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After having the worst sales day on Sunday I’ve ever seen, I changed our Directv package to the cheapest one (that’s still not “cheap”, but anyway). I also scaled back our Netflix from five discs out to three and got excited about a return to listening to This American Life and music more often. And maybe having the attention span to watch entire movies again — something we’ve all but lost in the past couple of years of television immersion.

Some of the cable shows we love best are The First 48, Cold Case Files, Mad Men (swoon), Deadliest Catch, and Intervention — apparently we aren’t alone in being addicted to that show because I got a bunch of tweets in response to my announcement yesterday from people who couldn’t stand to give up Intervention.

I first started watching Intervention alone and totally felt guilty and ashamed watching it, like only a sicko would watch an hour of a stranger’s family’s most private, horrifyingly personal, lowdown moments. I’d record them on our DVR and wait to watch them alone until once when my sister was over she saw it in the list of shows and was like, “oooh! Let’s watch Intervention!!” The concept of all of us watching the show together embarrassed me, like it’s something you should only watch in private (which of course isn’t true).

It’s not that I think the show is bad — I think it’s awesome, and since then Delia and I have watched it together many times — it’s just really intense and weird. I do think it’s informative (I love that they focus on all kinds of addictions and sicknesses from gambling to OCD to Diabetes to eating disorders) and helps build empathy, but it still feels wrong to watch it for entertainment. But we do, I guess. One person tweeted to me that she thinks that show is depressing with a capital “D”. And it’s true, that’s the embarrassing part — why would we watch something totally depressing for FUN? I guess there are a million awkward answers to that question.

*****

One of the first Interventions I watched was repeated last night and pissed me off in a giant way. The family seemed more concerned with Cristy’s stripping than with her drug use, like the STRIPPING was THE sign she was way out of control (and what a great marketing hook, too!). Whenever I see that crap it disturbs the fuck out of me the way people alienate someone who already feels totally isolated and judged by being TOTALLY FUCKING STUPID about sex work. I’m not saying that the sick women on Intervention would choose sex work if they weren’t in desperate situations, I’m just saying that their friends and families are usually so fucking retardedly focused on that part of it that they contribute to the problem and I’ve never seen that addressed in any healthy way on the show (though some of the families seem to have it in a more rational perspective).

It reminds me of a story I saw about a missing woman, maybe on America’s Most Wanted, told mostly from the perspective of her “loving” parents who OVER and OVER said they knew she would NEVER have become a prostitute in Las Vegas of her own volition and that her evil boyfriend HAD to have MADE her do it and caused her to disappear. They said stupid shit over and over again about how they knew their darling daughter would never have chosen this life for herself and how badly they wanted her back so she could be her old innocent self again. Of course she was probably dead so it probably doesn’t matter, but all I could think is that if this woman WAS alive and in a bad situation and saw her parents saying that shit, she’d probably rather whither up and accept her current lot than think she could ever live near them and their unaccepting ignorance again. People are so hyperfocused on how degrading they believe sex work always is that they can’t fucking think straight, like these parents who seemed unable to recognize that their daughter willingly chose this boyfriend AND sex work in Vegas, and that the real sad and scary thing was that someone — possibly the boyfriend — probably killed her for it. Instead they went on tv, rejected her choices (that probably came from wanting to get away from their moronic idealized perception of her) and shat all over her.

This is why I need to stop watching TV. Because this crap HAUNTS me! And I haven’t even said anything about the MOST DISTURBING episodes of Intervention and America’s Most Wanted! Gah!

Do they have Intervention on DVD?

No!! I need a break!! NO MORE INTERVENTION!!!!

PS – Ken is totally our favorite interventionist.