Logan makes fun of me, and I can't really blame him, for watching Starting Over. As a cross between self-help and reality tv which airs during the day and aimed entirely at women, it sometimes gets undeniably hokey. As a connoisseur of crap, I am not unschooled in the ways of totally useless, Lifestyle-brand nauseating pap for ladies. I maintain that television could be worse than this, and usually is.
A group of women share a house, each there for a different reason, each there for an unspecified length of time. Their goals range from admirable to ridiculous - most want to lose weight, trust men, or start a small business, but then there was that one lady who just wanted to learn to drive (you have to go on tv to figure out how to call driving school?), as well as the weepy nutjob who wanted to be an auctioneer so badly that she cried and cried about the idea that she might not be a good one.
These goals, laughable or not, generally boil down to dealing with fear. It's an interesting and important thing to see an emotionally paralyzed woman finally take a good hard look at her life and say, I'm just not going to live that way anymore. This process is necessarily very different for everyone. One woman takes a yoga class, one forces herself to start talking to strangers, one learns self-defense, one goes back to school. The idea is that, whatever the method, if you are unsatisfied with your life, you need to determine what must change, take responsibility, and take action. Pretty basic self-help stuff, but I think it's a message which may actually empower a lot of viewers, and it's better for you than The Price is Right.
The house gets daily visits from two "life coaches" who guide the women toward their various goals. This is meant to give the women basic support and encouragement, which is surely valid, but it's the worst part. While the one-on-one meetings aren't usually that painful, the "Board of Review" is excruciating. The ladies sit around a table and testify as to whether a certain member of the household is fulfilling her potential. If she isn't, she is asked to verbally defend her place in the house. If she has reached all her goals, she "graduates" out of the house, which leads to another ceremony, which is unfailingly and embarassingly like a funeral. Cassie, it won't be like you're really gone, because you'll always live on in my heart! (I swear to god.)
But even in the show's hokiest moments, this is genuine emotion, usually expressed for reasons I don't find silly. These women are going through profoundly difficult changes, living in an unfamiliar environment filled with similarly volatile women, and they are doing it all on national television. I'm not nearly strong or bold enough to do that. And can I really laugh at the single mom who raised her baby without any help from her family, and who was herself given up at birth, when she says, "I never knew what it was like to be supported by women," with tears in her eyes? I'm not made of stone; they got me.
I watch Dr. Phil and I'm not sorry about that either.
