Part One: The Bastards of Reality Television

affections are really mixed bag. There's positive sides. Honestly, so fucking funny, and I have no idea what it means that. I'm like, not even mad. It's extreme. It's yeah, it's clever. It's fun to get roasted like that where you're like, yeah, that's very funny. We're like, I'm not quite sure what

you mean, but you're you're not wrong, right. It flows, It's like words flow, and it's just it's like, yeah, I like a good It's like it's like when you well, I'm getting into dangerous territory here, but when you read people being like super shitty on some level. Uh, from like a hundred and fifty years ago, and it's like, well, this is sexist or racist, but man, people could put together sentences back then. That's not that's not a bad sentence, you know, like it's it's horrible, but it's not a

bad sentence. People used to Yeah, the ship posts were a lot more people put a lot more work into their ship posts. It's like HP Lovecraft racism. Well, it's like this is terrible, but man, quite quite quite quite a phrase way to create an entire lure around your racing exactly. That's that's so much more effort than people put into it these days. Um, David Bell, that's me, that's you. You know, you know, you know Dave of you know, you know, you know, I don't know you know,

you know Dave. Okay, you know, I think I think Dave is going to love this topic. I hope he does. Um, I hope he loves it, and I hope you hate it. Sylvie, Okay, I'm just I'm just an asshole. I'm a bad person, just biting the hand that stops me from committing a series of crimes that get us erased and arrested. In our podcast Shutdown, Dave, how do you feel about reality TV. Oh okay, um mixed feelings. Yeah, yeah, that's the right way to feel. Yeah, I don't watch most of you.

I don't find it interesting, but I don't have anything against it unless something horrible was done behind the scenes. You know. It's like if if everybody, if there's consent and everybody's cool, uh, then we're we're good. We're good. I do like, I do like the occasional like British bake off, but I wouldn't consider a share. I mean, it is unscripted. But am I right in saying that

reality TV does have the personality of a staff infection? Yes, yes, yes, where it's where it's gross and infectious, but also you might get to take some time off of work, which is to enjoy it. Yeah. So you know, I'm not going to do this thing. This is going to be kind of a loosey goosey episode. We're doing this right after the kissing your episodes. Everybody's tired. I'm not going to be one of these smarmi foxs who's just like shipping on the concept of reality TV to seem smart. Right,

reality TV is broadly speak, it's junk food. You know, it is not good for you. But that said, I do shipload of things that are bad for me, and I would also that it's not new. Game shows have always existed. There's always entertainment, junk food, that fucking piece of trash Mozart right, like his ship. Everyone knows he ship, but like people like to enjoy ship and that's fine. Um, I like the Bloodhound Gang, you know, like we're not nobody.

Nobody in this show is going to be like again, there's nothing bad, or like, you're not dumb because some of the smartest people I know like turn off from like getting their PhD or whatever and like watch you know, a bake off show or like Big Brother or some ship. It's fine. Listen where we're done here. I will be going online and ordering the the four K release of Moonfall. I will be doing that, and I will watch the special features. I mean, Dave, you've watched Ship with me.

One of my favorite things to put on is people hurting themselves horribly while skiing or bass jumping, and I have. I have since expanded to wingsuit crashes, some of which the people diet of. There's some gnarly wing crash videos if you look. That's the old pink missed. But oh yeah, yeah, have you looked into um parkour? Parkour accidents are great if you really want to be harrowed. Just type gun

fails into YouTube. There's some ship in there. Oh my god, there's this video and just google and like type gun there's some nasty There's a dude who like put a bunch of tanner, right, which is this explosive. You shoot it and it blows up on a fucking lawnmower and shot at it close range and the blade cut his leg off. Ship. So again, I'm saying this all not to celebrate my own crapulence, but like, we all like

some stuff that's the entertainments of like junk food, right. Um, So this isn't an episode about like trying to I'm not trying to make the case that like reality TV is bad and you should feel bad for watching it. This is about the most fucked up things that have ever happened within the broad umbrella of reality or what you might call unscripted content. Um, there's not a particular

thesis here. I just spent a lot of time reading about the worst things that have happened in reality TV, and I decided to do a podcast None of You Can Stop Mace deal with It. Will probably do another episode in the future with more of these stories. Is exciting. Yeah, before we start, I want to share my very favorite reality television story, and this is a story about a reality TV show I enjoyed. So when I was in Iraq, this is like the second or the third, might have

been the fourth time. I forget exactly which time it was. Um, but we're like, you know, when you're hanging out a place like that, we're like going to refugee camps and like frontline positions, and in order to get to both, you have to spend time and like a bunch of random living rooms because that's where everyone's like posted up leader of these camps, these like different generals and ship.

They're all like hanging out in houses, and so while you're waiting to get approval to go places, you're just like sitting in like usually an air conditioned living room with the TV on and a bunch of guys with their guns and phones out and ship. And one of the times we were out there, this is the same reality show kept going on. It came on in like two or three different places, and I don't know what the name of the show is. I have not brief

googling has not informed me of it. But the premise was that there was this host who would like take a rich guy out to the desert, like he would They would be like driving a caravan and there would be a contrived accident and like one of the cases I remember, this guy is like in a little motor cade and they get stuck in quicksand and his vehicle sinks and he has to get out and he's like on top of the vehicle and while that's happening, the

host dressed as a Komodo dragon comes out and attacks them. Ship just fucking insane, Like I I don't know what was like. I'm sure there's elements of this that I was not grasping because there were no subtitles and I do not speak Arabic um. But it was it some of the wildest ship I've watched on TV. It was so good. I don't know what's scarier, being attacked by a Komodo dragon or a man dressed like one, because they're both very pretty good costume. Yeah, oh my god,

it sounds like it's like Survivor man wild. I don't know what the point was supposed to be, because on all of them, people just like react the way you would if you suck a photo dragon. Goddamn, Like where we America can't talk, but we're like assimilated to our weirdness.

