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William Shatner to Star in New Reality TV Series
Gildor writes "The small town of Riverside, Iowa has long billed itself as the birthplace of James T. Kirk. So they were thrilled when William Shatner came there to film a Star Trek prequel about the early life of Kirk. Except there was no movie. After about 9 days, Shatner announced they were actually filming a reality TV mini-series."
When are people going to stop allowing the networks to shove this filth down their throats?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Kahhhhhhhhnnnnnnn
Did anyone else read: "William Shatner to Star in New Star Wars Reality TV Series." I was about to say..
DeForest Kelly must be rolling in his grave...
I thought he was Canadian.
Um, Id perfer to get my scifi without any reality at all. Perhaps a show about space cops saving kittens or something like that. We need more programming that allows celebs to go freakin crazy...
Based on the Shatner name this is News for Nerds? It certainly can't be Stuff that matters!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I wonder where the guy is who's sitting around thinking "you know what our fall lineup needs? another reality show!"
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
They should team Shatner up with Hasslehoff.
A Space / Beach setting with the Olsen twins thrown in as well... with a reality twist maybe ?
Money baby... money.
I....can...not.....wait...to..see.this..new....sho w.
Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa; I only work in outer space.
The networks are out to make money, not be your friend. They wouldn't be airing reality TV if they didnt make money at it.
However, the profit margins on a reality TV show are MUCH higher. They don't have to pay expensive actors, they don't have to build or maintain sets, they don't need to hire extras from the screen actors guild, etc. They can even usually do product placements *on* the shows to make more money.
Then you have shows like American Idol - not only is the show cheap, but afterwards, they have an artist that is guaranteed to sell at least a few records - and they don't have to spend any money promoting them!
The marketers that convinced the masses to watch these shows are pure genius. And the networks are laughing all the way to the bank.
According to the article, Shatner, when he announced it was a hoax, gave the town $100,000 as a gift. The crew of the "film" donated $12,000 to the library. Most people where just happy to have him in town...and Shatner said it wasn't going to make fun of anyone - the reality TV show was when a big Hollywood production company comes in to a small town.
They also spent $1,000,000 to make the show, much of that going into the towns economy. What would be REALLY cool was if the reality show went over well and Shatner decided to actually make the movie into a real movie. That could be pretty cool, and it would already have tons of publicity and marketing started for it.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
I guess it would make sense for Shatner to have a cameo in whatever Trek show they might make about Kirk, but he won't be playing Kirk in any prequels :)
But reality TV? Blech. I'd rather have a 73 old old Shatner trying to play a 30 year old Kirk :)
He perhaps could have brought along a few Tribbles...
http://khaaan.com/
Especially one that has Shatner. Please tell me he doesn't try to sing in it.
You see! It was! A Joke!
*wave hands awkwardly*
I'm! Sorry! For the mistake!!
*ends up upside down in a wagon, still flailing*
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
How is it that a first post can be redundent?
Kirk was born in Iowa, not Shatner.
This sounds like a case for Dr Dan Streetmentioner.
I think you meant to say "Kirk wioll haven be born in Iowa, not Shatner"
Then, just to make it interesting you could, in the same way they do for MUDs, allocate points to internet participants who (via videoconferencing) have the most convincing characters, and then have them participate with greater ships, which they got by using their points.
Of course there would have to be some 'mission' to the whole thing (pick your trekkie episode), or perhaps a second crew on another ship (another studio).
Finally the studios would have to be modified to allow the participants to actually live there for a while...
Reality TV is about as cheap as infomercials and cooking shows, if not more so. Quality Programming, on the other hand, is a lot more expensive.
We've been told America Loves Reality TV when the Reality is that the networks LOVE it because it's PURE PROFIT.
This seems like the same thing in a way, and the Joe Schmoe show was quite funny. You can read Rhett's blob here. No information yet, but that might change soon.
"They also said they created their own little soap opera where Shatner pretended to be a jerk to his cast"
Good thing they didn't try to make him act.
Khaaaaaaaan!
