The difference between my life and HGTV

I used to love watching HGTV shows like House Hunters and Property Virgins. No more!! Here are my beefs with them:
1) HGTV never called me back asking Jeff and I to be on one of their shows. Jerks.
2) All of the home buyers get at least three great house options. These houses are:
a: HUGE. 2000+ square feet and the buyers still complain that the closets aren't big enough. One house will have a big enough closet, where the male buyer inserts the joke "This one will even hold all of your shoes!"
b: Under $250,000 even though they're HUGE and have updated kitchens.
c: All sit on like 3 acres of gorgeous land.
3) The buyers then struggle with the decision of which great house to choose! So many options!
4) Four weeks pass as they mull their decision.
5) The buyers then decide to make an offer on their favorite. They offer $40,000 LESS than the asking price.
6) The sellers say no way, and come down $20,000 in their counter offer.
7) The buyers hem and haw and say the sellers are being unreasonable in not taking their low ball offer. They recounter at $30,000 less than the asking price.
8) THEY GET IT. House sold. Happily ever after.

Can you see why I was excited about house hunting? Well let me tell you, in the Long Beach, California housing market, this scenario is bullcrap. A fairy tale if you will. This is how it actually goes:
1) Every morning Liv logs in to Listingbook, homeseekers, and zillow.com to look for any new properties that have come on the market in the past 12 hours that happen to be in a nonviolent neighborhood, are over 600 square feet, and are in our budget. Average find: 3 houses. Excitement!!
2) Liv emails Noelle, our fantastic realtor, with the 3 properties. She quickly responds with "#1 closed to offers, #2 subject to inspection (have to submit an offer before even being allowed to look inside the house), #3 It's a short sale being managed by BofA (i.e. will take 4-5 months before the bank gets around to accepting your offer). Want to submit an offer on #2?
3) YES! Write up offer for $20,000 MORE than the asking price to be competitive. Rush to sign offer papers and submit.
4) Wait 4 days for agent to respond to offer.
5) Go and see house now that you know your offer was received and you're in the running.
6) House looks good, lots of potential. Bite nails until Noelle calls.
7) We were outbid. Again. But Noelle has three more potential properties to show us so we go do drive-bys.
8) Repeat steps 3-7.

I know there's a happy ending at the end of this story, I'm just pointing out it takes more than thirty minutes on TV. I guess I should have known that.