Sometimes, I file away little bits and pieces of information to blog about, and then I have no idea what to do with them. For example, there’s this bit via one of my new favourite blogs, Inside the CBC: a new reality television series in preproduction for the CBC called (wait for it) A Week Without Women.
A Week Without Women is an ambitious new series which explores what happens when all the women in a ordinary Canadian town leave for seven days… What happens to a workplace without women? What happens in a community? What happens at home when the men and children are forced to cope without girlfriends, wives or mothers?!
I have been noodling this little bit of information for days, and I just can’t come up with enough snark to do it justice. On the CBC, of all places! I would love to think that this could be a thoughtful exploration of gender roles, of the extra weight that women carry when they do a full-time day job and then pull another couple of hours on domestic chores, or even highlight how much more capable men really are at domestic and relationship issues than they are ever given credit for. But you know it’s not going to play out that way. Dollars to doughnuts, it will be contrived, sensationalistic, and divisive.
Of course, I’m hardly the one to be criticizing reality TV as a genre. Beloved and I tuned in as usual for the first episode in the new Survivor season – I wouldn’t miss it. The debut I’m really looking forward to, though, is the new Amazing Race all-star season. I wrote about Uchenna and Joyce when they won season seven of the Amazing Race, and nearly two years after the fact, I consistently get google traffic looking for news on whether they ever adopted or were successful with IVF. I even wrote to CBS a year or so ago asking for an update I could post on the blog, since I get so much traffic asking the question, but (amazingly) they failed to respond to me. I’m looking forward to next Sunday night (Feb 18) to tune in and cheer them on again. It would be especially satisfying to see them trounce Rob and Amber!
What’s your guilty TV pleasure?
