I love ‘Maury.’ In fact, I think there’s nothing as subversively beautiful as watching some crying woman await the results of three different paternity tests to figure out who her baby’s daddy is. ‘Maury’ knows his target audience (me) pretty well, and as a result, at least seventy-five percent of his episodes involve ho bag preteen mothers who did their best Heidi Fleiss impressions and ended up impregnated. You might think I’m a terrible person for guffawing as some seventeen year old pours out her soul one tear drop at a time, but it’s really hard to drum up sympathy for some skank who slept with ten different men during a one week period without a thought of getting on birth control.
Unfortunately, the twenty five percent of ‘Maury’ episodes that don’t involve these harlots are usually devoted to sending abusive husbands to boot camp or helping really fat children. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching an intimidating black man, with a uniform on, scream at some wife beaters with four teeth and a Jake LaMotta attitude. It just provides slightly less entertainment than some douche, who recently found out he was not the father, throwing a road map at the devastated mother and shouting, “Go find the real father, bitch!”
I was a little bored yesterday; so, I naturally decided to cheer myself up with a little hot, sexy Maury Povich action. I caught the end of ‘Springer’ (which I also eat up), and I eagerly awaited the first paternity pandemonium. Sadly, it never came. At the start of the show, I was informed that this hour was being devoted to ugly girls who were made fun of in high school and suddenly got real hot. It wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for, but this train wreck of pent-up teenage angst certainly had the potential for greatness. Boy, was I wrong.
If you’ve never seen one of these ‘Maury’ episodes before, I’ll explain the basic premise. Basically, some chick was picked on in high school because she was fat, flat chested, had bad hair, or resembled a mountain lion. The poor girl was so traumatized that she left school and never returned. Then said lady decided that she would work out every single day, not to improve her own confidence, but so that she could come back five or ten years later and confront the guys and girls who had picked on her.
Each segment starts with our favorite host showing everyone what the girl looked like in high school. He points out all of her flaws, usually braces, a weird side pony tail, and some ill-fitting clothes, and then brings the “updated version” of the woman out. She busts through the dressing room door like a bat out of hell, and angrily looks at picture of herself five years ago. Invariably, she’ll make some comments like, “Who’s that loser? I can’t believe I looked like that.” She’ll then work the cleverly placed runway with an outfit on that can only be described as unfinished. All the guys in the audience will hoot and holler, and she’ll head backstage to surprise someone from her past.
Some guy will then emerge from the dressing room and receive a vicious round of boos from the audience who cleverly forgot that they picked on kids in high school too. Maury will ask the dude if he remembers the girl, and he’ll mumble something like, “Yeah. She had a big crush on me, but I wasn’t attracted to her because she was ugly.” The audience will then boo some more, and Maury will bring out the newly slender vixen with eighty percent of her tits hanging out to a raucous ovation. Naturally, the high school bully will be shocked. She’ll then sit next to him and attempt to get the approval she was desperately seeking ten years ago. Sometimes the two will even go home together.
I think I speak for most intelligent adults when I say, “What the hell?” Here’s a great lesson for our kids: if someone doesn’t like you, completely change around your entire life and then return hoping they will think you are hot enough to be treated like a real person. It makes me sick. In essence, these chicks are saying, “You were completely right to have treated me like dog shit. I was ugly and kind of a nerd. I’ve spent the last five years getting hot now; so, will you please like me?”
During my junior year of high school, I weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I had hair past my shoulders and sideburns down to my chin. I could have been called a lot of things, but attractive was not one of them. Over the next year, I lost seventy pounds because I wanted to. I don’t look back at my fatter self with any embarrassment. I was a fun guy. I loved to drink my weight in beer. I loved to poof my hair out as wide as possible. It was exactly who I wanted to be at that moment, and sometimes I even miss it.
By bringing up the past and chastising who you used to be, all these girls are doing is proving what a waste of time that five years has been. If someone doesn’t like you, who cares? Forge your own path. In the end, what are you even proving? You got real hot; so, now some guy who was always a jerk-off to you feels like you’re worth his time. That’s a great way to get used, and a foolish way to temporarily inflate your winded self-esteem.
I don’t even know which group I hate the most: the living in the past guest, the hypocritical audience, or Maury himself. Shame on all of you for being so hell-bent on morphing yourselves or others into some bullshit mold that you think society wants. I’ve never met anyone that fits any of the stereotypes that society wants, and everyone that tries ends up a shallow, transparent hologram that I can only feel sorry for.
