Reality Show Absurdity

I feel like admitting to the fact that I used to watch Jersey Shore will be helpful in recovering some of the IQ points I lost from watching it.

My wife got me hooked on The Bachelor/Bachelorette series. When we started dating she asked if I liked watching those two shows? Being a man trying to mate with a woman, of course I said YES! What started as a master fornication plan quickly turned into a bonafide addiction to the shows and eventually marriage. Men beware! It could happen to you next!

I will also admit to a morbid and disturbing fondness for Dr Pimple Popper. What is wrong with me? I cannot get enough of that icky goey nonsense.

 

A couple former students of mine are involved with reality shows, one has spent a number of years on Survivor and another is/has been a producer and a field producer of a couple more reality shows. Their graduation classes in this relative small area were probably in the range of 60 students. Go figure.

 

I'll cop to watching Jersey Shore as well. Those first two seasons were gold. The cast really did have an amazing chemistry together.

 

I'd rather listen to my Herman's Hermits Greatest Hits CD again while drinking warm Dr Pepper.

 

The no shirt and coveralls guy on Moonshiners who wanted to go legal is Tim Smith. Funnily enough, he did just that. His "moonshine" isn't half bad. The cinnamon spice one is the best. Better than Fireball.
https://www.timsmithspirits.com/

 

Reality show is such a poor name for a genre that relies upon contrived/manipulated situations.

I get the appeal of Survivor, watching people strategize how they're going to make everyone else look bad and get eliminated is an entertaining concept. Watching people complete an obstacle course to win an "immunity" idol or a basket of fruit while living on an island is hardly what I would call "reality television."

It wasn't the first, but MTV's Real World gets credit for launching the reality TV explosion. As if a bunch of people living in a nice, high-rent apartment in a major area, while not working regular gigs, is anywhere close to reality. Hell, Friends is as much of a reality show as Real World.

 

I thought the first season of shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and if I can say it without further commentary, even The Apprentice were really interesting, because they were the first time most of humanity was exposed to a game where there was a conflicting dynamic of cooperation vs competition. To win, one had to be really clever and cooperative at times, and not simply narcissistic. I found them to have become completely uninteresting by season 2 because a game is always easier once you have already seen people play it. Also, many of the contestants by that point were people who obviously were just trying to get TV or modeling contracts.

As far as other ostensibly unscripted "reality" shows go, whether they are about fishing, home improvement, surgery, storage lockers, weight loss, celebutantes, or whatever, I could not be less interested.

 

The wife is a fan of reality shows. I've watched a few seasons of the Bachelor with her. Every season had the formulaic shocking twist towards the ending that the host said we won't want to miss. Every year the guy/girl would pick the one most viewers did not want them to pick. I liked the train wreck that was Honey Boo Boo. Through the years I liked The Osbournes, Storage Wars, Hardcore Pawn, the first few seasons of Survivor until I got bored with it. We watched Big Brother for years until we discovered the UK version which is tons better. Now we can't watch the US version. So sanitized and corny compared to the UK. Currently I like 90 Day Fiance with American citizens trying to gain a spouse from a foreign land. Most of the couples are wildly incompatible which makes for good entertainment.

 

Yes {blush} I grudgingly admit to watching both of them, but not regularly, oh no, not regularly.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was so bad it was good!

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned Pawn Stars. I would watch that occasionally when I was flipping through channels seeing what was on.

 

The Bachelor is one of those shows that is hilarious, which is ironic.

To keep up with a few friends who inexplicably watch the B every year, I joined in about five years ago. I watch it while doing other things, anything, but I do catch it weekly during the winter. I've noticed that every years there's the bitch that everyone hates, and is outwardly nauseating, yet she keeps hanging around, inexplicably. In some cases she gets the boot during a "loser leave town" two-on-one date.

One of my favorite cliches is when a woman is there for the wrong reasons. As if any woman who signs up for a cattle call in the hope of accepting a marriage proposal when it is all over is there for the right reason. I've noticed all the women who are allegedly there for the right reason are unemployed and unattractive, and could never meet a nice man in the major metropolitan area they live in, or live close to. I hear it all the time in Minneapolis, you can't find a single man to save your soul.

I feel like one of the new stunts in recent years to keep the show from being stale by the end of the season is to have the dude change his mind somewhere along the way, leaving the "winner" devastated by the unexpected turn of events. The past five years are all a blur, but I feel like some variation of that has happened the past two years. I know it has happened more than once now.

