Watching the latest episode of VH1's Sober House, I suddenly became aware of an annoying trend that's exploded within the world of trashy reality television: an egregious overabundance of previews and recaps. That's right friends and family, you heard me: previews and recaps are cutting dangerously into the precious, limited number of minutes we're allotted each week to watch people destroy their own lives publicly.
Just to use this week's Sober House as an example: I saw last week, on the preview for this week's episode, that Tom Sizemore is going to freak out on Mike Starr, the bassist for Alice in Chains, and try to fight him. So for a week I've known this was coming, and have been very eager to see this development. This is an instance of the preview doing its job: luring me, a loyal viewer of the show, into watching the next episode.
So then naturally, at the beginning of this week's episode, VH1 shows the same titillating footage. Fine. Get me hyped up again. It's all good.
Here's what I don't need, though. I don't need you to go to every commercial break throughout the show saying "Coming up!" and then playing the exact same footage of Tom Sizemore freaking out on Mike Starr. I know that's coming up. I've gotten the previews for it multiple times before the episode even started. Stop bragging about your amazing show, and instead show your amazing show.
And while we're on the subject, when you come back from the commercials? I absolutely do not need you to replay the exact same 20 seconds of footage that led into the commercial. Give my advanced humanoid brain just a little bit of credit to remember what it just processed moments ago. I am not on the same hardcore drugs as the people on Sober House. I remember what happened before the commercial. Especially now - meaning, like, in the last seven years - with TiVo, I'm not even watching the commercials. I zip over them in seconds. So now you're just making me watch the exact same footage back to back, with only a seconds-long buffer of mindless button pushing in between. It's redundant. It's unnecessary. In short, it's unacceptable.
Keep in mind, this is only a big deal because I enjoy the show. I kvetch because I care. I know you have endless hours of entertaining reality footage of these disgusting people I despise. I also know you only have less than an hour to show me all the best moments of these human trainwrecks. So please, don't double up. Trust me enough to not need the refresher course of an easily distracted three year-old, and I shall reward you by destroying my own life, contentedly rotting away on my couch in the same spot, every week, for the rest of time.
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