My TV Guilty Pleasures

The first is Maury, the talk show hosted by Maury Povich. With Ricki Lake going bye-bye, Springer being less entertaining, and Jenny Jones long off the air, Maury is the king of trash talk shows. This show is the pioneer of the following types of themes: the paternity test, the lie detector test, the amazing transformations, and the freaks/”really extraordinary people.” My personal favorite is the paternity test. I crack up as women (who normally are either ghetto, country, fat, ugly, or any combination of the four) bring their (ex) boyfriends/husbands/lovers/ to find out who is the father of their under 5-year-old child. The women are always 100% sure that the man they brought is the father. The man then does some clip where he denies he’s the father of the kid and insults the woman. In some rare cases, the man really does want to be the father. They both end up on stage, proceed to yell and cuss at each other, as Maury watches and then gets the test results in a manila envelope. Most of the time, the guy is the father and the woman gloats. If he isn’t the father, the man is very happy and the woman runs like hell out of the studio. It’s trashy, guilt-inducing, campy fun.

The other guilty pleasure is about as far away from Maury as you can get. It’s Antiques Roadshow. Yep, that show on PBS about people who bring in their stuff to see if it’s valuable or just junk. I don’t know why, but it intrigues me. I don’t collect antiques nor do I intend to. I don’t have anything remotely valuable enough to bring onto that show. But it’s kind of fun to see people be surprised at the values of items they took for granted. Also, those antique dealers tell you a lot. But, still, why do I like watching it?