Dear VH1: I’ve Finally Had Enough
Yes. You’ve done it. You’ve broken me. I can’t take these “Love” shows anymore. I can’t take Celeb-Reality anymore. I can’t take any more Rehab. Ok? You happy? You did it. Are you proud of yourself? I like music videos. I do. I always have. I enjoy their little stories. So, I remember when I was younger – pop-up video came out. It was awesome. A perfect fit for me. This was when I began giving you a chance. When I defended you against those who looked at you like an Adult Contemporary (read: shitty) version of MTV. Yes. You played The Police and Paula Abdul even though they’re time of ruling the airwaves had come to pass.
But then you surprised me VH1. You remade yourself while I was in college. You began all kinds of list shows. It was an easy formula: mildly-funny comedians comment on stuff. They commented on the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. They commented on the best breakups. The best fights. The best hair metal. I liked it. I mean, I got REALLY tired of it, but who doesn’t like a good countdown or list?
All these list shows slowly transitioned to Celeb-Reality. Your next evolution. you basically took a whole bunch of C-list celebrities and gave them a show. The thing was, your strategy was really obvious. It was like a sociological experiment, its like one of your executives said, “People will watch anything with a celebrity… they’d probably watch a show with like 6 washed up celebrities in a house.”
Then you all laughed, heartily.
You gave us this terrible mindless programming and we loved it. I watched it. I wasn’t happy with myself but it was easy and mildly entertaining.
Then came Flavor of Love, and the end was in sight. You went from having us watch the lives of shitty C-list celebrities to watching awful representatives of humankind fight for the love of C-list celebrities. The result? A whole stable of VH1 personalities you could use over and over and over again. For different shows. Well, actually just different versions of the same show:
- Flavor of Love
- Rock of Love
- Daisy of Love (this name doesn’t even make sense)
- I Love Money
- I Love New York
- For the Love of Ray J (who is Ray J? Is he a celebrity? Seriously… who is he?)
- Real Chance at Love (by far the most confusing of all of them)
What’s worse is there are like 17 versions of each of these shows. And it’s always the exact… same…. show. I’m done. I can’t take it. It’s embarrassing to even turn this channel on. I feel like less of a human being for watching VH1, a once proud network. I even think watching MTV is more honorable, at least its culturally relevant and its horrible shows have some production value.
Oh. Not to mention the next evolution of VH1 seems to be exploiting drug-addicted has-been celebrities. Cool. Good idea. All in the name of recovery I guess.
So that’s it VH1. You and I are over.
Don’t forget Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, where men and women alike bit, scratched, and shouted for the love of stripper (porn star?) Tila Tequila. These shows are the worst. I’ll still flip through VH1 to see if they have a countdown, but I’m with you. Not that MTV is much better with shows like Next, Parental Control, etc.
Those channels are bad.