Watching really bad television is one of my former guilty pleasures.
I say former not because I've stopped watching. I've stopped feeling guilty.
Last night, too lazy to get up to change the channel (the remote control batteries having escaped to perform some other task just as easily done manually), I slid directly from American Idol into Hell's Kitchen.
If you haven't watched it, Idol achieves some redeeming value.
There's the whole American Dream thing. Someone cuts through your back yard, hears you singing in the shower, and is stunned by your brilliance. Turns out he's not just your ordinary peeping Tom but a top talent agent, and presto: next thing you know, you're a star.
There's also the whole Joseph Campbell journey of the hero educational component. You start out leaving home to accomplish a big fuzzy goal, usually something macho like world domination. Along the way through the dark scary woods, you encounter monsters and dragons and have to sing songs by Neil Diamond. Someone, say Dolly Parton, comes along to help you. You finally reach your goal, which is to hear Randy Jackson say "yo, check it out. Now that's who you really are." In other words, you've come full-circle back home, only with a really lucrative recording contract.
Hell's Kitchen has no redeeming value. You watch it for the food pornography and also to see odd people, people you wouldn't want to ever know in real life, smoke cigarettes, mess up in the kitchen, and be emotionally and possibly physically abused by master chef Gordon Ramsey before heading off to be emotionally and possibly physically abused by their team mates who are plotting to vote them off the island.
You also get to see the chef apprentice hopefuls be humiliated by nasty diners. This gives you the chance to enjoy their come-uppance while feeling smugly superior to the guests, who are as icky as the apprentices only better looking.
Especially the mother of the daughter trying out Hell's Kitchen for a Sweet Sixteen party. Now there's an idea I can get behind.
Anyway, she bristles and pouts in a way you can see she imagines is fetching, and you want to slap her even though you are a Quaker and allegedly nonviolent except, apparently, in your heart. The journey to Hell's Kitchen makes you nasty, too. It's enjoyable.
The daughter is surprisingly normal, actually sweet, perhaps. You pity her not just because of the mother but because you are certain she'd prefer McDonald's, which is where she'll go as soon as she gets the keys to the Mercedes-Benz ML320 that probably awaits her, payment for putting up with posh food and camera crews.
Liz, my companion in time-wasting, was 16 two years and four days ago. I think she has opinions about all this. But she watches quietly while I prattle on.
"Desserts," I say, as the competing teams try to come up with suitable menus. "That's how I'd go. The rest of the meal doesn't matter as long as there are big honking chocolate confections tortured into fashionable shapes or served in martini glasses. It's all about ostentatious presentation of stuff they're already familiar with." More prattling ensues.
Liz ignores me. Then she offers The Look.
The apprentice chefs present a dessert, something puddingish with a large banana garnish. We smirk in unison. "That's so wrong," we say, also in unison.
I try to engage her in conversation again. "Well, you know 16 year olds better than I do."
"Not ones like that."
"What do you think rich California girls who have never tasted shrimp and get all excited when they see chicken wings would want to eat, then?"
"Ice cubes. And laxatives."
She has a point.
And somewhere in here, so do I.
Oh. I remember. Have you ever noticed how often quality shows, pumped up with good messages and important values, leave you with nothing to say at the end? Just, "Wow, that was really good!"
On the other hand, trash on Fox TV leads to an examination of the Seven Deadly Sins, culture and values, economics, mythology, eating disorders, and why it's better to live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where most of the people are. . . reasonable.
Most of the time. We all get a little exercised now and then.