But it's kind of the same as when you watch like the Japanese Brakes shows, Yeah, the Silent Library, where it's like you have to be quite in a library and they just like do funked up ship to you and if you make a noise, you lose, and and it's like that actually I think got an American adaptation. Um, But like it's that extra context of not understanding the language or the extra layer that's like makes it so perfect and bizarre. Man, I want to watch that so bad.

I love that s Yeah, someone will find it now that we've talked about it, and we'll find the clips. I would love to watch it again, um anyway, Dave. On January eleven, nineteen seventy three, PBS began to air the first of twelve hour long episodes of an American Family to levision documentary about the Louds, an actual family

and this is probably the very first reality show in history. Now, the Louds were upper middle class and lived in Santa Barbara, and over three hours of raw footage of them was shot between May and December thirty one ninety one. The initial intent was just to kind of chronicle their daily lives, but during filming, the relationship between spouses Bill and Pat Loud broke down, and the show ends with both parents divorcing. Camera's actually caught Pat asking for a divorce on camera.

She tells Bill, you know there's a problem, and he responds, what's your problem? This was picked by TV Guide as one of the top hundred TV moments of all time, and in some ways, viewers have never moved on from the concept of watching unscripted life moments from rich people in California right like this. This is broadly speaking, still the reality TV What do you do you think? And I don't know the answer to this? What they have had that divorce if they weren't on camera? Who knows?

I I have not watched the twelve hours of the Louds. It's the double slit theory of like, when observed, will they divorce? It can't help, right, it can't help. It probably gives people just a more sense of like I want drama in my life. Yeah, I'm being videotaped all the time, So like you start like thinking of your life like a TV show. I imagine. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it could like make it easier for a trouble within a merry a marriage to get solved. But

that said, I don't know anything about this particular couple. Um, but it's worth noting that, like reality TV does not start far from where it is now, right, like the yeah this is this is still the heart of the of the genre. Um. So an American family is hugely successful and it immediately spawns an imitation by the BBC call just the Family Now An American families particularly notable because the Loud Family's oldest son, Lance was probably the

world's first openly gay TV star. Um Like, he's open about being gay in the show in nineteen seventy three,

which is pretty groundbreaking for the time. Um and he dies during the AIDS epidemic, which is, uh, you know, there's a whole is an interesting person whose life to study right this this show and he like, there's nothing particularly problematic here, it's just an interesting piece of his I mean, it's your typical reality TV coming from PBS and BBC as we all know, yeah, classic classic reality

TV stations. So in the years that followed, the series went through the normal life cycle of a successful show. There's a handful of parodies, right, like a bunch of different like sketch shows do parodies of an American family. There's like jokes and sitcoms of the day about moments that have happened in the show. Um, and then ten years after it airs, there's an attempted reboot that doesn't

do very well. Right, nothing at all weird here. This is like more or less what happens with every successful show. Most folks probably figured that was kind of it for the genre, which had yet to be named. People didn't talk about reality TV is a thing. There's just this one weird show that had existed. But a few perceptive individuals at the time recognized that something special was afoot. Anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide. The

New Yorker writes quote. Her contribution, which wasn't mentioned on the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine after the listings, tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and a profile of Shelly Winters, Bill and Pat Loud and their five children are either actors nor public figures, Mead wrote, Rather, they were the people they portrayed on television, members of

a real family. Producers compressed seven months of tedium and turmoil into twelve one hour segments, which constituted, in Mead's view, a new kind of art form and innovation as significant as the invention of drama or the novel. And I think that's true no matter how you like reality TV, Like, of course it's hit that point of cultural relevance already, it's had that impact. We have the Trump presidency because

of reality TV, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. The biggest shame about reality TV is when it's staged, right, Like, yeah, it's the same opinion of documentary. Um, we'll get into that, but yeah, but I think that is interesting. They're just looking at it as like it's like the birth of the novel, you know, Yeah, it will be with us for a long time. It'll it'll be so broad that I think it's like any genre where it's sort of

mixes with other genres. You know. Uh, you could argue that just what we're doing, like TikTok uh and like the the the YouTube's and so on, our offshoots of reality TV because we're following people's lives. Uh, people are kind of filming genuine moments, stage moments. It's all, it's all part of the same thing. Yeah, and you know, it's like with them, and like with novels, there's this you know, there's horrible things you can tie to novels.

You know, Hitler was very influenced by the novels of Karl may Um, you're right, yeah, yeah, we probably don't have novels caused Hitler. We probably don't have the Bosnian genocide without the Pelican brief obviously, Um, you know. But also there's good things that novels have brought us to. Um probably what assumes good things. I don't read books, Um, you know, right, but I do watch Jack Ryan movies. I do watch Jack Ryan movies, which it influenced my

life in a number of ways. Yeah, and I've been told they started as some sort of book. Yeah. The Jack Reacher series really helped me make peace with the fact that, Um, I'm incredibly jacked. Uh. You know, there's people it's really hard to be like a jacked white dude exactly exactly finally representation exactly. It's it's wonderful. Yeah, that's just like the yeah, anyway whatever, that this bit has gone on long enough, so yes, yes it had.

So it's interesting then that it takes like Margaret meets right about the how influential this art medium is going to be. And it's interesting that it takes like twenty years from the first reality TV show before it turns into anything, like we have this idea for a long time before people figure out what to do with it.

