My Dirty Little Secrets: Shows That I am Obsessed With that I am Embarrassed to Watch

We all have them.  Our dirty little secrets.  Mine come in the form of really bad TV.  The kind of TV that I frantically reach to turn off when I see Todd pull into the driveway.  When I am watching with my iPad on the treadmill, I listen to hear if he’s walking up the hallway, and I press the off button just in time.  I am so embarrassed I can’t even have him know I watch.  And he knows EVERYTHING about me. 

My first dirty little guilty secret is Pretty Little Liars.  I have read ALL the books in the series.  There was like 20 of them.  Read.  Them.  All.  And this was before I was tracking the books I am reading on my web site.  But if I was, I wonder if I would have admitted I read them all.

Though I have to admit I was disappointed in the “series finale” where the show writers decided that the obvious person who was A, the stalker, was a transgender girl who had nothing to do with anything.  The reason why I am saying it in quotes is because they decided that the series would continue, when the girls were 5 years older.  They are 5 years older, back in Rosewood, and still being stalked by A.  See?  It’s totally stupid.  At this rate, this is how Pretty Little Liars is going to be if we don't put an end to it:

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching Pretty Little Liars.

But yet, there I am waiting to find out who A is watching while I log my miles on my treadmill.

I am also obsessed with anything having to do with cults.  I am a sucker for memoirs written by people who have left cults.  So, yeah, Big Love with the polygamist family that has ties to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints?  Hell yes.  But more recently I’ve become hooked on Hulu Original, The Path.  It has the guy from Breaking Bad (which everyone else loved and I just could not get into) and he’s in a cult in upstate New York.  But he’s questioning his faith.  And I am hooked.

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching The Path

Speaking of cults, A&E had a show with Leah Remini, the woman who played in King of Queens.  She was a Scientologist, and in addition to writing a memoir about leaving that cult, she’s doing a show on A&E where she interviews people who also left and exposes certain truths about the group.  I am completely obsessed with how members of the cult follow her around and try to intimidate her.  Absolutely fascinating!

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching Leah Remini Scientology and the Aftermath.

OK, radical gear change.  Can we please talk about The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce?  It’s a scripted series on Bravo.  You know that network, where they show “real” housewives doing fake stuff all the time. (Can I just tell you about the time I watched a Real Housewives show?  I was packing me and Todd for a trip.  I wanted to share one suitcase so I wouldn’t have to pay to check two.  I turned on the show so I could have some noise.  The lady on TV was like “I’m going away on a weekend trip with the girls…” and she whips out 4 gigantic suitcases.  For a weekend trip. Then she goes on to tell me “This one’s for my shoes, this other one’s for my makeup…” Whaaa?) 

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching The Girlfriends Guide to Divorce

So, I’ve devoured all three seasons of Girlfriends Guide to Divorce, which is the ultimate brain junk food show.  It’s about four impossibly beautiful women in Hollywood.  The main one, played by Lisa Edelstein, is a famous author of a series of Girlfriends’ Guide books.  Like the Girlfriends’ Guide to Babies, or Fly Fishing, or Murder Scene Cleanup, or whatever.  She’s going through a divorce, despite her perfect public persona of being the Girlfriend who guides the rest of us weirdo mortals through all the stuff we don’t know how to handle.  Then the rest of the women do crazy shit like sleep with their clients, or their boss, and the miles are flying beneath my feet.  The thing that stinks about this show is that they only made a few episodes for a season.  I think there were only 7 episodes in this last season.  That only equates to just a few miles on the treadmill, which is BS.

I have never admitted this next one to anyone.  ANYONE at all.  But, guys, I totally watched every episode of The Hills.  And it was the stupidest show in the entire world.  And I watched it. 

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching The Hills.

Watching it was a challenge because I didn’t even have an iPad then, so I couldn’t even watch it on the treadmill.  This was a “reality” show that wasn’t based on anything real at all.  It was about these 20 year old girls who lived in Hollywood, had glamorous jobs, one had a Mercedes, and they lived in luxurious apartments.  You know, just like normal 20 somethings do.  The jobs they had were as event planners, fashion designers and the like.  But you could totally tell that they didn’t really work in these places, because they were so busy going to lunch all the time and hitting the clubs, and lounging by the pool and discussing the drama of their terrible boyfriends.  And I watched every minute of it.  I also read Lauren Conrad’s LA Candy book series, that’s how invested I got into this idiotic show.  And I can’t even justify a calorie burn for it.

Going back to Bravo, this new show Imposters is delicious.  Imagine you get a quickie marriage to this crazy hot woman.  She even has a French accent, which is crazy sexy.  Then one day you get home and find out she’s taken you for every penny.  And left behind incriminating photos she had on you and says in a video that if you try to find her she’ll reveal them.  Then a few weeks later some other dude comes to your house and you learn she took him too.  So you guys decide to join forces and find her, just to find a woman she was also married to and who also got taken for a ride.  Honestly, this isn’t a guilty pleasure.  It’s a really good show.

BJ Knapp author of Beside the Music admits to watching Imposters on Bravo

Another one on Bravo I am DYING to see is The Arrangement.  When I am finished getting caught up on Imposters I’ll check this one out on the Bravo app.  It’s about a Hollywood arranged marriage, and it looks yummy.  Though I admit it reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Selma (or was it Patty?) marries Troy McClure so that he can prove to the world that he doesn’t have some weird fetish and digs women.  Cannot wait to log some miles with this one.

So there you have it.  I’ve now told you my shameful TV secrets. 

Don’t judge me

BJ Knapp is the author of Beside the Music, available for purchase here. Please sign up for the Backstage with BJ Knapp mailing list to get updates on events, signings, dog pictures and so much more.

added on 03.03.17

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