I’ve taken some time the last few days to watch the first season of Beauty and the Geek again since my mother purchased it on amazon.com. It’s been slightly reedited—they added about two minutes of extra footage per episode—but I’m not sure if that warrants the price tag of $1.99 each or $11.14 for the season. (That’s my opinion, but if you’re a rabid fan… keep your foamy mouth to yourself.)
So I was going through, seeing how they added a few seconds here and there. For example, when I got to Episode 4 and they were showing us trying to get phone numbers, it revealed that my full quote was not “OOOHHHHHHH…”. It was “OOOHHHHHH, I got snubbed!” That’s how illuminating the new edit was at times.
But much like previous viewings, each time I watch myself wandering through that outdoor mall, thinking about the horrors of approaching random women and interrupting their routines to get the phone numbers for no reason… it still makes me cringe. Giving Caitilin a really bad massage? “Oops.” Throwing up on TV? “Man, that sucked.” Trying to get digits? It hurts to think about. Seriously.
I came up with the answer while chatting with someone online the next night. We’d turned our webcams on so we could see each other and every time I looked at my face on the screen, copying my every movement, every expression, everything that flashed across my face… it had an unreal quality to it. Then I had a flashback to watching myself on TV and it finally clicked.
I was suffering from PTRSD: Post-traumatic reality show disorder.