How is that possible?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Will we never get a break from all this Star Trek nonsense? It'e enough already with the 8 series and the 10 movies and the endless string of reruns, books andconventions. I mean sure, GR did great stuff but aren't people done making money off of his franchise yet?
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
I read the title three times before I realized it was not about a Star Trek Reality TV Show. Guess Im used to William Shatner apearing next to Star Trek.
Sindri Traustason.
It's in stores tomorrow!!!!!. htm, and you can even hear songs from it!!
http://www.nme.com/features/110018
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
This seems to be a going trend for TV producers to claim they are working on project A in order to get people to unwittingly participate in project B... here on Slashdot not to look ago there was a warning story about MTV Networks fooling experts into appearing on a Comedy Central project called "Crossballs"
MTV Networks seems to be making a habit of this. MTV itself fooled a half dozen college students who thought they were interning on a music video project into being the stars of Faking the Video. And let's not forget TNN/SpikeTV's project called The Joe Schmo Show.
There oughta be a law against these things... because apparently basic fraud hasn't caught up to when fraud is being done in the name of TV.
Behold.... for I am
William Shatner
I got canned
really fast by priceline..
dot com
Now I am
an overrated washed up actor
Whose only claim to fame is
acting in Esperanto and
being the first white man
to admit to kissing a black chick
Now I can be me
Not competing with
that damn vulcan nemoy.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
ahh... local news for a community of about 930. ;)
No, THIS is his low-point, William Shatner's Spplat Attack, a DVD of a Star Trek-themed day of paintball. A friend bought this and brought it over one night.
It was painful.
Very painful.
How painful was it? There was actually a moment when I wished I was watching Star Trek V instead.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
It would be very appropriate for them to drive the "Shatner / Hasslehoff Industries Two Thousand".
;-)
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When Shatner called the movie his "passion" and swore that he wouldn't sacrifice his principles moments after arriving nine days ago, she believed him.
Someone actually believed Shatner has principles?
They should have done a reality TV show about how the real Kirk will be from a long line of Mexican-Iowans.
Seastead this.
His new CD, Has Been comes out on Tuesday. Here is a review.
I'm still looking for a copy of Transformed Man if anyone knows where to get one.....
William Shatner to Star in New Reality TV Series
What does William Shatner know about reality? I've had the feeling he's not been so with it since he decided to cover "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
I am reminded of that Futurama episode where they are stranded on the planet with the energy being and the cast of Star Trek; the energy creature is yelling at the cast during his fan script rehearsal, and Leonard Nimoy says, "You must respect your actors. When I directed Star Trek IV, I got an excellent performance out of Bill because I respected him" and Shatner responds with "And when I directed Star Trek V, I got an excellent performance out of me, because I respected me so much". Yeah, good old Shatner.
I think in order to be XHTML compliant, you need a .
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
The best reality tv show would be to send the producers and hosts from all of the other reality tv shows to an island without any food or supplies. The person who lives the longest would win money so they never need to work again.
Shatner has a temper as short as a Klingon's. He would be a wreck in a reality tv kind of situation.
Have you heard him freak out about his hairpiece?
If anyone can find a link to the radio interview I am referring to, please post it here.
ôó
This kind of crap really bothers me. The first few times it was done, it was funny, ha ha. But now this kind of shit is just as annoying as all of the "cowboy neal" and "in soviet russia" stuff, just not as funny. However, here is my real problem with it. Spike and others seem to think it's OK as long as they smooth everything over with a little cash. Bullshit! When are people going to wake up and realize that sometimes, money just isn't worth being made a fool of? The problem here is that most people have been conditioned to basically bend over when offered a decent amount of money. This needs to end. There MUST be some way of pointing out to people that it is not a good thing to check the essence of your being at the door and do just about anything that will scar your dignitiy for cash. un-America needs to get its dignity back. What a travesty.
Un-news
Shatner needs to just retire.
Riverside, Iowa is the alleged birthplace of James T. Kirk, not William Shatner (though sometimes I think Shatner himself gets the two confused ;-) ).
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
And I'm not sure why your lame attempt at a joke is modded "funny" since it is not.
