Where Have All the Reruns Gone?

In the midst of these hot summer months, with inflated gas prices, staycations and humidity, you would think that this was the time of year when Americans would need new and fresh entertainment more than any other. While we have the typical flash-bang affair at the local multiplexes, as well as some little Batman movie people keep fussing over, the six or seven minute drive is remarkably inconvenient, when in the winter and fall months, all we need do is flip on the tube in our living rooms for some quality enjoyment. Sadly, in these summer months, when one presses the "on" switch they are confronted with a barrage of reality television. While there may be the occasional gem in the rough (I personally enjoyed "Hell's Kitchen"), on the whole, these shows can have you wishing that you were birthed into this world in the body of a more intelligent species. A cow perhaps. For surely their only great indecency is chewing with their mouths open, while NBC christians its warm weather series under the theme the  "All American Summer".  While I may call myself a patriotic person on the whole, if being "All American" includes crushing beer cans between size DDDDD breasts on national television ("America's Got Talent"), I'm packing up and moving to Australia. If beer breast crushing isn't "American" enough, one may simply tune into another night on NBC. For instance, on Wednesdays, we have the new series "Baby Borrowers" in which teens are 'lent' a child to care for and subsequently succumb to abstinence for the rest of their lives based on the horrifying experience. Finally we have "American Gladiator", since we can't press our similarities to Rome-on-the-brink-of-collapse enough, here's a show to draw even more similarities. You know, but instead of live lions, we have Rocketball. What happened to the days when the summer months were filled with reruns and failed pilots? I for one would rather tune in to watch Future Dwight save Stanley from the poison coffee for a tenth repeat viewing than see a giant pig attempt to create a masterpiece with watercolors on prime time. Vaudeville died out for a good reason- let's not try to bring it back, people. ABC is less shameless about their summer fare; instead focusing on prepping for the premieres of their more well respected shows with a "Lost" bookclub and activities of the like. In the meantime, they have chosen to occupy viewers with one of the worse television programs ever devised, "The Mole", and the pathetic and masochistic "Wipeout!". CBS doesn't even bother advertising its summer shows on its website, filling their page instead with "fall 2008 previews", and while usually in a case such as this, my curiosity would impel me to tune in and discover just what they are hiding, I think this time I can make a brain saving exception. Summer vacation be damned; someone just wake me up when "Heroes" starts up again. Until then, I'll be dog-day afternoon dreaming of the good ol' days when reruns were the most American thing around.