In case you haven't seen this masterpiece, or want a refresher before reading my descent in Snuggie-fueled madness, take a peek below:

While watching NBC’s weight loss reality show The Biggest Loser on TV the other night, a thought occurred to me that chilled me to the very bone: when it comes to reality programming, all the networks should learn a lesson from Fox.

In the early, heady days of reality TV, everything was incredibly new and exciting, and just bursting with the potential that comes from real people placed into strange circumstances, with low production values keeping options open. The first two such shows to hit American airwaves – Survivor and Big Brother –had completely opposite premises (one featured disparate strangers placed into the wild and asked to provide everything they needed on their own, while the other confined strangers into a house and watched what would happen when they weren’t asked to do anything), and as such offered a clue as to just how diverse this new genre could be.

I freely admit that I am as guilty as the next person in adding to the current epidemic of reality programming on our airwaves today. There is something undeniably compelling about watching everyday people humiliate themselves in front of a national audience. When they do this for money, we watch and wonder how far we ourselves would go in their shoes; when they do it for no other reason than exposure and (what inevitably turns out to be the wrong kind of) fame, we get a front-row seat to the pointless deconstruction of an already soulless individual. It’s a recipe for success if ever I saw one.

It only takes a scant few viewings of The Bachelor to see that it makes for stilted, banal television, but what of the experience of the contestants? Even though it appears to be merely a redundant and derivative cycle of events, leading to a finale with no surprise or variation, mustn’t it be true that those who live it are on the ultimate emotional roller coaster, with their lives forever affected by the time and effort put into finding love in such a public, combative way?