I wonder how many of these people will look back on their participation in 10 or 20 years and be embarrassed by their antics. Probably fewer than should. But plenty of us say and do stupid stuff when we're in our 20s. I can't proclaim to be wise beyond my years when I was 27.

Many years ago, a co-worker that watched Melrose Place claimed he did so because it was funny. I didn't get it. Why watch some prime time soap when you could watch scripted comedy, a la Seinfeld? I kind of get it now.

Although Pawn Stars is plenty scripted, when I watch it, I learn some tidbit or factoid about history, typically. The storylines about the stars of the pawn shop, I treat them like watching an episode of a TV sit com. Sometimes good for a laugh, but nothing more than scripted comedy.

 

Just in case you, like me, are 9 years old:



Apparently Rob Riggle was allowed to design and name one hole, and he was *insistent* that it be named "Uranus".

 

I haven't watched it since I broke up with my ex (bad memories...), but it's one of those shows that is always absurd. "I'm just not sure he's here for the right reasons..."

Also, in thread synergy, Holey Moley did a Bachelor-themed episode last year, co-hosted by Chris Harrison:

 

Definitely a fan of these shows. I remember watching MTV's Real World and agree it all started from there. Then for me came Survivor which got too dramatic too quick so I watch it off and on.

But anything to do with Travel in the way of visiting other places, like Amazing Race and Below Deck I have stood by.
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Tried the Bachelor for one season and that was enough. Never watched Jersey Shore, Kardashian or even anything American Idolish...

Also enjoy Top Chef. And Making of the DCC... brings me back to my High School days...

 

Despite what you are led to believe.......
No "Reality " Show is unscripted.
Don't fall for that nonsense.
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I used to love " Survivor " until the show insulted my intelligence.
Placing Idols right on the footpath - in front of certain players ( Oh !.....stop it ! )
Who didn't know ( from Episode #1 ) the Veteran with Post Trauma wasn't gonna win ?
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" Deadliest Catch " - I watch, when nothing else is on.
I have a HS friend who captain's a fishing boat.
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I've even watched that show.......Ricky - The Louisiana Exterminator ?......whatever it's called ?
" Flipping Vegas "......yup.......and somehow the whiney guy always makes his deadline house opening ?
( Hey....I watched Bob Villa's " This Old House " for years ! )
2 minutes of " Moonshiners ".......was enough.
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NEVER Watched !
Bachelor or Bachelorette.........I don't even understand the fake concept ?....and I don't want to find out !
American Idol
Big Brother
Amazing Race
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My 2 cents

 

It's funny, when I started this thread I didn't realize how many reality shows I'd watched without even thinking they were. Pawn Stars, Hardcore Pawn and the Osbornes are shows I watched that if you asked, I'd classify as reality tv. Yet, when I watched that thought never would've crossed my mind. Funny what we can convince ourselves of.

 

To be fair, Big Brother is live pretty much 24/7. There's some producer "suggestions", and obviously the broadcast episodes are edited to create a storyline. But I love that it makes no pretenses about being anything other than the dumbest show on television.

I was also a big fan of the Hubert Keller show on Vegas restaurants. There's a very blurry line between "documentary" and "reality TV".

 

We were inveterate FoodNetwork watchers when it was about cooking. We are "house crack" addicts (HGTV) -- some. We're at about 0% for most everything else mentioned here.

 

My guilty pleasures in the reality show genre are 90 Day Fiance and Married at First Sight.

 

BB and Survivor always remind me of one of those professional development seminars that I took back in the 1990s, long before either of the programs were popular. This was on Organizational Power, Politics, and Games and a lot of it had to do with such things as the influence of natural leaders (as opposed to the designated leaders) and the members of an organization forming informal coalitions of influence and alliances of those coalitions and how such things can help or hinder the effectiveness of an organization.

Those two programs, and other so-called "reality" shows could easily be case studies or lab experiments for such seminars.

 

I only semi-ironically refer to BB as "the most important social experiment of our time". It's an excellent study in what happens when you put 16 people with the average intelligence of a head of cabbage in a confined environment for several months.

Once, a cocktail waitress told everyone she was a college student. Her reasoning: "I thought that if I told them i was a cocktail waitress, they'd think I had an advantage and target me for being too much of a threat". I spent weeks trying to apply logic to that one.