That I mean that happens sort of with found footage as well, because there were like there was some found footage films and then we kind of went quiet, and then the Blair Witch Project brought it back finally, the which is again one of one of the great works of humanitarian right, yeah, the Blair Witch Project, without which I don't know, we wouldn't have make a genocide just before me yeah, yeah, yeah, we would have the VHS movies which have solved world hunger. Sure, yeah, we'll go

with that. So the first show to take reality TV forward was The Real World, which debuted an MTV and n Rather than watching a family live there life and risk the chance that it might be boring, MTV decided to throw a bunch of young adults in a house and film what happened. Um, the show was successful, but it also was not like the kind of successful that on its own was going to spawn a world like

changing industry. You know, um, you know, the real world is kind of a proof of concept, but it's not as influentialists and later things are going to be the key to transmuting these particular these peculiar documentary style shows into the thing that devoured television. Happened to be held in the head of a Fox executive named Mike Darnell. Prior to two thousand, Mike's background had been producing shows like When Animals Attack, World, Scariest Police Chases, and a

variety of other premises now met by random weirdos on YouTube. Right, Like, all the shows he gets started with are like the things I watched on random YouTubers collect Yeah, that's oh yeah, I remember America's finding some videos where it's like that's YouTube. Yeah, that's the only way you can watch people getting hitting the balls, and it's like we want that. I I would argue reality TV is better than like When Animals Attack, because that like that was just YouTube, but it was

YouTube done in this like really serious tone. Um, I don't know if you like I I actually would see you could see people like attack videos on when animals attack would get reused on like World's Funniest Animals, and they would just cover it in a different tone. Uh, and like not mentioned the injuries, you know, like because they just it didn't matter. It was just it was so schlocky. Um, at least Reality TV had, like I

don't know, people involved a little more drama. Yeah, I think like because also I always felt gross about like America's Funniest Like a lot of these different videos shows less, but like a lot of them would have like narration that was like generally kind of mean spirited towards the people. And I think it's much better to just have context free loops of videos of people hurting themselves. That's that's fine. And it was a whole industry that, Yeah, YouTube pretty

much killed. It is kind of funny that agree to which that used to be the dominant thing on TV and now it's just random dudes. One of my favorite YouTubers is the car Crash Channel, which is just compilations of car accidents right, yeah, what else? Like, you don't need a commentary, No, I don't need I don't need a word from anybody. Just get in bed, put on the car crashes, and go to sleep. And go to sleep to the car crashes. I love sleeping to train crashes.

There's nothing as soothing as watching a train hit a box truck. Yeah. It just goes poof, yeah, just yeah, just like you just sends right into the deeply soothing. So Darnell is also the mind behind a two hour special. So you know, this is how we get to start doing these, like when animals attack. But then near the end of the nineteen nineties, he has an idea for a two hour TV special with the title who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire? So this is gonna be the

show that births all of modern reality TV. Really um. It airs on Fox on February two thousand. In her book Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Posner describes it this way. The special, which predated the game changing Survivor, was a hybrid of Miss America and a Male Order bride parade. With executive producer Mike Flice of Next Entertainment, Darnell brought fifty brides to be to Las Vegas to be auctioned

off to a complete stranger. The sachet and swimsuits tittered nervously and answered pageant style questions to assess their moral fortitude and sexual prowess in thirty seconds or less. Groom Rick Rockwell was hidden as he and the audience determined

who deserved the biggest prize of all. A brand new multimillionaire husband, nurse and future playboy centerfold, Darva Conjure, Rockwell's eventual choice got her first glimpse of her fiance moments before they were legally wed on air nearly twenty three million view We was tuned in. It's funny how when read that academically, it really is horrifying. It's a nightmare, right, Like that's that's like like an auctioning human beings off

to a rich man. It's pretty bad. Yeah. It's one of those where he's like, you had to you had to be there. I guess I think if you were there a lot of people but no, but it was, but they were part of they watched it. Reality TV created I think more than most things they hate watch right, yes, oh god, yes, yes, um so the series got a twenty eight share um, which is basically is a big hit in terms people don't use as much anymore to talk about success because streaming is kind of like who

gives a ship about those old terms. But anyway, it's a big hit. Mike Darnell declared it the best show ever. Uh or Chris Darnell. I think it was Chris ship. How many Darnell's we got here? What's Mike? No? It is? I think they're both my? Are they both? Mike's the TV executives? It all checks out. Mike Flice, who's the producer, later bragged Mike and I knew that the National Organization for Women would hate us, that this would be the most controversial show ever. We thought it was all good,

but it got so hot, so crazy red hot. They said it was the most talked about show since Roots. It was the lead sketch on Saturday Night Live. It's maybe your reality show that involves auctioning human beings shouldn't be compared to Roots. No, you might. You might not

want to be drawn attention to that, buddy. Yeah no. This this also begins this problem, which is the it's it's kind of resonates all the way to the Internet obviously, which is like, oh, they're talking about us, and it's like, yeah, that doesn't you know, that's not a good measurement of whether or not something's good or not. But I mean it is for their purposes, because it's a measurement of whether or not something can be worth money to advertisers,

which is all that matters. Now, speaking of advertisers, Dave, No, you know what, we can say whatever we want on this show because it gets advertisers. So I can say, for example, Dave has an island off the coast of Indonesia where you can make grab a crude weapon spear you know, um, a club you know, like you'd use on a seal, a rock, and you can hunt children in the open preserves that they keep on this island, and they'll get cooked for You don't have to cook

the child brisket yourself. Takes care of that. I know. It's the opposite actually how normally works. Yeah, right, all right, but that's that's kind of the the appeal. That that's the appeal, right normally, since you the ingredients and you cook it on the child hunting island, you provide the ingredients and cooks the food, right, because that's the most fun part of that process, of the child hunting process. How much does it cost? What does it go for? Oh?

