Rifle suggests an interesting remedy to what Dave thinks of as forest fires. In fact there's no possible remedy and there really aren't any forest fires.
The very nature of the product obviates the possibility ever of being able to discuss successfully what's scripted, acted, and therefore theater, as apart from what's real, spontaneous and true, since each episode mixes inseparably the fantasy with the reality. I remember 6 months ago going on and on in a moderately pedantic fashion about Bradley's "willing suspension of disbelief" and saying that I love
Broke Straight Boys because there ARE gaffes, fluffs, small incoherent absurdities in the montage, puzzling glances off stage by the boys, pseudonyms forgotten, all that stuff that I just absolutely love, all tied inextricably up with a porn shoot where these guys are being real guys, telling a version they are comfortable with, and can possibly remember for next time, of what their life is like at the moment.
I just wish everyone, including David, could look at
Broke Straight Boys like that. You're totally involved in it, at the same time as being enough detached to laugh at the foibles and the fakery. I can use words like that because I really love this site. I did a talk about it to a bunch of sociology students a couple of months ago who were engaged in a creative writing seminar, and used it as an example of the successful mix of realityTV and fetish fantasy porn, with a strong dose of soap opera (in that the viewers, over time, become emotionally entangled in the ersatz lives of the protagonists).
Dave, no one minds when you step in to try to quell what you fear might turn into a nasty revolt among the terrifying forumites, but I wish we didn't feel as if we had to apologize for being perspicacious. Keep in mind that there are movie fanatics who collect inconsistencies in the filming, continuity and montage of multimillion buck feature films with emblematic names starring in them. They publish them online, exchange them with each other, argue about them, they LOVE them. I posted ages ago that I pay every month for the gravy, but also the lumps in the gravy. They both taste delicious to me, just delicious. I love your recipe dude. So do the arsonists