Reality TV is So Not Real

by Kimber Vale

I’m not kidding. Honestly, I sorta figured as much, but I didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about reality TV when I began writing my book “Double Takes.” I like to watch all the tattoo fix-up shows, okay? I admit it. Oh, and I enjoy some home and garden shows (which I heard are a complete fabrication because the buyers have already purchased the homes by the time the show is filmed, so it’s only a matter of guessing which house they already chose months ago).

Anyway, let it be said that Dancing with the American Honey True Stories of Storage Hoarders in the E.R. is, generally speaking, not my thing.

I’m more of a Dr. G: Medical Examiner and Monsters Inside Me kind of gal. Those are documentaries with dramatizations. 😉 Waaaayyyy better and totally creeptastic.

I will say this, though: all reality TV is virtually impossible to avoid.

So, what mind boggling gems did I learn in my reality TV autopsy? Hand me that metacarpal saw and I’ll show you.

~~This ain’t no Candid Camera, baby.

Current shows edit mercilessly so the producers can make pretty much anything “happen.” Obviously, the star of the show made that mortified face—it just wasn’t at the person they lead you to believe it was directed toward. She probably stepped in a pile of dog crap, but now everyone thinks that she thinks that bachelor number three is a pile of dog crap.  See how that works? Technically, it isn’t lying. Just misleading.

~~Occasionally, shows hire actors to play certain parts.

I guess they are “real” hired actors. Just like squeeze cheese is real fake cheese. I suppose I just equated Kyrie, Gio’s TV boyfriend, with squeeze cheese. I think he’d actually like that.

~~Tweaking the set to virtually guarantee hilarity and hijinks is fair game. Does your beauty contestant’s mama—let’s call her Sherry—have an evil ex? Maybe he has a daughter with the woman who he cheated on Sherry with? Let’s fly him and the kid in and have his little princess compete against Sherry’s little princess. Won’t that be a surprise when she shows up and sings the same exact song as her half-sister in the talent show? Sherry’s face ought to be priceless! Tune in next week when the stage is suspiciously covered in Crisco.

Anyway, not that I ever believed reality TV was real, I learned that it was even less real than I supposed, and that Jerry Springer was a man before his time. You go Jerry.

Blurb:

Ah, the life of a rock star. Everyone thinks it’s nothing but sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Not for Giovanni Savale. 

For the lead singer of Three Deaf Mice, a band that reached its pinnacle in the late nineties, it’s nothing but an ugly divorce with a custody battle, money trouble, and now the nightmare exposure of starring in a reality television show. When his producer decides to cash in on an infamous interview Gio did years ago, and give the self-confessed bisexual rocker an onscreen boyfriend, things really hit the fan. Gio is certain his sexual experimentation back in his drug-abusing days meant nothing — after all he’s been married for nine years, clean and sober for nearly as long, and he has a son. And Gio is not remotely attracted to Kyrie, the funny, flamboyant actor they choose for his love interest. Of course, Lance Garrett, the mysterious and sexy owner of the local antique shop, Double Takes, is a whole different story. The guy has Gio planning out a future he never imagined. With the threat of losing all custody of his ten-year-old son, ghosts from the past returning for revenge, and the cameras rolling, can Gio keep his head above water and his heart from getting broken?

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Excerpt:

“We need to talk ratings, here. The network isn’t happy. I’m not happy. Therefore, no one will be happy. Capice? You see how it trickles down, right?” He shrugged like he was a helpless pawn in all this. “Of course, you want a hit show…”

Hit show? Gio’s brow lifted with doubt. He wanted a paycheck. He wanted Kevin to stop saying capice like Gio was straight off a boat from the old country; it made him want to find Kevin a big, gory horse head to keep him company at night. He wanted to be able to afford the cutthroat divorce lawyer he’d hired. He wanted—fuck. He wanted a goddamn vacation.

“Of course.” It was the obvious answer. Lies on top of lies. Shovel the shit, Gio. Make the grade and get paid. Whatever it takes.

“Good. That settles it. Now…” Kevin skimmed over the paper like he was looking for something. As if he didn’t already have every dot of punctuation on Gio’s contract memorized. “Oh, here it is.” He slid a finger over the page and his voice, brimming with false surprise, whipped out the nail he had saved for Gio’s coffin. “Now, your contract clearly states that you’re open to any scene development possibilities for Real Rock…”

Gio hated the way he kept trailing off. Fill in the blanks, Gio-my-man. Bend over and take it. Kevin had him by the short and curlies, and he wasn’t letting go until he drained every last drop of self-respect out of his latest meal ticket.

Gio leaned in again, sure he’d find that exact phrase written out on his contract with his initials beside it.

“And you’re on the hook for any reshoots deemed necessary by the studio.”

Gio scowled. Reshoots? Where was Kevin going with this?

“People aren’t really tuning in to see you and the boys jam out or write music anymore. Not as much as we’d like. It seemed like a good draw when we were in initial concept development, but the ratings are dropping off.” Kevin paused to take a sip from the water glass on his desk, prolonging the kill. “They’ve watched you doing the creative thing and now they’re bored. They want a little more meat in their television programs, so we need to make sure the second half of season one comes back with a bang. You know what we’re competing with here, right?”

“Yeah.” Actually, he didn’t. Didn’t give the slightest shit what they were competing with. That tattoo show, maybe? Two-year-olds dressed like hookers and sent down a cat walk? Did anyone watch normal shit anymore?

“Wife Auctions is kicking our ass right now, Gio.”

Wife Auctions? How come no one ever told him there was such a thing? Could have saved Gio a boatload of bullshit. Imagine, someone paying me to take Christine off my hands? Gio snorted a laugh, and the Prince of Darkness on the other side of the desk gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “Sorry. Just thinking about auctioning off my wife.” Ex-wife.

“Well, she’s not your wife anymore, which is a good thing for us.”

Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, dumbass.

“We’ve completed a viewer poll and consulted with the production team and coaches…”

Coaches. Coach me on how to be real for my reality show, Kevin. Such a freakin’ steaming pile.

“And we’ve come up with a winner of an angle that’s gonna knock Wife Auctions into a later time slot, buddy.”

Gio just stared, waiting to check out the size of the hammer about to fall on his nuts.

“It’s gonna be intense—reshoots, like I said. And we’ll need to splice the newer material in with the film we’ve already compiled. Probably have to scrap the stuff that wasn’t working.” He sighed as if Gio should feel sorry for him. “I know we were gonna break before taping on season two began, but that’s not an option now while we focus on the new angle. We have to get as much fresh tape as possible before the second half of season one begins in a couple weeks. Be a crazy-tight schedule, some added costs, but we think it’ll be worth the effort.”

Ah, we. His name is Kevin and he speaks for the “we.”

“No drastic changes in appearance from our old film, got it?” Kevin gave him a severe look. “Don’t shave your head.”

“What? What exactly are we shooting?”

“Our viewers want to see more of your bisexual side, and we’re going to give it to them.”

The fuck? “Excuse me?”

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Bio:

Kimber Vale writes romance of all stripes, from hot hetero stories to mouthwatering men falling in love (under the name K. Vale). Keep up with Kimber’s news and follow all her tour stops on her blog: http://www.kimbervale.me  and friend/follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KimberVale. Come for the sex. Stay for the story. http://www.authorkimbervale.com

Find Kimber’s books: Liquid Silver Amazon