Okay, I’ll shut up about the Oscars. (Just to be clear, I know they’re stupid, but they’re still pretty influential.)

Now! Reality shows.

So last week, they were doing some kind of work in my house that involves turning some of the power off, but not all of it. Like, my TV worked, but not my kitchen lights. Which is great, because it meant I got to watch American Idol while eating cold cereal.

American Idol is a terrible show. (Aside: tonight, with the faux-schoolboy thing and the tie pin and the stubble I actually found Ryan Seacrest to be — momentarily — attractive. …I know! Take me off your blogrolls! I can never live this down.) I know this. Yet still, I watch.

Along the same lines, I figured out after weeks of study why the Muchmusic VJ search is such a bad bad show. I don’t mean terrible but fascinating in the Idol way, I mean, like it’s bad TV, but it’s also not especially good at being bad TV. It wants to. But it’s not there. They don’t actually show the challenges. Just a lot of 18-22 year olds bitching. I lived in res, I don’t need to see this shit played out at One King West. Seriously, they’re like “hey kids, produce a short segment for a crappy Canadian entertainment show.” And then it shows them arguing, and then it has interviews with them talking about how well or horribly their challenge went, but it only shows, like two-second clips of the actual work they did.

Then, it goes to the judges, who get lots of screen time referring to stuff we never actually see. Mostly it feels like they’re being judged as people, not by their skills in being entertainment TV hosts. However, having Secret sponsor the confessional is total crosspromotional genius.

Anyway, the point of any of the “job interview” brand of reality show — including Idol, ANTM, Project Runway — is watching how the contestants perform and judging for yourself. “I can’t believe they cut Austin Scarlett but kept Wendy Pepper on!” etc. This creates the suspense. With VJ Search, the judges all seem very earnest, but as far as I can tell, they cut the girl last week (Larissa) because she’s a bitch. I mean, apparently she didn’t do well with her “challenge,” but they don’t show enough of that shit to give you any clear idea. When you watch Idol, you see everyone sing, so it at least makes sense when someone is or is not cut. You feel involved. When you don’t know for yourself how anyone’s doing, it becomes this totally random exercise.

Lastly, my favourite part of reality shows is talking with people about them and everyone suddenly forming expert opinions on music, or modelling, or singing, or like, being a mogul or whatever. I thought I might kind of like VJ search because I sort of have experience being an entertainment reporter. Granted, for print, and I mostly covered art movies and like, university organizations butchering Oscar Wilde, but I did meet sort of Canadian celebrities a couple of times. However, it is profoundly bad. Just on all the time. On two channels.