(or something similar that they could pull out of their ass)
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Why bother lying to a community that you want to film a movie in their town? There are zillions of movies being filmed on locations all over the world, so why not just pick one, tow cameras around all over the place, and record what the real reactions of people are to the real-life situation of having a big production come to their town?
Oh, wait. That's not reality TV. That's a documentary.
Star Trek the Motion Picture came out in 1979, two years *after* Star Wars. The resurrection was inspired by Star Wars' success.
Until then it was mostly a cancelled 1960's sitcom. There was a choppy cartoon, but that hardly counts as milking the franchise.
This isn't a "good thing all around". It's a terrible thing. Basically, a bunch of people in "the biz" decided it would be funny to fool a small town community. They came in, lied, manipulated, and essentially disrespected these people, then decided that their trust was worth about $100,000. The donated money is a bribe, plain and simple, to buy off the feeble stirrings of conscience in Shatner, et al.
I see this happening more and more, and it's starting to get to me. People aren't here for your entertainment. Real people aren't the Sims, for Pete's sake. They don't go about their lives just to relieve the tedium of yours. It's a bad thing to treat people as if they were just means to be used in achieving your ends, whether that's something cartoony grand or as mundane as filling half an hour of that gaping void that is your life.
People are not means only.
I don't care that they got "genuine reactions" and "true feeling" and all that other crap that producers of shows like this believe justify their deceptions. In the end, a bunch of Hollywood types decided that small town people can be easily duped for the entertainment of a jaded national audience.
And for all those who asked, back when the reality craze fist hit, what harm Survivor etc. could do... well, here we are. These people didn't volunteer for the reality show; they were impressed into service, kidnapped.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I think he's made a *big* mistake. Nobody is
going to want to know him in his *own home town*
anymore.
Imagine, the next time he goes into a bar.
(call 911).
... when there are no more people left who are willing to participate in reality TV shows anymore. I mean, it's not like they can make a reality TV show without real people, right?
Cut back to Peter and William Shatner dancing barefoot in puddles by the side of the road. Meg comes along the road, and spots them.
Peter: Aaaargh!
William: My God! Look out!
The car skids to a stop, but knocks them both down. Meg and Lois get out.
Meg: Oh, my God. I hit William Shatner.
William: Light... growing... dimmer... can't... breathe. Beam me up, God.
He lays flat on his back, his shirt pops open and his gut pops out. Ensign Ricky and a crowd of people stand watching.
Ensign: Whoo. I did not see that coming.
-----
The only preformance outside Star Trek that I can stand by Shatner.
...and I would like to discuss this further, but I'm late for my shift at McDonalds!
1. Star in classic, overly-campy sci-fi series. 2. Host over-hyped drama-rescue series. 3. Perform insult to music for a badly floundering dot-com. 4. Profit!
Re: Crossballs: remember how there was that "gun nut" that got all upset?
:). And yes, I'm the same guy suing Diebold so hey, I ain't JUST a gun nut :).
:). Swear to God - they pulled it at the last second. My lawyer's two letters about how they didn't have permission appear to have sunk in.
Yeah, that would be me
Anyways. They never ran my episode
[/blows rassberries towards NYC and the Viacom corporate office:ON]
[shatner mode="kirk"]You don't understand why we must have such diversions? Do not your own people ... seek enjoyment in their own way? So it is with us. You see, we humans ... we need to ... relax ... to entertain ourselves. All of the great leaders in history have realized this: Caesar, Napoleon, Darius of Rigel IV. That's why ... we created ... television. If. You. Deny us. The chance to relax ... we will grow weary of our lives ... our less human lives?[/kirk]
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Re: Crossballs: remember how there was that "gun nut" that got all upset? Yeah, that would be me :). And yes, I'm the same guy suing Diebold so hey, I ain't JUST a gun nut :).
Anyways. They never ran my episode :). Swear to God - they pulled it at the last second. My lawyer's two letters about how they didn't have permission appear to have sunk in.
What a coincedence. You know that guy on the debates the other night? The really irritating one? That was me. And yes, I'm the same guy running to be president.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
From the article: "They don't understand that we opened our hearts to them," Simon said.
There's the problem right there. Never, ever open your heart to TV executives!!
