Regarding Bridezillas (DISH Network channel 128, Sundays, 9 PM):

The first season of this candid reality program, which follows brides, their families, and, on great occasion, the groom, was a glimpse into the lives of otherwise normal women who flip out during wedding planning. It truly served as a lens on reality; the ever-ballooning wedding industry (emphasis on industry) takes advantage of a self-esteem indoctrinated, largely coddled generation which has been marketed to since the womb. It’s YOOOOOOUUUUUUR special day, ladies! YOU matter, and any old hapless busser, baker, or pending husband had better not get in the way of it.

Pour this flaming attitude of entitlement atop a Long Island Iced Tea’s worth of family tension, job changes, and potential changes in living arrangements, and what you have is one unhappy woman in tulle. I wasn’t immune, myself; in the final weeks before my wedding, I threw a purse across my living room, yelled at my mother, and hung up on my fiancé when he tangled with me over the bridesmaids dresses.

But what I didn’t do was hit my future husband and tell him that he was never seeing his friends again, suggest to a caterer a wedding cake shaped like a vagina, abscond from a seamstress’ living room with a wedding dress I hadn’t paid for, spend my family into oblivion, or hire security to keep my pending mother in law from attending the wedding. All these happened on the current season ofBridezillas. It’s The Jerry Springer Show with a limousine and table favors.

And whether this behavior is for real or simply for the benefit of the cameras, it says something absolutely terrifying about American culture: Either our citizens actually act like this, or we want to invite people who do into our living rooms.

As a native Cincinnatian, I have a soft spot for WKRP in Cincinnati, and was thrilled when I discovered that it’s returning in reruns (DISH Network channel 239, Sundays, 7 PM) That’s TV comfort food of the highest order: If I’m ever concerned about conjuring an image of the skyline of my youth, I know that I’ll be able to visit it, preserved forever, at seven and seven-thirty on the weekend.

The first season of the series is already on DVD, but many diehard fans aren’t tuning in, just as several won’t be joining me in front of the DVR on Sunday nights. Why? Because much of the music of the series, classics from the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, has been replaced with copyright-free pale imitations. The cost of inserting the original music, say the distributors, would keep the show off the shelves and air entirely.

Several changes are simply on the annoying side; seeing Dr. Johnny Fever manically bob his head in time to elevator music just ain’t right. Station programmer Andy Travis mouths the lyrics to an instrumental, and sometimes the DJ’s announce a record as an entirely different song begins to play.

But for a series set at a rock radio station, music sometimes acts as an underpinning to a plot. One Russian character makes a reference to the lyrics of “Tiny Dancer”; that’s missing in the reruns. In another episode, timid newscaster Les Nessman readies himself for a date with the station bicycle, played by Loni Anderson. In the original broadcast, “Hot Blooded” pours through the station loudspeaker, but his carefully timed motions and facial expressions are lost against the backdrop of… this other one song.

As a child of New Wave music, I mostly don’t miss the era-specific drop ins… but then again, I’m watching for Reds pennants in the background, not listening for the Grateful Dead. However, the fate ofWKRP in Cincinnati is an object lesson in the important integration of pop music with popping dialogue.

Hey, did you see the Emmys last night? Me either! Or anybody else, really.

Last night’s Emmy broadcast on ABC (DISH 73) was the lowest-rated since Nielsen started keeping track. The numbers fell off twelve percent from last year.

Why?

Critics have lambasted the show for its self-important Oprahizing, the flat humor, the uneven hosting job of the five best reality show host nominees. But that wouldn’t explain why nobody tuned in to begin with.

Maybe it was that we’re more preoccupied with our upside-down mortgages than we are with watching multimillionaire stars flash their couture on the red carpet.

Maybe we’re distracted by the immediacy of entertainment we’ve come to expect: Red Box, Netflix, You Tube, episodes on DVD demand.

Maybe, in one of the ugliest Presidential contests of the modern era, when we sit down at the end of the week to unwind, we don’t to tune in to a program which will doubtless come replete with political grandstanding and assorted partisan cheap shots.

