The Real World, Big Brother, and Home Improvement: many Americans watch these television shows. These Americans who watch these shows are from many different backgrounds; whether it is rich, poor, city people, country people or anything else. Americans won't admit that certain TV shows have an effect on their lives. But authors like Ehrenreich and Winn claim that television is affecting the lives of every American each day. Television shows are now portraying things like the perfect family or young and spontaneous people, for example. Many families sit down and watch these shows, mesmerized by how perfect these characters lives can be. This brings up a major question, how does watching television provide a way to escape from the reality of our lives? Family relationships and the view of young people are being affect by Americans using television to escape from their real lives.
             Barbara Ehrenreich's perspective on this issue is that television provides a way for many families to escape from their lives. Her point is strong because she uses examples like "When I watched television, mainly as a way of getting to know my husband and children, I found that my mind wandered to more interesting things." (345) More examples that she uses are television shows like the Huxtables, which portray a perfect family. She catches the audience's, the "dull" family's, attention many times throughout the piece Spudding Out, by making those families think about their own lives and causes them to realize how much they actually do watch TV. Ehrenreich tries to make the audience think about how their family may be dull and by watching TV, it gives them some excitement that they may not have in their lives. She uses the word couch potato a lot through her piece. By doing this, she is adding repetition which makes sure she gets her point across. Her point is that many families have become couch potatoes...