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The Real World
Unwarranted attention is paid to the laughable opinions of college students who pretend not to notice they are surrounded by cameras.
Tonight: Out-of-proportion wailing and whining over insignficant household issues.
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Road Rules
Easily swayed youths are offered cash and prizes in exchange for on-camera antics calculated to bring maximum shame upon their families back home.
Tonight: Nakedness, drunkenness, opportunistic nightclub sex. The following day: the cast gives an inspirational presentation at a school assembly. |
Real World / Road Rules Challenge
Nearly forgotten former reality show participants try once more to transition from reality to celebrity by means of an unfortunately not-to-the-death battle.
Tonight: Yet again "Puck" trots out the tiresome bad boy act to the inexplicable surprise of the others. |
The Osbournes
Celebrity portraying himself as an average person struggles to reclaim the limelight from hundreds of average persons on reality shows struggling to portray themselves as celebrities.
Tonight: One of the family's pets defecates on the floor.
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| Fear Factor
Bland, aggressive professional comic waves cash and fleeting recognition before the noses of attention-starved gym rat stereotypes, inducing them to dangle from great heights and devour repugnant substances unrecognized as food even in very hungry regions.
Tonight: Playboy "Playmates" discover the poor mix of strenuous physical activity and ludicrously large breast sizes. |
Dog Eat Dog
Everyday people are goaded by an improbably gorgeous model into displaying the shameless taunting and poor sportsmanship of professional basketball players.
Tonight: Playboy "Playmates" attempt to prove there is more to them than expensive elective surgery; fail comically. |
| Survivor
Sixteen irritating strangers who would be unwelcome in most decent American households are welcomed weekly into millions of decent American households as they prey without mercy upon one another in a bid to be lauded for their cunning and ruthlessness.
Tonight: Castaways show next to no self-awareness as they inordinately overappraise their own attractiveness, abilities, and intelligence. |
Big Brother
Orwell's frightening vision of a totally controlled society surveilled around the clock is trivialized and played for laughs by imprisoned housemates largely lacking common sense, common courtesy, and any trace of body hair; each week they face the hair-splitting task of deciding who among them is most feckless and therefore most deserving of expulsion.
Tonight: Painfully ordinary people interact in predictable ways, then argue about it; grudges are held.
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(Syndicated) |
Blind Date
Wildly incompatible aspiring actors posing as normal people are sent out on the town either to clash and insult each other or else to find some pretext for getting naked together.
Tonight: Wildly incompatible aspiring actors display genuine dislike for each other, trade vicious personal insults, get naked in a hot-tub anyway.
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Change of Heart
Couples agree to be videotaped while cheating openly on one another and also to be offended by the resulting taped evidence.
Tonight: Host mugs for camera in response to "wacky" dating antics; in response to off-camera prompting, the audience emits the now-traditional "woooOOOOooo!!" sound. |
Street Smarts
The apparent morons populating cities everywhere show themselves to be, in reality, so monstrously ill-informed that genuine morons would be embarrassed to share the appelation with them.
Tonight: Painfully simple queries go unanswered; host repeatedly refers to these as "real stumpers." |
Jerry Springer
Brilliant parody of reality television, wherein actors pretend to be trailer trash who could not possibly, really, actually exist in real life.
Tonight: Seriously. It cannot be that these people are real. No no no. No way.
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| The Mole
Ten people attempt to discover who is selling them out, apparently oblivious to the irony.
Tonight:Celebrity Mole! The celebrity contestants are doubly oblivious to twice the irony.
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20/20
Real stories of crime, tragedy and human suffering are exploited for monetary gain by a powerful media conglomerate.
Tonight: Victims of tragedy suffer the sensitive poking of microphones in front of their faces, to the accompaniment of maudlin piano music tinkling away in the background. Also, an in-depth hidden camera investigative report on the surprising comeback of the popular "Hula Hoop." Finally, for the nth week in a row, Barbara Walters either pretends to be, or really is, too stupid to comprehend the reports of John Stossel. |
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A Makeover Story
Weak attempt to justify the glamour business by means of Frankenstein-like cosmetic experiments on misguided feebs who wouldn't rather just get over their looks and crack a book or something.
Tonight: For the sake of barely detectable net gains in attractiveness, multitudes of cosmetic company lab animals are submitted to cruel tortures and slow, agonizing deaths.
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A Dating Story
Two dreadfully dull individuals are set up on a date by a snickering mutual friend; suffer through conventional "first date" activity seasoned only by numbing smalltalk; are ultimately disappointed by their date's appalling dearth of interesting qualities, failing to recognize the barren vacuity of their own hollow personalities.
Tonight: Disneyland! |
A Wedding Story
Tendentious tales of unremarkable individuals who gull themselves into believing that two bleak and unremarkable lives will be made bright and interesting by the performance of an unimaginative ceremony culminating in a ritualistic cake fight, immediately followed by long years of unrelieved boredom and seething resentment. |
A Baby Story
Expecting couples prepare to force their ignorant prejudices and traditional cultural stupidities upon helpless infants who never asked to be born in the first place.
Tonight:
The Grand Miracle of Birth: namely, that new parents are actually thick enough to believe the polite assurances of friends and family that their wrinkly spawn is "adorable." |
| Temptation Island
Shallow couples willingly offer up their lives and relationships for public degradation in the vain hope that their pointless lives might somehow be made less empty by means of casual frolics with seductive runway models who in real life would have nothing to do with them. |
American Idol
The overwrought vocal mannerisms and body gyrations of current pop stars are easily mimicked by amateurs in a convincing demonstration of how egregiously overvalued pop stars really are.
Tonight: Middling versions of mediocre songs by amateur performers who have received nothing but lifelong praise for their talents, completely unaware that people were only humoring them to shut them up.
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The Anna Nicole Show
Mad cow stumbles through clumps of words seemingly intended as intelligible speech.
Tonight: Disjointed vignettes of a bloated ex-model snacking, mumbling, complaining, and lounging alternate with commercial breaks consisting of relentless promo spots for The Anna Nicole Show
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The Howard Stern Show
Host and regulars talk dirty; celebrities spill dirt; ordinary folk eat dirt for cash and prizes.
Tonight: Dirt. Also: dirt. In addition: Anna Nicole Smith, who, to promote The Anna Nicole Show, readily consents to a spontaneous grope session with a repulsively misshapen Stern show intern. |
E! True Hollywood Story
Profiles in broadly defined "celebrity," much of which actually has little to do with Hollywood at all.
Tonight: The grave of Andy Warhol is exhumed; the corpse is discovered to have rotated.
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