My first couple of weeks of life on the couch have gone pretty well, thanks in large part to the fact that I’ve slept through most of it. I’ve actually managed to avoid the worst of primetime television, with one notable exception. A friend and self-proclaimed “reality-TV addict” conned me into watching one of the final episodes of The Bachelorette, claiming I’d like it so much I’d be hooked. The experiment yielded mixed results. I hated it so much I wanted to call her at every commercial break and curse her, but I was afraid I’d miss part of the show when it came back on.

I happened to see the episode where Miss Bachelorette goes on overnight dates with the three final suitors. In each case, there was some pretty heavy making out, and they shared a hotel room. The sharing of the hotel rooms was supposed to be a special surprise – the producers had given her an ornate, gilded card to present to her date so that they could share a luxury suite rather than separate rooms, if she felt a special bond. I think they were hoping that, with a trembling hand, she’d present the card in an emotional, ratings-getting moment to one special guy; instead, she whipped that sucker out with no delay at the end of each date. I guess in this case “bachelorette” is a euphemism for “ho’.”

During the obligatory scenes where the chick was crying about how difficult it was to choose between such wonderful reality-TV boyfriends, I flipped channels to see what else was on. If the primetime shows are bad enough to make me have serious doubts about the state of our society, the commercials make me want to put my house up for sale so I can find a nice remote cave to move into. I can pretend that most of the viewership of The Bachelorette can be attributed to invalids, quadriplegics, the mentally infirm, and other people who may not have total control over what’s on their television. But I can’t pretend that nobody is buying the products that are advertised. Companies don’t spend millions continuing to advertise something that nobody is buying.

Case in point: until this adventure in television-watching, I was not aware that being shy is a disorder and there is now a pill to cure it. I knew we had pills to help people quit smoking, lower cholesterol, and ease acid reflux, but I was not aware that there are pills for personality traits. I should have seen it coming, since there is Prozac for depression and Valium for stress, but I guess I just figured that psychiatrists had surely run out of pseudo-disorders. There have to be some limits to their creativity.

Apparently not. So now we have commercials for Paxil, which cures shyness – err, “social anxiety disorder.”

The commercial starts out by showing a brightly lit room full of beautiful, twenty-something yuppies wearing all the very latest in designer clothes, laughing and talking amongst themselves. The protagonist walks in and seems apprehensive. At this point, the audience is thinking, “Yup, this person is normal.” But no. This person is not normal. He has “social anxiety disorder,” because he doesn’t want to hang out at a party full of cliquish scenesters who look like they’ve just walked off the set of a Banana Republic photo shoot.

Rather than just make a beeline to the bar, like the rest of us would, our hero pops a Paxil and is suddenly talkative and happy, thrilled to be hanging out with his new best friends. It’s a good thing there is a voice over, because if you watched the commercial on mute you’d think it’s a pill that turns you into an asshole.

I suppose this is not a good start to my temporary life on the couch if one commercial and one reality-TV show have already made my blood pressure rise. Am I doomed to be pissed off every time I turn on the television? Oh well, if that turns out to be the case I’m sure there’s always a pill I could take to cure it. Maybe I’ll even create a new disorder. I can see the commercial now: a young woman is alone in a room watching television. The new reality-TV show, Forever Eden, comes on, and she begins cursing and making obscene gestures at the television. The voice over explains that this woman has “stupidity intolerance disorder” and cuts to a bunch of other situations where this terrible disorder has reared its ugly head in her life: while driving, surfing the Web, on hold with the phone company, etc. Cut back to the couch scene. She pops a handful of the new drug Zombiezin® and is content to watch hours and hours and hours of reality television with glee.

The upside of all this is that I have a newfound appreciation for infomercials, which I will cover in the forthcoming Dispatch #2.