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9 Reality Shows That Didn’t Last
In recent years, entertainment has been suffering an overload of reality television, most of which is trite and unintelligent. A lot of the programming is still on the air, but a lot of it is now a part of television history no one appreciates. Let’s revisit some of the shows that flopped.
Married By America
In Married By America, viewers voted for pairs of single men and women would be engaged and arranged to be married all within a 5 week span. The dating pool was originally selected by the suitors’ loved ones. America then voted in to decide which man would propose to which women without even having seen her face or talked to her at all. After the fiances were paired up, they spent five weeks first getting to know the person they were planning to marry. At the end of each episode, so called relationship experts would decide which engagement was going to end. By the final episode, two couples were left to plan their weddings Thankfully, neither of the couples went through with it. I’m surprised this wasn’t thought of as unethical from the start, but cancelling it after a season was the right call.
Clark Gable Is the New Host of Cheaters
Clark Gable, grandson of the actor Clark Gable, will replace Joey Greco as host of Cheaters. Executive producer Bobby Goldstein, who created the confrontational show where people confront their cheating significant other, told The Hollywood Reporter, “We just felt it was time to freshen up the show with a new host.”
Before landing the gig with Cheaters, Gable modeled and had a minor role in the low-budget Italian film Looking for Clara. When it comes to acting, Gable says, “It’s in my blood, and I really want to do it. Just like my grandfather. But I don’t want to be compared to him in any way because I am different. I just happen to be born into these great circumstances, so I feel it gives me a great opportunity for what I want to do.”
AGT’s Second Night in Vegas
Tom Cotter
I was really not looking forward to Tuesday’s America’s Got Talent. After a very disappointing showing on Monday, I didn’t really have any expectation that it would get better. Fortunately, I was wrong. Tuesdays performances were not great, but it was a considerable improvement compared to these awful last few weeks.
The show opened with the magic category. First up was mind reader Eric Dittelman. He was entertaining in his initial audition, but also very intimate. His act seemed a bit small for Vegas. It still might be. As the judges agreed, he’s not a great showman. Nonetheless, overall he was impressive. At this point, the show was already far better than the first night in Vegas. Next up was one of my favorite acts, escape artist Nate Horseman. He was a bit better in his initial audition, but watching him escape from a glass box underwater was still exciting to watch. On the plus side, there might have been higher risk for serious damage, but escaping from a straightjacket is still more exciting. Both Dittelman and Horseman will get a chance to further prove themselves in New York.
AGT’s First Night in Vegas
Archer Ben Blaque
America’s Got Talent began Vegas Week last night and there really was no reason to be optimistic about this season. It has been a disappointment. There have been many acts that were terrible and not even remotely entertaining. Most of the acts that made it through to Vegas were only average.
The hour opened with the crowd of acts scrambling as they were told that they would be split into three groups: the judge’s favorites, the standbys, and those who weren’t on either list. The acts in the last group would not perform in Vegas and would either be sent home right away or sent straight to the New York rounds. This was very repetitive, as the acts were shown on camera all saying basically the same thing that they had a good performance at the auditions and they hope they make it through. This did not hold my attention at all and the time could’ve been used to give the acts more screen time.
CBS Hilariously Throws Stones At ABC’s Glass House
CBS unsuccessfully tried to get a court to block the premiere of ABC’s Big Brother-esque reality show The Glass House. While the premiere of The Glass House was only watched by 4.7 million viewers, that hasn’t stopped CBS from sending out a press release that is one big jab at ABC.
Here is the press release in it’s entirety:
06.20.2012
CBS ANNOUNCES DEVELOPMENT OF “DANCING ON THE STARS,” AN EXCITING AND COMPLETELY ORIGINAL REALITY PROGRAM THAT OWES ITS CONCEPT AND EXECUTION TO NOBODY AT ALL
Los Angeles, June 20, 2012 – Subsequent to recent developments in the creative and legal community, CBS Television today felt it was appropriate to reveal the upcoming launch of an exciting, groundbreaking and completely original new reality program for the CBS Television Network.
The dazzling new show, DANCING ON THE STARS, will be broadcast live from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and will feature moderately famous and sort of well-known people you almost recognize competing for big prizes by dancing on the graves of some of Hollywood’s most iconic and well-beloved stars of stage and screen.
MTV Goes Retro
No, MTV hasn’t had a change of heart and decided to play music videos all day. However, MTV has announced its new “Retro Mania” block. The block, which will air weekdays from 9am to 12pm, will start on June 25 and will run until August 3.
The full schedule is:
June 25 – June 29: Laguna Beach (Seasons 1 and 2)
July 2 – July 27: The Hills (Seasons 1 – 6)
July 30 – August 3: Daria (MTV’s favorite episodes from the series)
After seeing the list, it looks like MTV has no idea what is considered retro. If MTV really wanted to go retro, it would have put Remote Control and old seasons of The Real World.
What shows would you like to see on MTV’s Retro Mania block?
I would like to see 2ge+her, which was about a fictional boy band, and the aforementioned Remote Control.
