You may have noticed the name of my mini-blog is This Week IN TV, not this week ON TV. And there’s a good reason for the grammatical switch of phrase.

Television is a pop culture monster in of itself, an entire realm that one can talk for hours about. And everyone likes their own mix of the shows and personalities that it features. There in lies the beauty of TV, there’s so much offered and one can pick and choose as to what is right for them.

So let’s get down to it:

When it comes to reality TV, I have an immense love-hate relationship with the popular genre: I think it’s the dumbest form of entertainment in the history of the world.

However, if I am extremely ill, or if I have nothing else to do, or if I I see that there’s a 12 hour marathon of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills followed by another 12 hours of Beverly Hills housewife Lisa Vanderpump’s spinoff Vanderpump Rules, I’m likely going to sit down and watch attentively as I waste a day of my life. (And, full disclosure, I absolutely love the Kardashians and their show. You can hate me. I know. I’ll get over it.)

Angela Raiola, affectionately known as Big Ang, passed away this week at the age of 55, after losing her battle with throat, lung, and brain cancer. Big Ang got her big break on VH1’s Mob Wives, something I never watched, but heard plenty about just by being a fan of reality TV. Big Ang’s character was a fan favorite, she was genuine, funny, and whenever she was on screen, attention was always fully on her.

Audiences loved Big Ang so much that she eventually ended up with a spin-off show on VH1, Miami Monkey, in which Big Ang runs a second location of her bar in Miami, enjoying every second of serving her famous Staten Island Mimosas to a new crowd.

Honestly, it was a good show — it was like Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules but instead of Lisa Vanderpump managing the slutty but otherwise clean cut staff of her upscale Beverly Hills restaurant, it’s Big Ang drunkenly yelling at the equally as drunk gross patrons and staff of her South Beach dive bar. Hell, here’s Big Ang talking about a normal Wednesday night shift at her bar:

I’m pretty sure the show was just so endearing just because of the surrounding programs on its channel, VH1, the garbage pyre of Reality TV programming. On a channel like MTV, where reality TV of this (extremely low) caliber was born, or even E!, which gave rise to the Kardashian Empire, or even Bravo, which houses not only the Housewives, but also the Shahs of Sunset, Big Ang probably never would have found her niche and made her way into the limelight.

When it is all said and done, Big Ang was on the Mount Rushmore of Reality TV stars, along with Flava Flav, New York of I Love New York, and Bret Michaels. Her TV persona embodied reality TV: on screen, she was was vapid, silly, messy lover of alcohol, a proverbial car accident you can’t look away from. But off-screen, her real life personality as a warm and genuine real Big Ang would often shine through, especially when dealing with her children.

Her life and legacy can teach us a lot about reality television: while someone acts one way in front of a camera meant to capture only fake drama and stupidity, they likely are a completely different person when the cameras stop rolling. And though such an equation may lack genuineness, that is, unfortunately, is the reality of the situation.