Disappointment

A few weeks ago, I turned the TV on in my room just for some noise while I worked on homework.  There was really nothing on that I wanted to watch, but I ended up leaving it on TLC’s relatively new show “Extreme Couponing.”  I didn’t have any interest in watching this show at first, but as it continued I began to ignore my homework and watch in disgust.  This show is absolutely ridiculous.  It follows several women around each episode as they go through their grocery shopping, trying to save as much money as possible with coupons. In my opinion, coupons are really only helpful if they save you money on something you were planning on buying anyway.   

On this show the families spend hours, even days, cutting out every coupon they can find before doing their grocery shopping.  When they shop, the people on the episode I watched buy enormous amounts of food: one woman bought something like 60 packages of cold cuts, and another bought around 30 containers of cream cheese.  These people have normal sized families.  They don’t feed entire communities or give to the homeless.  Each family filled several shopping carts to the brim, and one couple even checked out separately, with at least two carts each.  These people spent over 1,000 dollars on their purchase, and after putting the cashiers through the torture of scanning thousands of coupons, they walked out with their masses of food for less than 100 dollars.  The part of the show that disgusted me the most was when they got home to put away the food.  These people have entire rooms that are already filled with food from previous shopping trips.  One family had so much that they kept cereal in their own closets, and stuffed hundreds of packages of toilet paper under their children’s beds.  This is just crazy.  One family had enough food, BEFORE their televised shopping trip, to feed their whole family for nine years.  And they still go grocery shopping. Regularly.  I have no idea what is wrong with these people, but I think this is sick.  Our consumer culture has become so obsessed with buying things and getting the best deal that people go to extremes like this.  Most of the food they buy will be stale or expired before they even get close to consuming it.  No one in the world needs nine years’ worth of food stored in their home just because they like to see how much money they can save at the grocery store.  Especially when there are people, even in the United States, who worry about where their next meal will come from.  How can people be so selfish?  TLC promotes this show like it is a great thing that people can save this much money.  I think they should show it as a group of people who need serious therapy.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sale as much as the next person.  But come on, how much does one person really need to buy?  There is a point where saving money just turns into plain greed, and these people are way past it.  I obviously have a strong opinion about this, but anyone who hasn’t seen the show should watch it and see what they think.  I think it would be hard not to be absolutely disgusted. This show made me disappointed, both in society for allowing something like this to happen and be considered a good thing, and in TLC for making a show that promotes this.  I haven't been as disappointed as I was watching this show in quite a long time.