dates that involve helicopter rides, parasailing ("Wheeeee! I'm an angel!" etc.,) trips to Barbados and gondola rides in Venice. How to dress in couture gowns and designer tuxedos. How to select an engagement ring which boasts a diamond the approximate size of a Toyota Yaris. And... how to have all of this paid for entirely by a large multinational corporation. I don't know how your relationships blossom, but over the years mine have followed this pattern pretty consistently.

3) Learning how to sensitively reject a woman. As we know from "The Bachelor," what you do is assemble a bunch of beautiful, fiercely competitive women around the "rejectee" and hand a rose to everyone in the room BUT her. You make sure that the event is witnessed by about 15 trillion people including a large viewing audience, a ubiquitous "host," several cameramen, producers, key grips, best boys and Phil the boom mike operator. Be sure to preface the rejection with "this is the hardest decision I have ever had to make," and crack a bottle of champagne with your remaining conquests the minute the woman is finally out the door.

4.) Learning to depend on others to do your thinking for you. If you're the Bachelor, you don't even have to know how to COUNT, because there is a host there to do your pesky math for you. Don't worry if you are at the "Rose Ceremony," and your rose count starts to dwindle, because your host will be there to clarify matters by saying: "Ladies ... Lance (or whatever your cheeseball name happens to be) ... this is the final rose tonight." This is incorporated into the ceremony because the Bachelor clearly can't tell the difference between two roses and, say, one oven. The host is kind of like the intellectual prompts you see in the form of flash cards taped to kindergarten classroom walls; "Apple starts with A!"

5.) And finally, the most applicable life skill: breaking up. There have now been 12 Bachelors on the groundbreaking program, and, including the one on the show that just finished, only two are still with their buxom picks. Ain't love grand?

Let's just take a minute and do the math on that. If your chances of being picked as the bachelor's partner are 1/25 (4%) and then your chances of surviving as a couple are 1/6 (17%) ... well ... there's gotta be a better way to find love. Dare I say ... a more realistic way to find love?

Then again, I'm probably wrong about that. After all, I don't have a "host" to do my math for me.