I mean, you know you have to donate a significant amount to coke industries. But but really, Dave, can you put a price on hunting children on an island off the coast of Indonesia? I mean no, but also yes if you well, yes, they do, they do, they do. But if you sign up for their meal box plan, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a spot on the next yacht over to the child hunting island,

which is worth quite a bit. So here's here's our sponsors. Uh, we're back, We're back, and we're talking about the only mattress made entirely with linen stolen from the graves of dead Egyptian peasants. That's right. It is named because the ghost of dead Egyptian peasants lingers inside each mattress. You know, that's the guarantee. Yeah, I mean, what are they doing with all that linen? Nothing? Nothing, tons of wasted linen.

It sounds super sustainable, yeah, environment exactly, there's so much carbon wasted by getting linen that doesn't come from Egyptian peasants who were buried in lost desert cities. Um steals those corpses and passes the carbon savings onto you. Yeah, it's it's Yeah, it's convenient, it's good for the environment. It's great for the environment. Yeah, and it's affordable. Is there promo code? Can we make it even more affordable?

Promo code? Bastards? And they'll throw in a free ounce of mummy dust, which if if my eighteen nineties medical textbooks or anything to go by is useful in a variety of ailment, stay, you can at least snort it, and you've got the grip. You've got the shallots, the shingles will cure them all. Mummy dust. Sprinkle it on your mac and cheese. It's delicious. That was like three and a half minutes of how we do it? Are you happy, Sophie? Did you get what you wanted? I

said that bits getting gold, you made a worse one. Yeah, it's great. That's that's that's that's how what I've been doing since the Bits, Sophie. I missed the bit well too bad, So you probably won't be surprised to learn, Dave that a show that was premised on basically taking the idea of an arranged marriage and making it television

would turn out to have been unethical in some way. Right, So they do this whole competition, right, some lady wins this marriage to this fucking multimillionaire Rockwell, but they never consummate their marriage, and for a very good reason, the woman conjure has it annulled because she learns that Rockwell has a long history of violence against women. Um, so,

you know, good call on on her part. Um comes out like right as the show comes out that his former girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for vandalizing her car, breaking into her home, and repeatedly physically assaulting her. Good God, she stated, he said he would find me and kill me. Also, Rockwell is not a multimillionaire,

but that's hardly seems like the primary issue here. Who who would have thought that guy who goes on a TV show to uh look to like essentially buy a woman from an auction, Yeah, would be a liar and a violent abuser. Who who? Yeah, so his his former girl. Yeah. So all this hits the press right after the show comes out, and it's a big problem for Fox, because again, this is two thousands, so there was just a little

bit of shame left in the world. Was back when we cared it was it was like the rest of WIRs in southern California. There was still this like tiny layer of water. It's not going to be there in a couple of years, you know, just like the water in southern California, but it was still a little bit there.

Now you can kind of see the boats that didn't really have enough water, but there was at least something, you know, Yeah, you could pretend like, oh, it's just a dry and the rain will come back, It'll be all right. Yeah, So there's a little bit of shame, and it causes a problem for Fox. Darnell tells the report, this is the worst day of my life. What a

great guy. Um. He gets excoriated by media, who, by the way, like all of these journalists yelling at them were a lot of the same people who had been like raving over how groundbreaking the show was and who would who would go on to celebrate other horrible reality things. So whatever, Um. But in private, like he pretends that this is a horrible day for him in public. In private, he is a static Flice later recalled that his first reaction was, quote, great more publicity. Mike said, we gotta

get out in front of this. I'm like, absolutely, fuck, it's a restraining order. Let's get an interview with the girl. We'll put it on as part of as part of the special. We had a whole plan because that's the way we like it. Because that's the way we like it. What an amazing kind of dude. I love it because we had it all as a plan because and then something is the shame center of his brain like kicked in and like like turned it into because that's the

way we like it. That is just his ego protecting himself from something he knows. I think somewhere deep in he shouldn't do this. He is a bad person. Yeah, when when you become aware that on your show where women are auctioned off to the highest bidder, the guy buying the auction was a spousal abuser on a horrific kind of level of abuse and also lying about being rich, you should be like, well, huh, maybe I should rethink some things about like not just the show, but my life.

You know. He's the thing is that I don't know much about how the biz works, the specifically the reality TV biz. But I imagine that when you're casting reality TV, you're looking for outrageous people who are willing to do whatever on camera. Yes, and I'm not saying they all are. I'm just saying that that type of person tends to have some personal problems. Yeah, let's say a higher level. Yeah. Yeah, again,

not all of them, not all. Yeah, it's just that I can see why that would say attract people who are problematic in a lot of ways. And so yeah, it's I imagine that's why you have several stories similar to this of reality TV where it's yeah, it comes out that these people have done something horrifying, and it's like, yeah, because you barely vetted them, they're they're not a professional performer. Uh, and you stuck them on TV and made him a star. Yeah,

it's not the best thing to do, you know. It's like, you know, Dave, I don't. I don't have a lot of shame. Um, obviously, Like I think we both chose entertainment as career, so we probably have a lower shame threshold than a lot of people. Um, But like like every now, like on Twitter, I'll just like get see a tweet that I think is funny, and I'll share it and then someone will like inevitably be like, oh, you know, this guy did this horrible thing, and I'm like, well, no,

