I, like most of us, am sick to death of the MTV Video Music Awards even though I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down and made an effort to watch it from beginning to end. The show isn’t so much the horrible car wreck we couldn’t take our eyes off than it is an annoying fender bender that unnecessarily holds up traffic. You strain to catch a glimpse of gore and limbs, anything good, but it ultimately ends in disappointment. As one ONTDer pointed out, MTV has a lot of nerve to host a Video Music Awards when 90% of their broadcast are consumed with reruns of The Hills.

The only way I managed to catch Britney Spears’ much talked about performance (and, really, can we even call it a performance?) was by catching a clip of it on Youtube. What can be said about Ms. Spears’s interpretive dance at the VMA’s that hasn’t been said before. Ditto, internet, ditto.

After years of successfully avoiding every popular reality show on television, my boyfriend and I are actually using space on my DVR to record episodes of VH1’s The Pick-Up Artist.

The show runs on the premise that some men are basically inept, primitive morons who are unable to express their simplest desires in courtship and must resort to elaborate cat and mouse games to reach their ultimate goal: sex. Mystery, the show’s host and self-described Master Pickup Artist, likes to emphasize how his techniques aren’t just about getting women into bed; it’s really about learning one’s self-worth and gaining confidence. It’s a pretty lofty way to describe a show which encourages its contestants to bait women with practiced, scripted conversation (”Settle an argument for me, is kissing considered cheating?”). It isn’t the seriousness that Mystery treats his craft that makes the show so laughable (or his cringing fashion sense that underscores it), but the lengths in which these otherwise mild-mannered, lonely men would go for a lousy, alcohol-induced kiss. Moment after painfully awkward moment, each contestant is thrown into various nightclubs to execute the material they’ve learned.

It is absolutely irresistible to watch.

In every reality series, there is always one contestant audiences tirelessly root for and one who provokes only the most hateful of emotions, someone so perfectly unlikable it ensures a steady, loyal rating. For me, that exceedingly irritating buffoon is Pradeep.

He’s talkative, whiny, insincere, childish, high-strung and clearly overcompensating for his height. But the truly irritating aspect of Pradeep’s character (because, let’s at least give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s truly not this obnoxious) is that he’s playing the game ass-poorly and still winning.

In episode 4, Scott, the show’s most dedicated and likable contestant, is inexplicably eliminated despite applying, albeit unsuccessfully, all of Mystery’s pickup techniques. Pradeep, however, manages to survive another elimination after he completely blows his assignment to score a kiss at a nightclub by desperately bribing women with VIP access and promises of free alcohol.

Pradeep’s presence is probably the result of a producer’s decision, a fact that my boyfriend wisely points out, and I’m desperately looking forward to his elimination (because if God truly exists and he loves me, Pradeep will get eliminated) because let’s face it, absurd disasters like Pradeep are fun to hate but only for a little while.

I spent my lunch break curled up on the couch, relieved to have my hummus all to myself and switching between a broadcast of the film The Other Sister and MTV’s mindnumbing trash My Super Sweet Sixteen. While both share a theme of mild retardation, The Other Sister at least attempts to present a heartwarming message of how even functionally retarded people can love.

Naturally, there’s nothing funny about retardation or autism or whatever it is that Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi are trying to portray but there is something very funny about people pretending to be retarded or autistic or whatever and passing it off as a serious performance piece. There’s a scene in The Other Sister in which Lewis and Ribisi compete in a ludicrous, unintelligible shrieking match that’s supposed to remind the audience that they shouldn’t laugh at retarded people. Instead, the scene is so bizarre in its execution that it’s actually pretty funny: Lewis forces out her sobs so hard that she practically chokes and Ribisi is trying so hard to be retarded he simply splays out his fingers and whines. Serious considerations like sex, alcohol abuse and mental retardation are treated in such an unrealistic manner that it’s hard to believe the film was greenlighted at all.

I can’t explain with reason why I stop to watch My Super Sweet Sixteen whenever it airs on the soulless, gluttonous, life-sucking machine that is MTV, but I do. Every single episode is like seeing a horrific car accident that I have to stare at in disgust and amazement wondering how something can go so horribly wrong. One can argue that the show is simply scripted or strategically edited, perhaps MTV goes to great lengths to find wealthy families and their obnoxious children. Regardless, this glorification of enfant terrible has developed into a tiresome trend.

Are we raising a new generation of brats? Does a 7-year old really need a PSP, a cell phone and a flatscreen TV in the SUV? Are we so uninterested in talking and dealing with our children that we’ve decided to distract them with technological goodies? Why isn’t it ok to just say no anymore?