This is a reality show, not Star Trek!
Hey hey! He was at the University of Iowa on Friday to use our satellite uplink for interviews. I work in the same building and we tracked him down and got a pic.... here's the scoop
Yeah, my roommates here at college are from Riverside. So I have been hearing about it for a bit now. My roommates do point out that the people of Riverside are kinda strange, but that people in the Midwest in general would probably react similarly if a big star like that came to film a movie there. One thing that is nice to point out is they gave the town of Riverside about $100k. (from what I've been told)
I guess you can look at this two ways... One, a good ol' boy playing a friendly prank on his old town, or the one I'm favoring at the moment; Galaxy Quest primadonna trying to make it off the dying embers of his career. I mean, why his town? Why not some other middle America? I'm thinking because that's where his name was the strongest and would be least likely questioned. In otherwords, the easiest marks they could find. Yeah, so they gave em' a $112,000... BFD. That's called a bribe in order not to litigate Shatner's ass for being played the fool, like every other "you're a fool and we secretly know it" show out there. Besides, only $112,000 to the entire town? They're obviously hoping to make $$$ off it's syndication, which means $100,000 divided by 903 people is fucking peanuts.
I know they could portray them as decent folk as Rev. Rich Adam hopes, but these shows don't get viewership off folks being good and decent. They get it by putting people in tight spots and making em look like fools. Oh hey, Guess who didn't attend James Doohan's (suffering from Parkinson's disease, diabetes, lung fibrosis and Alzheimer's disease) annointement to the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Probably too busy getting a great hotel rate.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I think I'll go weep for the fate of the world now.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
It truly was a dark day when Family Guy went off the air.
NEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRDDDDSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!
;)
Ahem.. sorry, I'll go back to my star trek dvd's now..
Maybe a Leonard Nimoy reality show in Vulcan, Alberta?
It may be spamming but a band called TISM said it best -
If you love it, you deserve it.
If you watch Reality;
Got your crotch on Reality;
If you act on Reality;
Know a fact from Reality;
If you make up Reality;
See a break up on Reality;
If you produce Reality;
Don't want to reduce Reality;
If you costume Reality;
Know a better rest room than Reality;
If you write on Reality;
Do the lights on Reality;
If your ad's on Reality;
Follow fads from Reality;
If you grew up on Reality;
Didn't throw up on Reality;
If you write about - bring about - fight about - sing about;
admire it - inspire it - hire it - acquire it;
If you love it, you deserve it.
If you make Reality
If you fake Reality
Get your face on Reality
Product placed on Reality
Your song's on Reality;
It belongs on Reality;
You relate to Reality
You fellate Reality
Gay or straight on Reality
Celibate on Reality
If you renovate Reality
If you decorate Reality
If you argue 'bout the stinking
Body Corporate on Reality
If you cook on Reality
Even look at Reality
Give garden tips on Reality
Give me the shits on Reality
If you program Reality
Don't wanna pogrom Reality
If you're addicted to Reality
To who's evicted from Reality
If you getaway on Reality
Not get away from Reality
Find a match on Reality
Not put a match to Reality
Cameo on Reality
Funniest video Reality
If you do a deal on Reality
If you keep it real on Reality
If you vote on Reality
Cross-promote on Reality
Like the cast on Reality
Don't wanna glass them on Reality
If you don't can it - bash it - ban it - trash it;
If you follow it - observe it - swallow it - "lurve" it:
If you love it, you deserve it.
Hold on, this is bullshit!
10 dollars say that if the show generates enough interest (oh, maybe get /.ed or something) you'll be having to face the horror of a real Star Trek prequel in the works sometime soon.
A Ka-mai
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
It seems that network tv has been curious over the loss of 18 to 34 year old males, suggesting it is a problem with the survey. Seems like this might fit the profile of many people on Slashdot. Considering the types of shows that the networks have cancelled in the past and are making now, go figure.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... To quote Macaulay Culkin:
ARRRGH!!!!!
Shatner's speach is bad enough to try and follow, but to mix it with a "reality" show is going to be murder.
