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There’s just something inside of us that loves reality television, like how we love to pick at scabs. It’s catty, it’s full of backstabbing and over-the-top melodrama, and - most importantly - has no connection whatsoever with reality. Reality TV is like another realm of fantasy, and that realm is as addictive as crack for our inner bitches. You know who I’m talking about - it’s the inner bitch who thinks like a high school cheerleader. She sees her rival with a botched home perm and a rash from an upper-lip-wax-gone-wrong and laughs. And sometimes on those spectacularly, deliciously cruel moments that inner bitch makes us lean over and inform said rival that her bf admitted during a moment of mad monkey-sex that she is utterly inadequate in the sack.

That’s the part of us that’s drawn to reality television. And I’m not saying this as a way of persuading the masses to reject reality TV; on the contrary, I celebrate the part of me that can make someone cry in less than a minute; I give that part of me manicures, pretty high heels, and VH1.

There’s a standing rule in my house: no one watches Celebrity Rehab sober. Sometimes I like to partake in a cocktail I call The Marilyn - a glass of champagne and a valium. Sometimes there’s more flammable and rollable means of inebriation on hand. But whatever is imbibed, it is the act of being effed up that made Seth Binzer’s meth-induced game of hide and seek so freaking hilarious, Steven Adler’s denials of smoking heroin while being completely unable to put on pants a riot, and poor, semi-retarded Sean Stewart (“Who?” you may ask. Perfectly valid question. He’s Rod Sterwart’s clueless, half-wit, fashion victim of a son) who makes us double over with abdominal cramps while tears freely flowed from so much laughter when he weepily confessed his father once told him he wasn’t worth the sperm that made him.

Our inner bitches were sated.

But now, now VH1 has announced the mother of all Celebrity Rehabs - sex addict edition! While my inner bitch is excited about a fourth round of celebutard debauchery, my outer self worries that if I keep with the trend in partaking in the act denied by the show I’m going to end up with a gnarly case of rug burn. And yet, there are already reports of a dildo-fueled bonfire. My knees may have to make the sacrifice to keep the inner bitch in check.
And Celebutard Rehab isn’t the only show that makes me snort with laughter while affirming my status as ‘better than them’ - Tough Love took a bunch of emotionally damaged women and subjected them to the unfailingly rude criticism of Steve, the tough love disher-outer. He pointed out all the things that make women so freaking nutty that guys decide they’d rather boff a blow up doll then deal with womankind. Watching the deluded group have their realities crumble around them while they are forced to listen to common sense is a riot - sometimes even to them. Or rather, it makes them riot. One clueless broad threw around the lighting equipment and swore she would choke down a bottle of booze and a fistful of pills. Theses gals are gems. Wonder which will be the first to get her own dating show?

And since VH1 stands for finding love for everyone, they, of course, took on the crustiest, most intensely VD-ridden and moldiest of the cheesiest, over-and-done-with rock stars, Brett Michaels. Why doesn’t Brett Michaels deserve love, after all? But it wasn’t enough to get a freaking rock star laid (as if rock stars need help), now they’re working on his castoffs. Daisy of Love took a failing contender for Rock of Love and set her up with the biggest group of douche bags known to mankind (or, at least, L.A. kind). One of them was on another VH1 dating show, three are a set of Swedish triplets with hair that would have been laughed off stage at a Poison concert (a word: no one could understand the triplets, and so the show saw fit to give them subtitles. Either the subtitle guy was as inebriated as I was during the first season of Celebrity Rehab or he realized how dumb his job was because everything was spelled out as it was spoken and given random umlauts. Whoever you are, subtitle guy, I raise my glass to you) and the rest were just trying to promote their bands. A classier group of gents could be found sleeping it off under cardboard McMansions (as in, made of McDonalds wrappers) down any New York alley.

But my personal fav, a show that was sheer genius in season one and has already taunted us with the promise of season two, is Tool Academy. A handful of moronic, Cro-Magnon idiots came to a mansion on the pretense of being in a man beauty pageant called Mr. Awesome. They suffered the surprise of their lives when they found their extremely pissed off gf’s in the background, informing them that they were complete and utter tools and needed to be fixed, stat. They then went through humiliation after humiliation to prove that they were worthy of being kept as boyfriends (and, you know, that hundred thousand dollar prize check).

It was, simply put, a thing of beauty. Stupid, homophobic, man-panty wearing alpha males made to dress in tutus and sing in a glee club were busted as repeated cheaters, liars, and being in possession of Flock of Seagulls hair. I was entranced, and even now, me and my inner bitch swoon just a little waiting for season two. 

Now, I know that some people prefer Survivor (I like it’s more ‘realistic’ counterpart, Lost), Project Runway (Tyra is hilariously nutty in the brainpan), American Idol (which I will only watch if Ryan and Joel McHale have sex on stage and just get it over with) or Big Brother, but those shows on more ‘respectable’ networks just don’t have the carnie appeal of VH1. I like my reality TV to be on the same level of respectability as PT Barnum’s Fiji Mermaid.

And so does my inner bitch.

(Follow Amanda Rush on Twitter as @BrokenAmanda)