I didn't. It was just a random person on Twitter. But then I forget that about it for the rest of the day. It's incredible that this guy can be like, oh, we filmed the whole several hour long TV special with like a man who beat the ship out of his girlfriend and as a restraining order against him. Yeah. Right, that complete lack of shame. Yeah, it's amazable. I envy it. Yeah. Yeah. It would make some things easier, like getting access to a Lamborghini. That's like getting money. It makes that a

lot easier. And then you make YouTube videos about telling people how to get money, and you tell them to buy your book, which also will help them pick up women. That's another kind of guy without much shame. Yeah. Um. And also this does lead to all that because the pickup artist culture is heavily related to reality TV show and that show with what was a mystery? What was it called? I assume it was a mystery because that's that's one of them. The guys. Yeah, he definitely was

in a bunch of reality ships. So when this all blows up and there's this big backlash against who wants to marry a multimillionaire, everyone kind of assumes that Darnelle is going to get fired. Fox cancels the rebroadcast of the show, and they had been talking about turning it into a series because it was a huge hit, and they declined to um and they promised never. Fox promises to never be a part of any similar show in the future, which is extremely, extremely funny, like yeah, Fox,

absolutely wow. So it's worth noting that even while the heat is on other networks, as soon as Fox is like, well, I guess we won't turn this into a show like up N offers to buy it, of course, other TV networks are like, well, we'll make it into a show. I don't give a fuck im up N. All we have is Voyager reruns right now, up N, please help us. Most of that was actually their motto at the time. Most of people listening to this podcast right now are like,

I don't know what UPN. That's because this episode of our podcast will have more viewers than up and got in its entire time on the air. Absolutely, Um, But Mike Flye turns up and down. He's like, now, I don't want to give this guy to you, and I got a better idea. So flies who had produced the show, um, takes a variation of the pitch that he and Darnell

had made to ABC. Now they clean it up a little from Middle America, right, and they relaunch Who Wants to Be a multi Millionaire with some changes as a new series called You're Either This Dave The Bachelor? Yeah, baby, Yeah, that's where that starts. Yeah, and obviously The Bachelor is a lot less problematic, although not to look there, there's so much more and all of these shows. I'm sure people will be like, no, there's like, yeah, of course

a bunch of ship happened. It's tough. I've never seen a single episode of The Bachelor. No, this is not about The Bachelor, but it's funny where it comes from. Yeah. So Big Brother comes out later into two thousand. It's after Who Wants to be a Multimillionaire, and it's actually,

this is interesting. Big Brother is an import of a Dutch show that's itself inspired by the real world, which is like this thing that increasingly like up to this day is big in reality where like some foreign country will make a show that's inspired like these other shows, and then like we'll steal that idea and then that will like I don't know, it's fine, right, I've noticed that, Like I assume it's all owned by the same people, but it seems like you just have to change like

a few words. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not it's not. Honestly, there's not really a meaningful difference between like what they did with the Office, you know, like it's not fucked up. It's just like the way artworks like Foreigner painted this thing, like shows where you can legally make a slightly different version of this and it's fine. Yeah, yeah, and yeah,

this is fine. I just bring it up because I find it interesting, not because it's like bad that they imported the idea behind this Dutch show like who gives a fuck? So yeah, the War on Terror starts not long after you know this this whole period of time, and as it gets down to the business of just like fucking up a bunch of stuff, Reality TV is becoming the biggest thing in US media. The Bachelor is

a Titanic hit. Basically overnight, it becomes ABC's top rated show among eighteen to forty nine year olds, otherwise known as the demographic with money. Well, that's what we knew it as in two thousand colics. Yeah, definitely there was in two thousand, especially smoking cigarettes. So despite the promises they'd made in the wake of their disaster with Rockwell, Fox committed themselves to reality TV more than any other network.

Jennifer Posner writes, by February two thousand three, Fox was devoting a whopping in ABC thirty three percent of their sweeps offerings to reality shows. These percentages increased over the years, limiting the number of quality comedies and dramas available to viewers and reducing opportunities for union represented actors, writers and crew. Instead of firing their previously shamed reality group Guru, Fox

promoted Darnell to executive vice president of Alternative Programming. So they it's they get to bust some unions and give a creep a good job and then nice. Yeah, that's that's the American dream, right, They're good for them. It is nice, that is, and we will not be getting into it enough. But that is a big part of like why reality is so popular with producers and stuff like high level producers. Is like, well, you can gotta you can get away from a lot of union ship

with this. That is very true. You have people who work for a lot less and you can cut out the writer's guild, you know. Yeah, yeah, as a real bummer, it's very fun. So with that August title behind him, Darnell helped to bring to life a number of the most noteworthy early reality shows. There was two thousand ones Temptation Island, in which real life couples were separated and

tempted into adultery. Unbelievable premise Joe Millionaire, in which a bunch of women dated a guy they thought was a millionaire, only to realize he wasn't right. Isn't the twist? At the end, they give him a million dollars they get, they get, they split like it's either a million or half a million between him and the woman who agrees to go out with him after note learning he's not rich, Like, if she agrees to still go out with him, then they both get money. I don't know what the moral

is there, Yeah, I mean there's no moral. It's Mike Darnell. This guy doesn't have morals. Yeah, and just seeing what happens. Yeah, it's just Magan TV. In two thousand four's The Swan, a bunch of women are given plastic surgery and other risky surgical procedures so they can compete in the beauty Badget Man Mike Darnell. Baby, he's the fucking He's the Chuck Bearriss of reality TV, is what I'm getting from this. Yeah. Absolutely, he just sat there all day and came up with

horrible things to do. Yeah, and killed for the government on the side. My favorite show he did was the short lived series Mr. Personality, in which a woman dates a bunch of men wearing masks that they can't take off until the show winds, so she has to pick the woman she wants to be with without saying without a mask. They have one of those now too, they have like a blind date, but Dave. This one was hosted by Monica Lewinsky. Oh, I mean what we know

about her now, it's like good for her. Yeah, I'm not going to condemn her for like you gotta like what other kind of for one thing? One other kind of jobs are open to you. As Monica Lewinsky in the early two thousand's like not a lot of hiring opportunities after going through that ringer, So yeah, get get what you can, Monica. But it's it's incredible, it's extreme, Like the opening to this show is extremely funny and we're just gonna play it well. Please now for indoor

