Cursed Tongue: “What Happened Was …”

Posted by CursedTongue on March 15, 2006

I would never watch such depraved tasteless trash as those chair-throwing, “Nu-uh you didn’t!” cross-dressing Neo-Nazi shouting match, surprise boot camp talk shows. It’s the epitome of bad taste to put a, shall we say “experienced,” young woman on a stage with twelve men that may or may not be the father of her baby.

Even worse is recording it and sending it over the airwaves to young impressionable viewers. It’s just plain wrong to exploit Britney-Spears dressing preteens. And these horrible shows are thinly veiled as helpful, by ambushing the participants with a counselor or a hairdresser who the host invites to assist these poor troubled unmade-over souls.

Or so I hear.

Although, I will admit that I’m a slobbering fool for reality court shows. Which are much different than talk shows because they have a judge, a bailiff, and sometimes a lawyer-analyst.

The judge doesn’t pretend to be there to fix everyone’s problems. The judge is only there to decide which side of the case wins a cash prize from the other side. Then the lawyer-analyst explains why the judge was obligated by the law to make the decision he or she did because the producers of the show take great care to edit the important, legally informative parts out.

I have spent some time analyzing my enthusiasm for these shows. I’d like to think that it’s my innate sense of justice and my desire to learn about small claims law. But I think it may be because I am fascinated by the endless streams of people who stupidly signed for the loan on their ex-girlfriend’s or ex-boyfriend’s car. There are the ex-fiancés who don’t return engagement rings, the landlords that don’t return deposits, and the deadbeats who don’t return money they borrowed. There are the tenants who vacate suddenly and return months later to find that the broken TV they left behind had been chucked lovingly into the trash.

The best plaintiffs or defendants are the one who never watch judge shows. They talk out of turn, evade the question or show up without valuable evidence or their star witness. The judges don’t put up with misbehavior and a good episode contains at least one scene where the judge berates one of the litigants for acting like a moron.

Occasionally, we hit the disobedient litigant jackpot, and one of the participants shouts at the other party or the judge. If they don’t calm themselves quickly the judge has the bailiff remove them from the courtroom, and they finish the case without that disrespectful individual.

In my years of viewing “Judge Judy” and “The People’s Court,” I have learned a phrase that I like to call the Phrase of Doom. It’s the often used “What happened was …” The phrase is almost always followed by an overly complicated explanation of the circumstances surrounding the case. Rarely does the side that utters the Phrase of Doom win their case.

In a typical response to such an argument, the judge points out why the story is a complete fabrication and then proceeds to make a judgment in favor of the opposing litigant.

I once worked with an intern from China, and the misguided young woman had the unmitigated gall to denounce these reality courtroom productions. She told me they were completely fake. “Certainly not!” I assured her. “They are quite real. The judgments are real, and the litigation is binding.”

She was baffled as to why a respectable judge would allow their court to be turned into a TV show. I didn’t know quite how to answer her so my explanation began with, “What happened was …”

- Sarah Letnes

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