New TV Series!

TLC premieres "Nursing Home High," a reality show about high schoolers living in a nursing home.

Here's how it works.  Three seniors are ushered into a nursing home their last semester.  If they make it through without leaving the building and pass all their classes via skype, they will receive a $45,000 college scholarship.  But during non-school/homework hours, their electronics, phones, everything is taken away because old people usually don't know how to work these and/or they are too expensive.  There will be no way they can text their friends or have social contact with them during that semester, either, or they forfeit the prize.

They are also not allowed to talk to any family member older than they are during the show because in real life no 90-year-old can still phone her mom.  The TV staff will select one friend or younger sibling they can communicate with, but what the contestants don't know?  Is that the friend or sibling will have to pretend to have dementia, speak slowly, and ramble on about, "Oh do you remember that time where we went to the park, and we were at the park?  Times were different then..."

It's gonna be great!  I can't wait to see the epic tantrums these "kids" throw when staff speak slowly and condescendingly to them AND TALK ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS.  They're gonna go absolutely crazy for the cameras.  Especially when they finally resign themselves to a boring six months of reading in bed, only to find out that the only books they're allowed have three-point type so that the dwindling vision of older people is simulated.  They will find themselves greedily grabbing that large-print Reader's Digest and even laughing at the goofy comics.

Ok, all of the above is totally fake.  But I was just thinking for a second there (I forget why, because I'm old maybe) about how I'd rather be dead than stuck in a nursing home.  Seriously.  I can think of no other fate quite so legally cruel.  Unfortunately, life being what it is, we don't get to decide.

But (and why am I thinking this even, maybe because I'm old now) it would seriously be great if there could be secret shoppers in nursing homes.  You know.  Like the big companies hire to see if their employees are doing a good job, except these people would stay for a couple of weeks and hear what happens there at night.  And do things like check, are there enough staff to get all these sleeping oldsters out safely if there is a real fire??  Are there bedbugs?  What is the food like?  And can people contact friends in the outside world?  And is there cable TV?

I am seriously hooked on this Hoarders thing.  I'm probably going to have to watch every episode to get it out of my system.  Then I hear there is some new "Amish Mafia" series.  Really?  Like who wants to watch that?

But then I thought the same thing about "Who wants to watch people who live in piles of trash?" that is the premise of this series.