My dating life is terrible. Yes, this is a horrible way to start off my first submission but stick with me, please. Anyways, my dating life is horrible because the topic of interests always pops up. Yes, I have the typical interests of video games, arts and crafts, and spending time with my friends, but what do I say when they ask me about my TV-watching habits?
Now, I have two ways of going about this predicament. I can tell them I either watch anime, which wouldn’t be too bad if I didn’t kin Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, or I can admit to being interested in shitty reality television shows. Now, everyone has their own guilty pleasures in life, and honestly? Guilty pleasures should not be guilty; if you want to listen to Nickleback while you draw your Sonic OC, do it! But, it becomes a problem when these shows are not only problematic but also take up so much goddamn space in my brain that it is a wonder how I’m only failing one class right now. My three main shows are Ink Master, Worst Cooks in America, and 90 Day Fiance. I could have learned some of the digits of pi, or studied for my Spanish test (flashback to failing a class). But yes, I will admit it, I am addicted to some of the most oddly problematic television shows.
My love for Ink Master started in 2012 when I watched the second season with my dad. My gay ass saw Sarah Miller and knew that I was hooked. Who cares about poorly done tattoos and the most dramatic arguments you’ve ever seen when you have some honkers on the screen? Looking back, the show is awful. It is pure garbage of the most egotistical men you will ever meet who have their own sob stories of how they almost died of cancer but risked their lives to keep tattooing (yes, that is an actual story). But they build up these characters; some you love and some you hate, but at the end of the day, you are staying to watch someone get horrible tattoos.
Some of my favorites include a galaxy cat that is barfing rainbows, someone who spelled “Corinthians” as “Cortnthians”, or someone giving a pinup girl with two right feet. There is so much more to this show than just tattoos, however. The way they treat women is absolutely infuriating. I didn’t realize as an 11-year-old that the woman I was ogling was being called crazy and emotional. It is the worst when other contestants are the ones doing it. I still remember to this day when a male contestant said to a butch female contestant how she has “penis envy”. Honestly, how she did not smack that motherfucker in the face I will never understand. Not to mention how this show literally got canceled because a picture Oliver Peck, one of the show’s judges, had a picture leaked of him in full-on blackface. It is horrible because although there are so many issues with this show, I have rewatched each and every season at least three times. Some seasons I watched so many times I literally remember who gets which tattoo assigned to them, who the bottom two or three are, and who goes home. It is truly embarrassing when my roommate can mention a specific tattoo and I can tell them which episode a specific tattoo happened.
My love for Worst Cooks in America started with my arch-nemesis, Bobby Flay. Now, I say he is my arch enemy but in reality, my problem with him is simple: HE CHEATED ON HIS FUCKING WIFE WITH HIS ASSISTANT! When my roommates and I learned this we decided that he was awful. Now, he is technically on only four seasons of this show so I could get past it for the rest of the show. I started watching it when seasons three through five were on Netflix. There was something about these few seasons that tickled my dick to the point where I watched it over and over and over again. It was to the point where again I can tell you who is going home on which episode, what the challenge is, and more importantly, the funniest parts of each episode.
Some of the highlights of these seasons include when a man thought that to make grilled cheese you had to physically grill cheese, a woman named Carla who wants to fuck Bobby Flay the whole season, and partying with Betsy Johnson. For a while, those were the only seasons that I watched. And then my roommate got Discovery Plus and everything changed. I watched every season; ALL TWENTY-FOUR SEASONS. I do not have a problem, I swear. What I do have a problem with is how oddly problematic this show is. The show is problematic with its depictions of cooking different cultures of food. For example, in one of the seasons, they are challenging the recruits to make hibachi. They then have a fucking dragonfly across the screen, the cliche Asian music playing, and then cuts to them explaining what they are doing through a cliche remaking of a dub over of the instructions. Or when they were making Japanese food and pictures of cliche anime women came onto the screen. This show is about how people can’t cook and do goofy things, not being racist. Oh, and did I mention how one of the winners of a season literally got arrested for murdering her adopted daughter? Because yup, that happened. There is a reason why season twenty is not available anywhere!
My freshman year of college was a shit show. I was two weeks in and I ended up getting admitted to the hospital for appendicitis. I had only known my Arcadia friends for a couple of weeks at this point and I didn’t want to go to the hospital alone. So Belle, my now roommate, went to the hospital with me. This is how I got my first experience with 90 Day Fiance. I do not remember which of the several spin-offs I watched but I remember it involved Jenny and Sumit in one of their several appearances. Outside of them, there was a guy who did not have a job but sold cell phones that he had stolen off the street to try and get a place for himself and his new wife and children. However, he wanted to stay in his parent’s house with his child and his wife.
Now, this was just in the bed waiting room. My true 90 Day experience came when my appendix was now out. I was unable to sleep due to my missing appendix and I was watching the shitshow that was Jenny and Sumit. They’ve grown on me now showing them being married for about a year and since they are one of the more sane couples from the show. But at this moment, I was hooked. Jenny is a 60-year-old woman who is dating a 30-year-old Indian man. She was in front of the camera sobbing violently describing how she just found out her boyfriend is actually set up in an arranged marriage. She is in tears through the entire rundown of how his parents invaded their apartment and berated her and told her that he is already getting married to an Indian woman. This blew my fucking mind as I was hopped up on pain medication and just watching this absolute shitshow happen.
My nurse walked in to check on me and she saw that I was enthralled with the trainwreck occurring in front of my very eyes. I just remember her gently whispering, “what the fuck is going on” before she goes and helps me with all my medical checkups. I thought 90 Day Fiance was out of my life after this, but then this motherfucker named Big Ed showed up. During Covid, I was bored at home and my dad and I watched the entirety of 90 Day Fiance Before the 90 Days. It was the biggest shit show I have ever watched and I couldn’t get enough. And then my roommates and I started watching 90 Day Fiance, again. We have watched about five seasons and are currently watching both the new episodes of The Single Life and Happily Ever After. I feel like every time I watch some self-obsessed asshole man who has a woman who is too out of his league to try and date, a small part of me dies inside.
My weird obsession with reality tv shows is something that happened naturally. I think it has to do with my need for background noise when doing simple tasks like eating or doing homework, so I put on this show as background noise. However, it simply becomes more than that and I spend all of my time watching someone who does not know how to cook chicken breast or a couple arguing because the one sent his girlfriend’s nudes to his ex. It is the guiltiest of pleasures and a drug I do not think I can quit, not anytime soon.