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
They're all just Common People; Shatner's singing about them in his new CD
Has Been
Calling All Nerds: You Don't Have Time To Waste On Television!
/. any time, really! I swear!
My wife and I gave away our TiVo and television and haven't looked back. I don't know and don't particularly care how long it's been since we unplugged from the Matrix, but I promise you this:
If you kill your television, the rest will follow.
But I swear I can stop
/. peeve #274: The word is neither "walla" nor "whala", it's voila. Phonics is a tool of the devil.
CON!!!
They will quit shoving it down our throats when people quit watching it! It's like a d**n car wreck, everybody has to look. I'm sick of it too....if it wasn't for Fox News, the history channel, discovery, TV-Land, I wouldn't watch TV any more.
DeForest Kelly must be rolling in his grave...
Maybe we can use his body to power a generator then.
Actually I just got back from Cherry Hill, NJ where William Shatner gave a talk and signed autographs at a Star Trek Sci-Fi show. First off (he talked about this for a few minutes) this is a one time only mini series (just a few episodes, not a full season), I guess unless it makes enough money and they talk him into doing something like it again. And he called it something like MTV's Punked, just practiced on the entire town... from his description it actully sounds funny. In general I really, really hate reality TV... I get enough reality all day every day.. but again from his description of some of the practical jokes they played on the town it sounds like a great laugh so I'm willing to reserve judgement until I see one or two.
I live about 15 minutes from Riverside ... and I havn't heard much about this whole thing. I no sorta what happened, and all that, but there havn't been massive angry newspaper articles about it, that I have seen.
I easily could have missed alot, but it seems to me that the people around here didn't take it too seriously, and its not that big of a deal. What was a huge deal was the vote on having a casino in Riverside 2 months ago... that brought an uproar.
There is no spoon.
in the article Shatner assures the town that they won't be made fun of. - There's a promise not worth a plug nickel. When's the last time Hollywood portrayed rural life in a good way? NEVER. It's always farm dad is either a drunk, rapes his daughters at night, or both and the town that all knows it but doesn't do squat because they are just as guilty. Sorry but I'm sick of Hollywood's stereotypes.
We need an Enterprise episode where the crew are transported into a TJ Hooker alternative universe.
- pure class, and Shatner stays happy.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Please. Let the Kapitan pass into history. Even Gene Roddenberry let go. Everyone remember seeing his memorial at the start of the second greatest Trek film to grace the theatre (Star Trek VI).
I know your wife drown, and it really shocked the living hell out of me too. I can't even imagine going through that.
Please just let us remember you the way you used to be. I always hear that you were a real asshole on the set, but I just concentrate on the character.
No matter else, thank you for giving us your acting career. Some people are always stigmatized by one character; Judy Garland will always be Dorothy, Clint Eastwood will always be the shootingest mutherfucker that ever lived, Arnold Schwarzenegger will always be Conan...um...and the Terminator.
---
You will always be Captain Kirk. Please just let it go...
Denny Crane!
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
http://www.innergeek.us/
If they were the first unwitting participants to Tar & Feather Kirk, cast & crew. Revenge on @sshat reality show j3rckoffs would be sweet.
Let's face it. They are told they aren't going to be made fun of right now. Wait until their show comes out. They were used through & through.
I'm from Lone Tree, IA. How many of you have heard of Lone Tree? It's about six miles east of Riverside. Just the discussion (two-hundred-some-odd posts so-far) about Riverside, a place most of you had never previously known about, can't be a horrible thing. And communities do humorous things all the time. At least Riverside can claim that the egg that is theirs was done in good faith.
jg
Biggest Showbusiness Whore goes to .....
"William Shatner!"
Back666Back: Two-backed Beast
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It's not just because people watch these shows that they make money. As has already been mentioned, they are also very cheap to produce, meaning more profit.
Fox News is reality TV at its worst.
Mark my words, some enterprising college kids are going to clue into this fact and start selling their own 'reality show' over the internet, making their money off the advertising revenue their site will bring in.
You mean like "Naked College Girls' Apartment Webcam"? Been done.