bow food go it's this season finale Mr Personality. This season on Mr. Personality, Hayley Valentine arm, a twenty six year old career woman from Atlanta, was introduced to Quantity eligible men their faces covered by match because he's touched my heart in a different kind of way, like men range from unemployed to peacemaker masks. Hold on, do yourself a favor. Look up the other Fox show Secrets of Magic revealed with the Mask Magician, and I'm almost certain

they just reused those masks. I'm not. I mean, I haven't looked in a while, going by memory look for people. For people who aren't watching this, they look like servants at an eyes wide shut or yeah, they all have the same masks. They all kind of look like M. F. Doom, but with a little bit of like, uh, like the fucking skeletor from the Masters of the Universe movie. Mixed in. I'm shocked that they all have so funny. Here's more speaker with a strategy of mind control. Ever, and I

kept hearing the verse seventeen, the influences really unconscious. Haley was forced to send ten suitors packing. Their masks were removed. I think this totally sucks. The remaining ten were given new colored masks, and the competition taked in. Haley watched as a law unraveled and the boys gone wild. That's what I'm talking about. This is my lovely bedroom and two men eliminated themselves. That's what I'm just gonna have to do. I can't do this, so another bit of contemtible.

Like most reality TV, this is men wearing tuxes and masks that takes place in what looks like a like upper upper middle class like mcmanchion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what's amazing about it too, is it's like an eyes

wide shut orgy on a budget. It's it's I'm not saying I'm not saying I have this kind of money, obviously, but it's like this is like someone who owns like a tow truck company, like several old air house um which again nothing against that, but I'm just trying to It's like a party, but all of the food is like from Kirkland. You know, it's like Kirkland. It's like a Kirkland brand rich people orgy. Right, it's not it's not not wealthy, Like these people have money, but they

don't have that much. The next clip please, oh yeah, yeah, here's I. I picked this one because it's got a little bit of that sweet Lewinsky action that I know everybody's looking for. She really is just kind of barely in it, right, that's Monica behind the two talking now, Pilly. He had initially said that he took your breath away and that you could get lost in his green eyes, but you also said he seemed a little too smooth in a big occulating. This is the mind control motivational

speaker and life coach for teenagers. He's thirty years old in the dark green mask. Meet Chris Burg. So I love Burg who's into mind control. And he didn't die in a bar in Florida like ten years ago he had died in a bar and tabbed that or he was part of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation program in Iraq, like one of the two. It's just it's one or the other. Either he is in fact good at what he does or yeah, he's been stabbed in the stuff at a bar. Florida one an incredible show. Holy shit,

it's so funny. It's like it's like junk food. Because as soon as he was like I'm going to take off my mask, I'm like, here we fucking go. I can't wait to see this. Let's see this weirdo. And then he was just some honky. He's just some he's just some some hockey. Yeah, he's just some fucking hockey. It's so funny. I think it got like five episodes, like, which is why Monica Lewinsky is not a staple of

reality TV to this day, which is tragic. Um, just you can see that he's just like throwing ship at a dartboard, Like all right, let's put him in masks and let's get who's famous that people wouldn't expect to see in a show. Monica Lewinsky got her for some money, put her in the show. It didn't work, but they probably had a list. They probably look at one point William Shatner was going to host. You know, like it's probably just like we have a list of people who

we know, we'll do it. Yeah, we know they do it. They need work, and like it'll people will be like, well,

what I gotta I guess I'll try that. Yeah, yeah, we're back so yeah, and it's worth It is kind of interesting to me that, like, having just gone through this, the first reality show ever was like pretty complex and intelligent entertainment for its day, and there's some like real cultural value there, but it winds up as this, you know, because reality TV and documentaries could be the same thing, right, Like if you're just documenting something that you find interesting,

a slice of you know, life in America, like that family, Like that makes sense. It's just they realized quickly that's boring.

And yeah, it's like even you can see in shows that are still around, like the Real World when it debuted nineteen ninety two, it dealt with a lot of ship like aids and drug addiction and like LGBT issues in a way that was a lot of folks will argue at least I'm not a comprehensive I don't know much about the real world, but people who are critics of culture will argue was more intelligent than it is today.

UM Cultural critic LaToya Peterson writes that while growth and development were early on parts of the real world, in later days it became quote specifically cast for racists, assholes, and agitators. It's like a formula. Every season has some huge racial altercation. Every season as some kind of woman trying to sleep her way into self esteem. Every season has a guy coping with a breakup angrily. Right again, they saw out people, Yeah we're unstable, yeah, yeah, and

then they gave them money and fame. Well. And also as we saw with the very first with like Darnell's first show and positive notes that like, a big part of this change is that folks follow Darnell's lead in bating. Advocacy groups like the National Organization of Women are the double a CP or of clad with content that where people were like have controversies, which will get these groups to weigh in, which will cause like journalists to write

about this controversy, which generates press and views. UM. And that's a big part of it too. Clicks. It clicks. It's all that clicks. It's it's triggering the libs, and it's all built upon the same idea, which is that like any reaction is there is a reaction there for succeeds, even if the reaction is someone saying that's not funny, They're like we did it, and it's like did you though,

