The REAL Real L Word

The wife, being the reality TV junkie that she is, suddenly, deliciously and completely accidentally figured out earlier this week that we have access to Time de la Sho's new series, The Real L Word. Mind you, we don't pay for that premium channel, so it was a surprise to both of us that such a series would be ours to watch for free through the next few weeks. (It's all about sucking you in--they get you watching so you just HAVE to have the channel to watch your new favorite series.) So, we settle in and view two or three of the hour-long episodes, all the time marveling that it is ours for the taking.

I suppose I should have been marveling about the show itself, but I was much more intrigued by the fact that we could actually view the show than I was about the content of the show. Sigh. I am SO ashamed of myself.

I am even more ashamed to tell you that during a very brief "hot" scene, I yelled out, "Hey! There's that white watch I've been looking for!" instead of looking at anything else that might have been going on in the five second shot. Although you would think she would've been happy I was looking at a watch instead of some 29 year old's body part, the poor wife was mortified.

For those of you not in the know and/or for you who are not reality-TV-whores like you-know-who, this show is reality TV's answer to the L Word. I believe the tag line for the show is "Follow a group of six real life lebetians as they work and play in L.A." or something like that.

BTW, when I googled for a photo of the show (for your viewing pleasure--NOT this photo, so no worries there), I believe I gained a virus. I clicked on the photo and all of a sudden things started happening from a sight called sleezy-something something. I slammed my computer shut and didn't click on anything further. A reboot suggested either (a) everything is okay; (b) I've got a sleeping Trojan; or, (C) all my personal information is being transmitted to China as I type.

Here's the thing: my REAL real L word world is NOTHING like this reality show. Maybe for beautiful-looking, richer-than-sin, toy-breed-dog-owning 20-something's in L.A., but here in the middle-aged, middle-incomed Midwest, it ain't happening like on TV. In my REAL real L word, the dog has a skin yeast infection, we go to bed at 9 PM, the toilet is leaking to the point the ceiling tile is caving in, no one is sitting in a restaurant holding hands across the table. The non-tattooed teachers are freaking out because they are returning to school and the middle-management non-dread locked hard-working friends are driving their gas-guzzling cars, watching their cholesterol and watching reality TV. No one is having a makeover from a Hollywood make-up artist, no one is talking in sound bites and no one is planning a fifty gazillion dollar wedding.

Well, not that I know of....maybe some of my friends are holding out on me. I hope I get invited to the wedding if they are indeed doing such things.

Of course, it is totally comparing apples to wrinkly oranges when comparing my current life to the lives of today's 30 year old glamor girls living on the west coast. What I really need to do is compare my life of old to their life of now. If WE had had a reality TV show when we were their age, you would have enjoyed stories about corn-fed, beer-drinking, non-tattooed softball-playing teachers and office geeks who were always found hanging out at softball tournaments and gross bars, listening to those new artists Melissa Etheridge and Madonna, marching in pride parades and eating fast food because it was what we could afford....most featuring weird hairdos of the 1980s, some with dreadlocks but definitely no one with foo foo dogs. (For the record: Pablo was NOT a foo foo dog--Pablo was a brute. Don't confuse small with foo foo.) Scenes from the local bowling-alley-bar-social club would be plentiful. The show would not feature texting another girl during a date, surfing the web to cyber stalk a potential gal pal or breast implants, as those things didn't exist. Instead, you would get a camping trip in Wisconsin, a night at a local bar (dancing in your softball cleats), a weekend on a softball field (still wearing your softball cleats), an afternoon at the local hair salon (hopefully, not in your softball cleats but possibly in them, as they sponsored the team). Trust me, there would have been enough drama to keep you entertained: we had the home wrecker who slept with everyone except me and the wife (thank the baby jesus for that), the drunken messes, the drama queens, the avant garde hairdresser, the athletes, the non-athletes, the plain and the punk, the Beautiful Janes and the tenderonies.

Our real real L word show's ratings would have sky-rocketed during the episode featuring the spontaneous "wedding" held for teammates in a midwestern hotel room (Indiana? Kentucky? Ohio? Hell if I know--it's all a blur), complete with toilet-paper veil and flowers-stolen-out-of the-hotel-garden bouquets. The break ups and the hook ups would keep you guessing; the jogging shorts would keep you howling. In other words, you would have gotten a real life mix of real life people who just happened to fit into a real life category. Not another glitzy, glossy production in the reality-not-very-reality-based TV genre. Yum!

Back to the show. Quite to the wife's horror, I'm not sure I actually like the show--like all reality TV shows these days, it seems too contrived. (Oh, how I pine for the first season of "Survivor," and the first season of M-TV's "The Real World," as those were REAL reality TV shows). I'm not looking this gift horse in the mouth--if cable TV wants to give me a free month of this show for free, I am going to watch it. It's no better or worse than the original cable series, "The L Word." It's the same, only supposedly different. It's not. It is second verse, same as the first....only this time without known stars playing the parts. This is real people playing themselves, saying things they probably wouldn't be saying if they weren't on a sound stage. It's kinda weird.

No offense to the beautiful LA women of the show, but I'm going to watch my month's free worth of episodes, stop watching it when it's no longer free and continue to enjoy my own Real real L word life. After all, I have to go bathe the yeasty-smelling dog and go buy that white watch I've been wanting......