Maybe we’ve had it with lame sitcoms, retreads of retreaded movies, obnoxious commercials, and the open sewer-behavior seen on some reality shows.

Maybe we just don’t care.

It’s easy to lose patience with television, especially with the likes of, for instance, the sex-drenched Two and a Half Men airing in local syndication at seven in the evening.

But there’s C-SPAN‘s wall-to-wall coverage of this summer’s nominating conventions, without which David Letterman could have never selected his hideously dancing Delegate of the Day– without which we would have been bereft the image of a balloon-covered cameraman still imperviously aiming his lens at the stage. Come on, that’s a party.

There’s the marvelous Dirty Jobs (DISH Network channel 182, Tuesdays, 9 PM EST) with Mike Rowe, which gives some just screen time to essential workers most simply don’t think about.

There’s HBO’s John Adams, which brought to the small screen the life of the similarly fame-shafted second President.

There’s watching Michael Phelps, live and half a world away, outswim the competition by a fraction of a fraction of a second.

There’s good in that blinking box.

I can’t say that I blame you from failing to watch the industry congratulate itself. Me, I spent the evening struggling to properly cook a chicken and drinking wine with friends. But then I unwound for an hour with my husband on the couch as the TV blazed forth, and… it was a pretty good evening, you know?

realityblurred.com (yep, small “r”, small “b”) is running a series of interviews with each contestant for the upcoming run of Survivor (Thursdays, 8 PM, CBS, DISH 74.) This season takes place in wild and stunning Gabon, situated on the west coast of Africa. Over the summer, editor Andy Dehnart followed the production all the way to the preserve where the action took place — Probst, tents and all.

This, the 17th season, is the first to be filmed in HD (all the filth up close and personal, hooray!), and is running with the promo tag “Earth’s Last Eden.” Clips from the first episode have also appeared online, courtesy of CBS. The previews include a bit of behind the scenes footage.

Dehnart was privy to only the first three days of production and therefore doesn’t know any more about the end of the game than we do, but he spoke with each of the 18 cast members — one a 2004 gold medalist, one a student and professional gamer, and one a self-described “gay, white, athletic, male Cirie.” To sort out the competition, Dehnart decided to rank the contestants based on the conclusions he formed while watching them in action.

What makes these little previews so much more readable than the usual firehose of publicity aimed towards the public is that Dehnart mixes information about the candidates with his honest impressions– impressions he’s won the street cred to form, as he’s run realityblurred.com and closely covered Survivor since 2000. Readers are thus treated to, for instance, Dehnart’s cheerful revelation that one “came across as a complete a–hole in our conversation” and another is “very impressed with herself and over-confident.” He does, however, have his favorites.

If there’s a Survivor pool in your office, this is a great place for drafting picks and first-hand info as the series begins. Roast up the nearest handful of bugs and enjoy.

The season premiere of Desperate Housewives (Sundays at 9 PM on ABC) is coming up on September 28, and I am so very concerned. Not about the effect of the five-year time jump on the lives of the characters, which seems to have split up marriages, sent the Scavo children to juvie, and rendered general havoc across Wisteria Lane. Lookit, I don’t care about any of that.

I fear deeply for Bree, and her hair.

Did you see that shiznit in the last scene of the season finale? As a person who spent 90% of ages six to eighteen in a Catholic school uniform, I don’t much notice clothes, but there was no missing that. What was that, with the crammed-back hair, the ruffly blouse, the horrible vest and… and… and the pocket watch?  Does she become a Charles Dickens villain after the time jump?

I think it’s so difficult to process since this is Bree we’re typing about here. Bree Van de Kamp Hodge was always admirably attired in lovely shifts, smart gloves, the occasional stunning ball gown, and the most evenly conditioned hair. She was even stylishly tricked out while faux pregnant, showing her daughter-protecting padding to its very best advantage. You can’t buy that kind of ability.

