So, I was reading about Bridalplasty, a show so absurd I was sure I was being whooshed: brides to be compete for cosmetic surgery so they’ll be “perfect” for their wedding day.
I think cracked’s review puts it better than I could.
It makes Dumped: a show where participants must survive on a rubbish dump, seem eminently respectable by comparison, and that was the point where I thought the human race had jumped the shark.
I suspect that there are other candidates…
In spite of some personal misgivings about whether a reality show belongs in a forum devoted to the arts, I’m moving this to Cafe Society.
That sounds awful. The only way I can imagine redeeming this is if the winner subverted the entire point of the show by not actually taking advantage of the free plastic surgery and just having a great wedding on their dime.
Well, I can at least see how the thin veneer of eco-awareness could get this show the go-ahead if the producers didn’t think too hard about it. But I’m guessing the show was less Scrapheap Challenge than White Trash on a Trash Pile.
Oh, this is easy. My vote is “The Swan” from the ever-tasteful FOX network.
Okay. The idea is every week, an “ugly” woman gets a complete makeover, INCLUDING plastic surgery, liposuction, etc. She even gets therapists who try to help her understand why she has low self-esteem. (Oh gee, I don’t know. Maybe from shows like this?)
Anyway, all throughout the makeover phase, they never let the woman see a mirror, so that at the end, they can do a big “reveal” and we can watch her reaction as she sees in a mirror how astonishingly beautiful she is. Naturally, she immediately starts blubbering happily about how she’s got a whole new life.
Oh yes, at the season finale, they’ll have a beauty contest where they bring back everyone, and choose THE ULTIMATE SWAN.
If I remember, the show never got to the final beauty contest. I think I can guess why.
1 The title of the show obviously refers to the story of “The Ugly Duckling”.
2 The “ugly” women were never really ugly. They were ugly according to Hollywood. In other words, they looked just fine. Better than average. So, when just average looking women like the rest of us watched, we realized if the people making this show were presenting these women as “ugly”, what in the hell were they implying that the rest of us were?
3 The concept that women’s attractiveness is the sole purpose, nay the very pith and marrow of female existence was put forward on this show to such an extent that it retroactively erased the entire feminist movement back to the point where Abigail Adams wrote her husband John to “remember the ladies” in the new American government.
4 Every single one of the “ugly” women wound up looking like Barbie. Every…single…one.
Having the beauty contest would’ve been fucking pointless. It would’ve been just as well to toss the trophy up in the air and have them all run in high heels to catch it to decide the winner.
Sick, sick, deeply sick show.
None of these seem as tasteless to me as The Will does, and Who’s Your Daddy? is pretty fucked up too.
Both only lasted one episode but the fact that they made it past the “idea” stage is pretty bad.
After reading that Cracked review I can only say Frank Zappa was ahead of his time.
Was this the show where, at the end, they limo her to a fancy restaurant where she’d wobble in on heels for a big reveal party?
I don’t want them to stop until I see some tape of bums fist fighting for a box of Boone’s Farm.
I remember the show. It’d be interesting to see a follow-up on what they are doing now and what they think of the experience looking back.
For some reason (idiocy?) I initially read this as “limbo her to a fancy restaurant”. If they made the surgery victims dance the limbo whilst wobbling in high heels, I should think the show might almost be watchable.
Based on my almost-entirely second-hand knowledge of “reality” shows, I still say that Hoarders is the most messed up, as it makes spectacles out of otherwise publicity-averse people with genuine mental problems. It’s completely sickening to me.
My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancee was a major trainwreck from start to finish.
Somebody actually proposed a show about a bunch of children at an orphanage who would compete through the series and the winner would get adopted.
Every network they went to turned it down. Which shows that there are some ideas too godawful tastless even for television executives.
At the moment.
Arguably the orphan idea is ahead of its time, and must wait for society to ooze down to its level.
Though I am rather hoping that we get The Running Man before then 
Is it ‘‘Scare Tactics’’? The one where they lead people to believe they’ve just killed someone or something equally horrible and then, smile–you’re on candid camera!
I saw a Mexican version of that show once where the scenario was they kidnapped a guy, locked him in a metal cage and forced him to watch as his abductor (an actor, unbeknownst to him) torture a second victim (also in on the ‘‘joke’’) with acid. The next segment after that they totally tricked a guy into thinking his brother had committed suicide and it was all his fault. HILARIOUS!
Likelier, the TV executives simply felt that it was too tasteless for the American public and thus would not make big $$. I fully believe that if TV execs think an idea will make money, they will put it on the air, even if it involves publicly torturing small children and puppies.
I’m looking forward to Bluebeard. Which of our contestants will find the keys to Bluebeard’s heart, and resist the key to that secret room?
Hey - you’re pushing thirty girl, and being murdered by your man is still better than dying alone without one. And anyway, you’ve landed an alpha-male. The uxoricide* is a downside to that, but he’s really a good provider, and that’s a big upside.
*yes, I had to look that one up.
Another one I heard about since starting this thread is Hurl: where contestants are given generous meals of, say, chowder, and then have to compete in events such as being rolled around in a cage. Last to puke wins.
I gotta say, America seems way ahead in this kind of TV.
U S A! U S A!
They did that on Extreme Makeover, which had no competition angle. They probably did it for both shows.