Call it un-reality television.

The other day, I caught Bobby Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” on Bravo. For the most part, the show, which covers the antics of the perennially troubled R&B star and his wife, pop diva Whitney Houston, is like any other reality show, filled with scenes of hilarity, tenderness and tastelessness. There’s the TMI (too much information) scene in which he gets graphic about how he had to help his wife with a bowel problem, and the scene in which he wife likens his ashy feet to being flour-dipped.

They’re a hoot.

And while the show may not necessarily accomplish what Brown wants -– he’s said he hopes that it revamps his bad-boy image by showing him as a loving father and husband -- it does, at least, show that he and Houston aren’t as mismatched as people once believed. Between threatening to bust someone’s butt and being snippy with onlookers, she seems far from being the image of sweetness and light that her handlers once sold to the public.

Yet as Brown gives the public a peek into his reality, at the same time, he distorts it for too many young black males. He does this by making a stint in jail seem more like an extended business trip than what it really is -– jail.

And I don’t like that.

One show features Brown going to court in Atlanta last year to face charges of probation violation -– a charge that stemmed from him hitting his wife. He also talks of having served time in jail for not paying child support. But after Brown wraps up his jail time, he doesn’t talk about remorse as much as he talks about recreation.

He, Houston and their daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and his brother jet off to the Bahamas for some time at a ritzy resort. During the time they spend getting massages, having exotic meals and playing around, Brown waxes endlessly about how the Bahamas is a great place to go after having been in jail.

While jetting off to the Bahamas isn’t a reality for most black men, jail and prison certainly is.

More young black men are in prison than in college, and experts predict that if the rate of black incarceration continues, black men born in 2001 will have a 1-in-3 chance of being locked up. In Baltimore alone, more than half of black men in their 20s are either incarcerated or under the supervision of the criminal justice system, according to the Justice Policy Institute, an organization that is looking to counteract the nation’s high incarceration rates.

And when they get out, there will be no tropical retreat for them. In fact, it will be even tougher for them to pursue any such dreams, because their criminal records will make finding gainful employment tough. Many of them will be lucky to find a decent place to live, much less find an island to escape to.

Now I understand that this is reality television. So I certainly don’t expect for anyone to be looking to Brown or Houston –- or any other reality show celebrities, for that matter -- as role models. Yet it would have been great if the producers of the show had been able to take their cameras inside the jail to give a glimpse of what being on the inside is like; of having to talk to loved ones from behind a Plexiglas barrier and having to be told when to get up, when to wash, when to eat and when to sleep. And while Brown does say, at one point, that jail “ain’t nothin’ nice,” it seems more obligatory than heartfelt.

“Being Bobby Brown” does reflect Brown’s reality as a celebrity whose fame and access to money can buffer him from the real impact of his wrongdoing.

I just hope that all the other young black men who may watch it understand that unlike Brown, crime isn’t something that they should try at home.