And now back to the trivial things which occupy so much of our lives...
A show I really got to like last year during its first season was the Sci-Fi Channel's reality series "Ghost Hunters." It was cool, following a team of regular, everyday people who at night and on weekends checked out supposedly haunted locations. Each week, they visited a different location. You got to see the behind-the-scene's stuff of ghost hunting most people who have never actually been on a ghost hunt have never seen. (I've been on one real, actual ghost hunt, though without quite as many neat gadgets. It was equally very exciting and excruciatingly dull.) There was some stuff about the day-to-day lives of the ghost hunters, their jobs, their families, their relationships, but it was mostly about hunting ghosts. It was going to the places, learning their histories and the stories surrounding them, the exploration of the places, the analysis of the findings, etc. There was some interpersonal "drama" from time to time, but it was mainly filler. It was slow sometimes, but there was some really cool stuff during the season.
Now, it's been jazzed up. Instead of operating out of a trailer in Jason's (one of the founding members of The Atlantic Paranormal Society) backyard, they have a storefront office. They have lost of new gizmos, specially outfitted vans and obviously a lot larger budget from the Sci-Fi Channel. And while this season started off with a bang - a trip to The Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, (Which if it's still standing was considered one of the most haunted places in America) i has rapidly gone down hill. They are cramming multiple investigations into one show, they are almost completely cutting out footage of the team investigating the places and analyzing the data. What they are showing more of is the bickering between the characters, the interpersonal drama and the stuff having nothing whatsoever to do with investigating hauntings. Plus, it's now showing what assholes founding members Grant and Jason are to their so-called "friends." The last episode showed them basically kicking to the curb a team member who supposedly had been Grant's friend for years and a longtime T.A.P.S. team member. And when the poor guy finally decided he was just going to go his own way, Jason didn't even want to shake his hand goodbye.
I'll probably keep watching it. It's still interesting, but the reality of television is that I hate "reality" television. I can see plenty of people fight, argue, bitch and moan and play out their little dramas for free everyday. I don't want to watch it on a show that's supposed to be about ghosts.
posted by Joseph @ 9/01/2005 07:14:00 PM
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