Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Just One More Tiger

We watched Beauty & the Geek tonight.

I struggled mightily against it... but Nancy reminded me that I'd insisted on watching the premiere of Britney & Kevin: Chaotic... so yeah... not so much of a leg to stand on there.

Beauty & the Geek... it was okay. I get the feeling I'm supposed to be learning something from it (and by extension, from Ashton Kutcher... which scares the shit out of me)... but what, exactly?

Right now all I know is I'm annoyed that the assumption is clearly that the "beauties" are worth winning, while the geeks are -at best- worth training to be better geeks for other beauties... but I'm sure at least one of these pairings will result in a made-for-TV power couple that'll grace the airwaves for a month or so, and eventually spit out little next-gen Asia Carreras* in time for next year's sweeps.

Still, it's earnest and hopeful... and these days? These days it's good to feel either earnest or hopeful at all... never mind experiencing both at once during a syndicated TV show.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll be watching Beauty & the Geek... but I still say it would be better if they dropped a tiger on the couple that gets eliminated each week.

And here's the thing: the couple that doesn't get eliminated? They're in the room when the tiger falls on the other couple! So they spend a week doing nothing but stammering "Ti-Ti-Ti-Ti-Ti-" while everyone else bonds, or drinks, or misses home in Utah or one of the Dakotas or wherever, or just wonders what the hell that couple is stammering. They can't quiz each other on the periodic table of the elements, or on the finer points of Mac lipstick... all they can manage is the stammering, and stumbling through the week wincing, and flinching and squinting up at the ceiling... waiting....

Maybe that's the lesson of Beauty & the Geek: there's a tiger hovering out there for all of us.

*This link, by the way, is not safe for work... unless you work in Larry Flynt's office.

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