Like it's funny to me. The kind of what's happening here is the way bullies work, right, which is like if you react to them at all, you're giving them what they want that we have just applied to like all of culture now and reality is kind of how that happens, where it's like, well, I guess the way everything should work is that if you get people to react by being shitty, then than the person being shitty wins, right exactly, like if you run a show that's just

someone going out in public and taking dumps in the ground at a mall. All right now, Dave, I told you that in confidence. We'll have our pitch meeting with the h one in a week and maybe you can have multiple versions of that. It's like volcano and deep impact. You can never get too much of mull shitter. That's that's gonna be gold and it's spin off. Who wants to watch a multimillionaire ship in a fucking a Spencer's

gifts exactly. Oh, that'd be great because people at first they'd be like, something smells like ship, but they'd look and there's all the novelty ships and they're like, which one is it? Like one of them is? God. I want to go into a spencer's gift and leave a real dump and then solve the novelty ones. They wouldn't find it for months. Anyway, this is going to be stolen by Fox in like a week and make somebody forty seven million dollars. I mean that could legitimately be

like a sub chackass. It could be. It could make Yeah. In two thousand one, VH one launched it's Celebriality Block. The lynchpin of this was the surreal life based off the real world and people who were only celebrities in the loosest sense of the world, like at this point, Flavor Flav would live together on camera. Flavor Flav became a lot more famous later, but um, he was you know, this is kind of what like blew him up into

being a reality star. It was huge. The production company behind it, fifty one Minds Entertainment, started spinning off next from Entertainment Weekly quote. That's when they found Megan Hauserman, a former playboy model who appeared on season three If the WB turned c W reality competition Beauty and the Geek. She and her partner Alan Scooter Zackheim took home the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar prize with her bombshell

looks and sassy wood. Houserman became a fan favorite on Rock of Love with Brett Michaels Think The Bachelor but with poisons Michaels as its prize, and it spent off I Love Money and Rock of Love Charms School. Fifty one Minds decided to give the model her own show, Megan Once a Millionaire. The funny thing about Megan was her stated ambition, which was to marry a millionaire, says Cronin.

So we said, what if we filled a house with millionaires and they were competing for you as their trophy wife. Here we go. This is um I sort of know what's to come here. Yeah, this does not sound like a TV show from Mr Timmy Dave. It sounds like a spell to in the world. But a lot of a lot of studio executives were convinced it would be a hit. So VH one Green lights, this motherfucker. In the casting notice, they asked for a quote single men of the highest degree with a net worth of a

million dollars or more. Now, rather than rely entirely on traditional casting, they sent producers to nightclubs to throw parties where rich guys would audition by just like being at a nightclub. Um, they sound like the worst parties. Imagine that sounds yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. Imagine working a service job at one of those parties. What an absolute That's that's the that you could write a horror

movie just about one of these nights. There aren't a lot of ethical reasons to make and deploy a chlorine gas bomb using the cleaning chemicals commonly found in any bar, but this would have been one, right. Oh yeah, I don't think they would have arrested you. Yeah, it would have been self defense. We all agreed this with self defense. Yeah,

so um yeah, they do this thing. Um And one of the men they find through this process is Ryan Jenkins, a thirty two year old real estate developer from Las Vegas. It sounds like a perfectly rounded individual that I'm sure we'll have no problems around him. Now. One one casting producer later recalled of him, Ryan Jenkins had one of the best personalities on this planet. He was intriguing, he knew it. He wasn't the best looking guy in the world,

he just had this charisma. So all reality shows have a process for vetting candidates. This was clearly necessary after the first Millionaire show blew up due to its lead Mail being an abusive monster with a restraining order against him. Every network and production company, though, did this in a different way. The most Rigorou shows included the kind of like applications included the kind of information you need to get a mortgage you have to file it, every address

you'd ever had, every job you've had. There were psychiatric ski screeners, inc. Block tests, Etcetera. Entertainment Weekly continues. The other key component is the criminal background check, which involves, in parts, searching court interest records in every county a

candidate has ever lived. When it came time to run checks on all of Megan's potential millionaires, VH one turn to Collective Intelligence, a Washington State based company the network had been working with since two thousand three, but Collective only specialized in US based criminal searches, so for Jenkins a Canadian citizen. The company subcontracted out the search to another firm, Straight Line International. Ryan Jenkins's record came back clear and he was invited to join the cast. So

this is gonna go. Yeah, is a Canadian? You know they're they're nice people. Sure, no problems there. Megan Wants to Marry a Millionaire launched on August second, two thousand nine, and it is one of the cringest shows I've ever experienced. Let's watch the introduction. Okay, I've a milk and when a man who takes her there, a gentleman extraun enough wants me wants Megan gets oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, what Megan wants Megan gets. That's that's the

good stuff. Dave. Wait, you already explained who Megan is, right, Yeah, she's a playboy model whose primary ambition is to marry a millionaire. I still feel like saying, who does she thinks she is? It's just like, my god, all right, I mean, good good for her, I guess, I mean, you know, I'm saying that definitely not good. Good for her for wanting a millionaire and knowing what she wants, and I get I assume this will end really happy with her getting a millionaire. Yeah, I mean I think

she gets rich eventually. So there you go. Uh so, Ryan Jenkins in this episode, like the first that it's interminably long. She's just like meeting all of these guys, it's unbelievably awkward. Um some of them are like creepy old dudes who are like really weird and it's it's whatever, like it's it's it's they're all creepy in some way. They're all the kind of people who would show up on a show with this premise. Um, so it's horrible.

And in his introduction, Ryan Jenkins describes himself as quote a little bit of Prince Charming, a little bit of a bad boy. And here's here's here's him showing up on screen for the first time. Okay, hello Ogan, look we're matching already, we are matching. Have you met any Canadians before? Never looks about time, don't you think absolutely? Let you know a little secret please to Ryan whispers in my ear, you're gonna love Canadian bacon. Oh oh

fuck fuck that was a dick thing, right, I think? Yeah, I probably I just lost a year of my life. Yeah that that takes a lot out of you. My god, just the facial hair on Oh it's horrible, legal. I mean this was you know, the early two thousands. Every time. Yeah, oh, I can't defend it. I know there's a different time back then, but still that facial hair. You're gonna love Canadian bacon's flat because yeah, flat and flat, not not

quite cooked. Right. Yeah, here's the thing, if he was actually just talking about Canadian bacon, that would be delightful, right, if he just wants to like cooker some Canadian He was not. He was not, but that would have made him a winner. He probably could have gotten all the way to the top that way. But no, it's probably Yeah about his like tapeworm dick, like his flat, floppy, floppy tapeworm dick? Is it Canadian big in like round two? Like it's like a it's wrong, it's not right. It's

