Remember when reality TV meant watching your various family members yell random letters at the TV during Wheel of Fortune?

In light of the upcoming The Bachelor Wedding Live, whose promos have dominated ABC’s commercials for the last two weeks, I say “Stop the madness!” We call this reality, but very little about it is real.  Maybe once upon a time, what we saw was someone’s real life, but now things are so edited and re-filmed that what was once spontaneous is now nothing more than a cheap scripted drama.

First the scripts came in the form of the people on the show doing and saying outrageous things to get more camera time; now producers are hand picking people who will cause drama. Then there are the spin-offs that feature our favorite trouble-makers and odd couples. For example, VH1’s The Surreal Life, which featured past-their-prime celebs living in a house together and participating in different group challenges and activities, once featured Flavor Flav and Brigette Nielsen. During their time on the show the once rapper and the once actress began a relationship. This relationship spawned 14 different shows including Strange Love and Flavor of Love. Then the Flavor of Love girls got their own shows. This trash dominated VH1’s programming for five years.

Never mind VH1, let’s talk about Bravo or the brain trust that gave us The Real Housewives series. The show has six different filming locations in the U.S. and four international versions. The U.S. editions are notorious for faking scenes and creating reenactments of events. The show has generated seven different spin-offs and one more that has yet to air. These women are whiny, entitled and slightly insane yet they are everywhere.  They are on the cover of every tabloid and often featured on entertainment news shows like E News.

As for E!, they have given us the Kardashians, an action I am sure has secured the programming directors and Ryan Seacrest a special place in hell. I will admit with a certain amount of self loathing that I watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians. This is actually a perfect example of watching how fame or (in the case of most reality stars) infamy changes people. If one were to watch the first season of the show, and compare it to the show now, it is pretty amazing to see the change in the family. Of course, they have one thing that many reality stars don’t have, and that is the final edit on their show which means they can paint the picture anyway they want including filming and inserting scenes that may have been needed to keep the picture the way they want it.

I never thought I would long for the days of others shouting, “Oh for God’s sake, buy a vowel!” Yet here I am wondering if with all the rot that is on TV if, some people even know what a vowel is.