This was in the face of the constant fashion miscues of the other housewives– the crochet-and-fur sweatery nightmares flung over Susan’s shoulders, the couture cringers out of Gabby’s closet, the drab Momwear of Lynette. If this keeps up, there will be no further muted sundresses to turn to anymore.

Now we have Madame Pocket Watch, complete with vest, ruffles, and scraped-back hair, even to play poker. And seriously, if women really do dress like that five years down the road, I am clutching my cotton nightgowns to me and I am never leaving my home.

The genre of ’80′s sitcoms is more than ironic entertainment in my house:  It’s comfort food. One look at D.J. Tanner and her poofy bangs over pastel clothes does more good for my mood than any amount of chocolate.

One of the titans of the era, Golden Girls (constantly, DISH Network, channel 108) is now embraced by a new generation, thanks to its neverending rotation on Lifetime. Particularly fond of the Girls are college students, whose class schedules often synch with late night and midday airings.

Seeing the ladies so often, rotating through their lives over the seven seasons in such a rapid progression, forces an appreciation of their tremendous fortitude as the series turned ever more often from sharp table-talk and multiple banquet appearances to Very Special Episodes, with one involving all four in a hurricane, and another forcing them to intervene for a pregnant teenager, and still another staged in a crisis center, being held at gunpoint. The tragedies and challenges tumbled one after another on the heads of these poor seniors. Could mere cheesecake repair all this in your life?

DOROTHY ZBORNAK
-Teenage mother
-Husband left her for stewardess
-Discovers a close friend from high school is a lesbian
-Estranged from sister
-Becomes an object of obsession of a shut-in
-Fear of flying
-Audited and tried as slum lord
-Ex-husband slept with sister
-Foot injury requiring surgery
-Son enters marriage with much older woman
-Teaches student who is illegal alien
-Gambling addiction
-Chronic fatigue syndrome
-Lost winning lottery ticket in clothing drive

BLANCHE DEVEREAUX
-Widowed
-Dated abusive boyfriend
-Dated bigamist
-Sister needed kidney transplant
-Discovered her husband fathered a child during their marriage
-Discovered her father cheated on her mother with the African-American nanny
-Discovered her brother was gay and wants to marry
-Struggles with dating man in wheelchair
-Estranged from overweight daughter who was engaged to abusive man
-Grandmother of child born of artificial insemination
-Menopause

ROSE NYLUND
-Widowed
-Traumatized by mugging
-AIDS scare
-Experiences age discrimination
-Boyfriend dies during sex
-Boyfriend is member of Witness Protection Program
-Various family members maimed by farm implements
-Painkiller addiction
-Triple-bypass surgery
-Sister goes blind
-Swindled by bad investments
-Esophageal spasm
-Fear of public speaking
-Laid off from job
-Sexually harassed by dentist

SOPHIA PETRILLO
-Widowed
-Son a cross-dresser
-Befriends Alzheimer’s patient
-Survived death of said cross-dresser
-Hernia surgery
-Stroke
-Best friend dies
-Heart attack
-Severe indigestion
-Close friend threatenes suicide
-Close friend left in understaffed nursing home
-Tied up by robber
-Separated from husband married late in life

We’ve come to That Place as a culture: The fusion of reality television and sweat.

NBC’s The Biggest Loser (Tuesdays, 8 PM EDT, DISH Network NBC, check local listings) has spawned several workout DVD’s, but the focus of the show isn’t so much scandal and shock as competition and watching Jillian Michaels make 400-pound people do jumping jacks. The DVD’s make specific mention of the show, with trainer Bob Harper even making sly references to tensions played out during the competition.

Bravo’s Work Out (various, Dish Network 119), on the other hand, features the daily life of gym owner Jackie Warner, who has herself a barn of drama in the form of her trainers and clients. It wasn’t long before she was granted a DVD of her own, which makes no reference to the show which spun it. It’s long on crunches, squats, and, for those who have caught an ep or two of Work Out, creepiness: “Oh, look, there’s Renessa, last seen drunk and in a hot tub, making out with a co-worker in full view of the rest of the trainers.” Drama and delts, getcha some!