Maybe TV's not so bad afterall

What a difference a week makes. Last week, Jay Leno and the idiots at NBC had me so mad that Bobby and I were practicing our collaborative Boo Hiss routine (I boo, he hisses) around the house on the off chance that we should ever see Leno on the street. The mess NBC has made of their weeknight schedule made me question our future together – me and TV. This was rough because we’ve been together a long time but TV was looking pretty bleak. Then something awesome happened Monday night and my faith was renewed.

It was almost 10pm and we were switching channels around. Something caught my eye so I stopped on MTV. Their 9pm program Teen Mom was just wrapping up. This show infuriates Bobby because he thinks that dumb teenagers might see the life of a teenage mother as somehow romantic and want to try it. He’s right. A lot of teenagers are super dumb and easily influenced by movies, television and their friends. Teen Mom may look like a cautionary tale to actual adults but to kids it looks sort of sweet and nice to have someone who loves you unconditionally even if that person craps his pants and steals your freedom. Unstable, love starved teenagers don’t think rationally so putting this kind of programming in front of them is a recipe for disaster and nothing else.

MTV and their sister network VH1 are notoriously bad about setting a good example for kids. No one wants their child to grow up to be Snooki from Jersey Shore. I don’t even watch that show and I know that my little boys will end up with a cheese ball hooker like that over my dead body. Nobody wants their kids mimicking anyone on Frank the Entertainer’s Basement Affair. And For the Love of Ray J, no one even knows who Ray J is (okay, I do – he’s Brandy’s little brother who made a sex tape with Kim Kardashian and For the Love of Ray J, I wish I didn’t know that!).

So anyhow, the MTV/VH1 programming these days is trashy to say the least (Heidi Fleiss on Dr Drew’s Celebrity Rehab gives me actual nightmares). But I had read about this new documentary series that was premiering and I wanted to give it a try. What a fantastic decision on my part. MTV’s The Buried Life may have saved my faith in television and in humanity in general. The show rocks.

The basic point of the show is that these four young guys make a list of 100 things they want to do before they die and then they head out across the country in a bus to do them all. Every time they check something off their list they meet a stranger, find out what’s on his list and help that person do one of the things he’d like to do before he dies. I love the show on many levels.

First off the guys on the show are in their early twenties, the perfect age to do something like this. You have no responsibilities yet. Why sell your soul to corporate life when you’re so young? This is the prime time to get in a bus and do crazy stuff with your friends (unless, of course, you’re a Teen Mom in which case the baby needs to be changed). I had lots of fun as a young person but I also had lots of drama and responsibility. I can’t imagine how awesome it would have been if I’d been able to chuck reality and get in a van with Fissy and Nancy and Anne and just drive around the country getting into all sorts of crazy hijinks. I LOVE crazy hiijinks! Amazing. I envy these guys.

And I admire them because they’re not just doing it for themselves; they’re doing it for other people. To have that kind of social consciousness at twenty is rare. In the premiere episode they sneak into a party at the playboy mansion (their goal) and they help a teacher they meet get a new computer for his 5th grade classroom at an LA charter school (stranger’s goal). The meeting is obviously staged but that doesn’t take away from the end result – they helped this man with a lofty goal and they brought attention to schools in need and to the need for people to care about one another. I’d kill for an opportunity to do stuff like that. Have fun, be young AND make a difference. Pretty heavy stuff for an MTV show these days.

I also love the idea of having a list. I never saw The Bucket List because I knew how that was going to end but I did really like that song Tim McGraw sang called Live like You Were Dying. In the song McGraw, who is fast becoming my favorite singer turned actor, recounts the story of a forty-something man who thinks he’s going to die so he “went sky diving, he went rocky mountain climbing, he went two point seven seconds on a bull named Foo Man Chu” . I’m sure many people think the song is cliché and are gagging on their syrupy sweet vomit right now but it gets me every time because when it comes down to it, I think he’s right. We’d all benefit from the chance to “live like we were dying”.

Unfortunately, most people never slow down enough or take stock in their lives to see what’s important and live without regret. But these four young guys, Ben, Dave, Duncan, and Jonnie, seem to get something that lots of much older people miss. They live life to the fullest in a way that is completely unselfish. They are what I want more boys to grow up to be like.
So Bravo MTV. You may have actually redeemed yourself. Now if LOST can hold up to the hype next week, me and TV might actually make it after all.