like poutine. You're not supposed to put it in your body. It just exists because we you know, because America, the one time we pull our punches, it's with Canada. And look at this nonsense that exists. Now, look what we let happen. I'm gonna I'm going to need Garrison to fact check everything you just said. So Ryan advanced to the final round of the show. Um Hauserman liked him, although she saw some quote unquote red flags, like the fact that his rolex was fake and that he only

brought a single pair of pants for five weeks of filming. Amazing, all right, I wish I could, I wish I could act better than him, but I do only own a single pair of pants. Dave. I know this about having lived with you, but also, you're not a millionaire. That's true. I'm not. You're right. Yeah, I can't. I can't afford multiple pairs of pants. You're right. That's why. That's why I only have one pair. I'm the victim here, You're right. So, yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it is weird for him. It's weird

for him. Um. So she thought he was sweet, um, and she almost picked him as the winner. She looked him up on Facebook one night during shooting and got his phone number and called him privately to tell him she planned to pick him. But then she told the show's producers what she planned to do, and they were like, oh no, absolutely not. Um. They justified this as saying he wasn't likable and was just putting on a show

for her, and she eventually agreed to send him home. Quote, he was really upset, and I was upset also, so that's a shame. She planned to call him once filming was over and explained that she had just been doing what her producers wanted. The show flopped, but Hauserman remained in contact with Ryan. He told her that after she sent him home, he was so upset that quote, I went to Vegas and I met a girl. Um As

is normally the case on reality shows. Producers hired several of the failed contestants of this show for other projects, and so four years later, in two thousand nine, Ryan Jenkins has cast for a show called I Love Money three, vying her two d and fifty thousand dollar prize because you know, he's not actually a millionaire and he could

really use the cash. Entertainment Weekly continues he kept calling her on the phone, his wife, saying, I'm going to win this and you and I are going to have the life I've always promised, recalls Mark Cronin, co founder of fifty one Minds Entertainment, the production company behind Money, Megan the Surreal Life and the majority of the h one wildly successful celeb reality shows of that era. Then

he would ask her where were you last night? Because he's in Mexico shooting the show and she lives in Las Vegas. He was very jealous and very suspicious of her. We were actually making a story of it on the show. We were like, look at this guy. He's obsessed with this model he married. Cronin continues, it was funny until it wasn't funny at all. I guess why it stops being funny. I have an idea. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

It's pretty it's not funny. On August fifteen, two thousand nine, soon after I Love Money three wrapped fire, his his wife's strangled and mutilated body was found stuffed in a suitcase tossed to a dumpster in Buena Park, California. I

wonder what happened? Yeah, So Jenkins goes on the run, and as this all gets public, TMZ finds out that he has an extensive criminal record, um including an arrest in two thousand five for assaulting a girlfriend in Calgary, which v H one and fifty one mind said was not on his background check. Uh. Jenkins eventually kills himself in a hotel room in British Columbia in auguste. Um. And yeah, it's this whole big story, big big, ugly

story for the reality TV industry. Yeah, collective intelligence gets most of the blame for this, and they wind up laying off their workforce. Um. The whole nightmare reportedly leads to an increased willingness for production companies and networks to pay for thorough background checks. So that's good. It feels like everybody in America should go to jail for a day. It feels like we all got to go to jail

for that one. It's just like our culture everything. Everybody should just for your shift and then you're the guard next, because like we got to get through everybody, right, we should all feel fucking ashamed. If some refugee comes into the country, it's like, hey, sorry, it's been so tough over in Ethiopia or Ukraine. Glad you're here. You gotta go to jail for a day. Now. There was this show like fifteen years ago. No one has stopped it

from happening. He stopped it obvious that this person was Yeah, look, we know you new here, but every American has some collective responsibility for this show. I mean, listen, in our defense, he did say he was kind of a bad boy, so this is this would fall under the kind of a bad boy ages. Yeah, he's like, that's what he actually whispered. He's like in her ear, he's like, I'm a murderer. I am. I am going to be a murderer. Yeah, yeah,

Oh my fucking god. Now the good news, Dave, is that sketchy, violent dudes getting through vetting is no longer the main threat faced by reality shows. We're gonna talk about what is in part two of this series, Dave. How you like in reality is in reality? And you know, I'm mixed feelings always on reality, so you know, I can't can't complain, but really I don't have many compliments for it either. Yeah. I feel the same about reality as I do about Reality TV, which is I feel

like we could do better. Yeah, I feel like we could do better. You know. Um, But you know who's doing great, Dave, is your podcast network Gamefully Unemployed, where people can listen to hype casts and hear about what's coming out in in a Hollywood. They can listen to Fox Older is a Maniac and learn how the FBI definitely really functions. Um, yeah, it's been Yeah, it's our

own behind the bastards for Fox Molder and Fox Molder only. Yeah. Yeah, it's so detailed in fact that if you listen to every episode of Fox Molder is a Maniac, you are legally an FBI agent and can carry out raids and stings on whoever you want it. Yeah. I mean, you know, the government might say otherwise, but it's like a little wink wink, what do they know? What do they know? Yeah, exactly, They're just working with you. Yeah. So yeah, everybody check

that out. Gamefully Unemployed, game fully, patreon dot com dot wait, I can do it, Patreon dot com, slash gamefully Unemployed. We're on Twitter as well, gamefully and I think just gooding like that, something like that. All right, google them and then google yourself, but like in a sexual manner, your name just happen. Okay, cool, Yeah, google your name plus nude. See what happens. You'll get something. It won't be you won't be happy you got it, but you'll

get something. Anyway. This has been the podcast. I've been Robert Evans, you've been David Bell and Sophie has been disappointed in me,