There is nothing 'real' in reality TV shows...not for a bunch of people sitting closed in a house all day long, not for a bunch of people thrown without food in the wilds, not for a group of youngsters trying to make it as pop stars.
By the way, wouldn't 'Kirk' be too old for reality TV?
I live in Iowa City and can tell you the entire area was very excited about them "making a movie" here. Riverside, Iowa, is a tiny town with no real claim to fame other than the fact that they are nice people. Their mayor got the bright idea a few years ago that they should claim to be the Iowa town where Captain Kirk was born. They even raised $10,000 to erect a bronze statue of Kirk downtown by the barber shop. At first, Shatner wasn't going to allow it, but his mother asked him to let them because she wanted a statue of her boy. He didn't bother to attend the unveiling ceremony. In fact, the first time he ever set eyes on the town was when he moved in with an entire crew to scam them.
These people are huge Star Trek fans. Shatner and company really took advantage of a lot of very nice small town people with this scam. They didn't deserve it, and everyone there feels foolish and badly used.
Sure, Iowans are trusting small-town folk, but that's what I love about Iowa. It's one place that hasn't become cynical and mean. It's the opposite of Hollywood, where everyone is phony and it's all about making a buck, no matter what the cost.
I know one thing - this "reality" show won't have very high ratings in Iowa.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Did you know that '999' is the number for the emergency services in the UK? Surprises me that some rabid nutcase hasn't made a deal about this yet, given the obvious connection with '666'.
I don't think the parents point about the networks doom coming from redily syndicated reality shows is quite right - reality shows are a form of entertainment that I think would decay fairly quickly over time. Are there that many people that would want to see the first Survivor again?
I agree the real peril is that ANYONE can make a reality TV show, as they take almost no money to put on.
However the quality of compettion is directly proportional to the value of the reward at the end - people just are not as interesting when they are fighting for a small plastic trophy or "the glory of the win" as when $1 MILLION real dollars are on the line.
There are a lot of cheaper kind of crappy reality shows that show this principal at work, from ones somewhere in SCotland I think competing teams against each other for scientific tasks to ourdoor kind of challenge things (like King of the Pride on Animal Planet). They never come off as interesting as when the people are going for something really huge.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what do you think is so bad about reality TV?
Seriously, you and others like you are constantly deriding this form of TV. But is it really so bad compared to just about any other form of entertainment, including a good book?
If you think about it reality TV is a scripted framework, on which you get to watch how real people react against whatever scripted event occurs and how they react with each other.
There is some degree of pandering to show a bit of T&A or whatever, because they feel they have to. But if you'll notice the really popular reality shows are mostly devoted to capturing the essance of people reacting to unlikley events and each other within them.
Just because you might see these as having no intelligence to them does not mean there are not interesting elements you can draw from them.
In the Apprentice, I enjoy thinking of how I might approach tasks and analysing perceived flaws in strategy the teams put together. That actually takes a bit of thought, and you can learn some interesting things from what goes on there. For one thing, all business people can be just as dumb as anyone - they just have more money to play with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wouldn't the people have to sign releases to be shown? Anyone that appears is going to sign a release saying they are OK - if someone feels angry about being duped they can just not sign and fottage of them is gone.
The people that were supposed to be in the movie, why would they care if the footage was for a movie or not? They were being filmed and who cares where the footage goes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some people will just watch anything. But I have found that viewers of reality TV really get into them, as much as they get into anything - I only watch a very few TV shows (about six hours a week at most), and the only ones I watch regularily are The Apprentice and The Amazing Race.
Reality TV is some o fthe most educational TV around, if you come at it from the standpoint of learning about human nature and a study on how people react to each other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Generally I agree those shows where they trick people are more annoying than not, and hard to watch.
But this at least seems like it might have a more good-hearted motive in mind, if good can ever spring from trickery...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the one episode of Scare Tactics that I saw, they convinced a chimney cleaner that he was confronting a murderer who had stashed a decomposing body in the chimney. The poor guy was plainly terrified, and took it amazingly well when they told him it was just a setup. Had it been me, I think I would have been mad enough to break a few skulls before calming down. That one episode was enough to convince me that at least a few TV executives are completely insane.