Kardashians or MAFS: You’ll be judged on your trashy viewing

Whether it’s Kardashians, MAFS or endless sport you’ll be judged on your TV viewing. It could also make or break your relationship.

This week marks the last time we diehards can be Kardashian-shamed.

The Kardashian klan couldn’t have almost one billion Instagram followers without at least a few of us tuning in to the show each week.

But we are too ashamed to openly admit to watching it any more.

That stopped around the time Kim got robbed in Paris. Or was it just after Kylie admitted to having lip filler?

It’s hard to, um, keep up after 14 years, 20 seasons and 270 episodes.

Keeping Up With the Kardashians has had its last glam squad, piece-to-camera-confessional to overshare.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, they’ve called quits with the E! network and have already signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Disney’s Hulu.

To steal a line from Carrie Bradshaw: I couldn’t help but wonder, has our TV viewing always played such a central part in defining who we are?

Am I alone in getting Aunty-shamed by family? Admitting I’m partial to the “Kartrashians” is met with an eye roll, or worse, lip-curling contempt: “How can you watch that utter trash?” to “I’ve never watched a single episode.”

No ABC or Aunty-shaming comes from the so-called blue stocking, highbrow, highfalutin types. Like this week’s withering retort, “Really, you mean you didn’t watch the QAnon one on Four Corners?”

Or the presumptuous “What did you think of the Leigh Sales interview on 7.30 last night?”

Personal Sunday morning favourite when you phone home is, “Insiders is on (clunk).”

Lockdown is to blame.

Conversation fillers like asking how someone is, what their plans for the weekend are, or just a simple what have you been up to, seems slightly mocking when we are all bunkered down.

Pandemic-speak has morphed “How are you?” into “So what are you watching?”

It was a conversation starter when Michael Jordan’s 10-part doco series, The Last Dance, played during peak pandemic.

The Undoing also gave one definite cred and a great segue into Nicole Kidman’s frozen face, her moss green velvet jacket and to-die-for interiors.

The comic brilliance of Schitt’s Creek could have you rabbiting on for hours as you convince the naysayers and doubters with, “You just HAVE to get past season one.”

Keeping up with Mare of Easttown’s small-town dark secrets and watching Kate Winslet play ugly was the latest must watch.

We all needed Mare and her fraught mother-daughter relationship as Lockdown 4.0 kicked in.

Who isn’t still grieving from potentially saying goodbye for good (with a not so impressive season six finale) to Line Of Duty.

I still think about “Mother of God,” the Gaffer and his grog-blossomed nose. “If I see a bent copper, I only know one way and that’s full throttle.”

Reeling off having binged on anything with a slight hint of BBC makes one feel positively bookish.

Sky News blaring all day in the background at the home office speaks volumes.

The final straw to many a relationship is a partner’s viewing habits.

Husbands lolling about on couches watching ESPN 24/7 is divorce material.

One friend says hers will stoop to watching anything, anywhere in the world, at any time, just so long as there is ball in hand.

“The effing baseball in Korea, like really!”

There was a boyfriend who thought the news was for “brainwashed w--kers” and only watched re-runs of sitcoms Community, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Parks and Recreations. Bantering one-liners and expecting canned laughter when walking into the kitchen Kramer-style was a red flag of arrested development.

But their counterparts bingeing on network reality shows like The Block, MasterChef and Love Island is met with such disdain and audible groaning (not in the good way) that makes a trashy couch session unbearable.

Another friend says hands down the most enjoyable part of life right now is the glorious hour she has between the tradie husband pulling the door shut as he leaves and the baby going off for a nap to settle into her trash TV. Guilty escapism at its best.

Which brings us back to catching yourself staring at the TV with a beatific and stupefied smile as you watched the Kardashians.

Even the hairdressers don’t care any more.

“Do you do Housewives?” was excitedly asked by the apprentice pulling foils at the basin as if doing Housewives was doing the latest designer drug.

“You’ve got to try Salt Lake City. It’s the one about all the wife-swapping crazy Mormons. It’s like the best.”

But having wasted five days and 14 hours of life being a kloset-Kardashian (I did the maths), there is one line in the sand even this trashy TV devotee won’t stoop to: MAFS.