Okay, I know I’m too young to be this persnickety about popular entertainment and the world in general, but, well, the world is too full of idiotic things to ignore.  As you may have gathered, I’m not a big watcher of reality TV.  Regular episodes of “What Not To Wear” and occasional forays into “Top Design” are about as trashy as it gets for me.  It’s several things, really.  The people on most reality shows are deliberately selected to be not-too-bright and actively obnoxious, so much so that after a while, I start worrying that the dumb is going to rub off.  There isn’t a chance in hell I’d choose to spend time with most of these people in real life, so why would I want to bring them into my living room?  And at least in scripted television there’s a chance that someone will say something clever or do something interesting.  If I want people living normal life… I have my own life for that.

So, I am obviously not the target audience for this series, but still: HOW is there a whole series entitled “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”?  I can understand how this could be an amusing or interesting special.  But a whole series?  What is this contributing to the world?  I realize that, dumb as it sounds, there are in fact situations in which it’s possible for women who are not total idiots to not realize that they are pregnant.  Women who are carrying extra weight, have irregular cycles, have other medical issues, etc.  I get that, although I do still wonder how you get to the point of being in labor before you figure it out.  I find it impossible to imagine how more than an hour of this could possibly be education, though, and a whole series?  I can’t see how they could avoid running through a trillion women who make the same dumb decisions ignoring their symptoms, and what does anyone get out of that except an opportunity to make fun?  Come on, people.

Fox, makers of such intellectual fare as The Littlest Groom and When Animals Attack 30, has decided they have a great idea to turn this slow economy into a profitable show:

The network has ordered Someone’s Gotta Go, which will take place in real businesses across America and give employees the power to decide who among them gets fired, Daily Variety reported Wednesday.

“It’s Survivor meets The Office,” Fox reality chief Mike Darnell told Variety.

“When someone is arbitrarily let go the first reaction usually is ‘How come that person was fired when another idiot is still here?’ This finally gives employees a chance to make that decision instead of a boss.”

Yeesh.  Cause destroying lives on national television is so.much.fun! Hell in a handbasket, folks. That’s where we are heading.

More here.