Tampa Bay’s Not So Hot for America’s Got Talent
Big Barry posing with Howard Stern
America’s Got Talent has gotten a lot of coverage lately after the Tim Poe controversy, but I was just hoping to see some quality or at least memorable acts on Tuesday’s show. After all, it’s what the show should be known for. Whether it’s showcasing the true idiots of the world or actually finding unique undiscovered talent, the show has failed to do either many times this season. Tuesday was another disappointment.
The second Tampa Bay Episode opened with a Latin dance crew called The Untouchables, which is made up of kids ranging from ages 8-13. It was obvious that the group would make it through, for the simple fact that they’re kids with high energy that can be endearing. It’s also horribly boring. There is almost never a large dance act that isn’t reasonably coordinated and refined. It is not good for the viewer to know who goes through in advance. It would have been a little better if the performance was great, but it wasn’t. It was average. The show is at its best when it showcases the superior and the atrocious. This was neither.
The montages, both successful and unsuccessful, also were not anything exciting. Granted, these are the acts deemed unworthy of a viewer’s full attention, but that shouldn’t lend itself to inadequacy and boredom. A singer with an okay voice, a dancing duo, an illusionist get sent to Las Vegas. A singer with a slightly worse voice and some variety acts whose talents are unclear do not move to the next round. They’re all basically the same. The people voted through will probably not be seen again. The people who were rejected won’t get talked about again. It just seems like an elaborate time filler.
Another act featured was a squirrel that water skis. Some animal novelty acts can be fun and entertaining. This one certainly wasn’t. As Sharon and Howard agreed, it is nowhere near big enough for a Vegas show. Howie disagreed only out of curiosity to see the act do better in Vegas. It honestly would have been more entertaining to watch the squirrel go too fast around the pool and fall multiple times. That would have been worth a proper and unequivocal rejection. Instead, the squirrel technically succeeded with the act. It just wasn’t good. This act was not good enough to be considered a worthy talent. It was not horrible enough to be considered a hopeless excuse for entertainment. If it does not fit either of those, it isn’t worthy of being aired at all.
Choose Not to Watch The Choice
I wanted to like The Choice in a charmingly absurd kind of way. The premise of the show revolves around celebrities choosing dates based only on the sound of a suitor’s voice. The title is clearly a derivation of NBC’s singing competition show The Voice and this show seems to be trying to gain popularity based on viewers being familiar with the NBC show. That was really the main reason I was interested in watching it. I knew it wasn’t going to be “quality” television, but I still thought it was going to be enjoyable. I was mostly wrong.
The show opened with introducing the celebrities. They included recording artist, Romeo, Olympic athlete Jeremy Bloom, Jersey Shore cast member DJ Pauly D, and General Hospital star Jason Cook. None of these celebrities really interested me. Most of them are not really that famous. Of course, much like Dancing With The Stars, hiring low caliber “stars” is a common problem. I understand that most of the bigger “stars” already have their relationships constantly in the media or do not need the publicity, but the selection of celebrities was still a weak point for the show.
America’s Got Talent Goes Goth
Andrew De Leon
Last night America’s Got Talent was a little light on the entertainment again. NBC is killing the show. Each week, viewers only get two hours of new acts followed by several repeats throughout the week. In the past, we saw three to four hours of new acts and they were repeated once. It doesn’t help that each hour only has 5 full performances and four short ones mixed in with a bunch of boring montages consisting of people kissing or people with pets or some other boring activity the producers think will make the audience go “awwwww.”
On Tuesday, AGT was still in Austin. I think this is the first week NBC has aired both parts of a city’s auditions back to back, which helped with understanding Howie Mandel, Sharon Osbourne, and Howard Stern in the Snapple Chat.
The first act was the Aurora Light Painters. They painted with light. I really don’t know how to describe what they did without being captain obvious. The Aurora Light Painters somehow manipulated light and took advantage of a cameras light sensitivity to put on an interesting show. It wasn’t one of my favorites, but the judges loved it. (If anyone knows how the Aurora Light Painters performance works, please leave a comment. My head hurts just trying to figure it out.)
Push Girls Needs to Be Pushed Off Television
Even before I started watching the Sundance Channel’s Push Girls, I knew I was going to be very critical of it. I was right. I didn’t expect it to be anything I could consider “good television”. There were parts of it that I found profoundly irritating and even offensive. The reality series, revolving around four women who use wheelchairs, opened with two episodes on Monday night. The entire goal of the show seems to be to inspire a viewer to believe that they can achieve anything in life regardless of obstacles. It is a very repetitive and uninteresting message. The message starts to sound sickening when you realize that none of the women have lives that are particularly impressive.
The tagline for the series is “If you can’t stand up, stand out.” This annoying because it tries too hard to be cute. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was accurate for any of these women. It seems not to be. They just don’t seem that special. While their situations certainly took perseverance to overcome, it seemed that Tiphany, Angela, Mia and Auti were simply women who left me wondering why they got a show.
Wait! What's A Dial? 