Leaper - Yes. And not just the occasional freak landing or ill-conceived stunt, they’re getting hurt a lot now. Go check out the old threads and you’ll find more than a few.
I realize I’m zombifying this thread, but I wanted to point out that Adam Richman quit doing those eating challenges in 2012 and has since lost over 60 pounds. Before and After.
Even so, I always enjoyed Man v. Food. Adam always displayed a great self-deprecating sense of humor that actually made watching him stuff his face kinda fun.
I haven’t bothered with any of them since the first couple seasons of Biggest Loser and The Apprentice, which palled very quickly. They seem either voyeuristic or too laden with fake drama for my liking.
Guy Hairdo’s Moobs are pretty close to being triple Ds!
How can you even pull off an Undercover Boss shooting any more? If some new employee was introduced to your workplace followed by a camera crew, no matter what story they gave what would be the first thing you would be thinking? “I’m going to go online at lunchtime to see if the new guy/gal looks like any of the execs and, if so, I’m going to tell a sob story that’ll make me thousands!”.
Never really got into any, for a reality show it did appear so artificial, directed and staged.
Well There was ‘The Colony’ which I did tune into, even with the above. AFAIK they just left it as a cliffhanger as the characters were traveling by airboat and ended as the reach their destination to find that the baddies were already there.
I like So You Think You can Dance because I actually like the dancing, but I confess I PVR it and zip through commercials and boring back story.
I used to love The Biggest Loser and found it somewhat inspiring, then it just got inane and stupid with incredibly obese guests doing far more than they should be doing, water-loading and other unhealthy habits to win.
Let’s see; I watch Tiny House Nation mainly because I think most of the small houses look cool. I also keep watching 19 Kids & Counting. :o And no, I can’t really explain why, other than a vague desire to be up to speed when one of the Duggar kids rebels, comes out, otherwise does something forbidden. Especially if’s it’s an otherwise normal thing like going to college, or moving out without getting married. They can’t all turn into perfect little Christian Soldiers, and one of the older boys has been pinging my gaydar lately whenever he’s on camera.
I became a fan of Kitchen Nightmares from the UK version, since the entire thing was about restaurants that were failing, why they were failing, and what needed to be done to stop them failing. It could almost be called educational.
I wouldn’t say that the US version is dumbed down, but the entire focus has shifted from showing the manager how to manage and the cook how to cook, to getting families to work out their emotional issues and have someone collapse into tears or fly into a screaming rage every few minutes.
The UK version also never had the “surprise makeovers” that the US version does every episode. The UK crew would arrange for large groups to make reservations in order to test the kitchen, but beyond that they got nothing from Ramsey but advice, a menu, and a swift kick in the pants (sometimes metaphorical, sometimes not). Handing a restaurant with fundamental management problems $50K+ in free remodeling almost seems like they’re rewarding bad behavior and are just throwing money at the problem.
In The Amazing Race is it so obvious that if a team finishes last in a given leg, and if that team also has curvy cleavage, then it’s highly likely Phil will say, You are still racing because this is a non-elimination leg!.. ? I call it the Cleavage Rule.
The missus and I still watch The Amazing Race. But Survivor - unwatchable, we dropped that years ago.
The closest I ever came to watching reality TV was some of the HGTV porn. I loved House Hunters till I found out they already had homes under contract before they even started filming, so the “drama” of which to pick was all bogus. Plus I got sick and tired of “natural light” and “man cave” and “closet big enough for all of my SHOES!!!” ugh
I liked the remodeling shows where you actually saw the work they did - I learned lots of tips from them. Unfortunately, it seems you now see the “before” followed by demolition interspersed with exaggerated drama before the final reveal. I don’t even turn on HGTV any longer. And it used to be my go-to station.
Hubby and I went to that pirate bar once with friends, I think it was a year or two before they did the show. Our friends insisted that it was a fun and amazing experience. I was underwhelmed to say the least. The “grog” was undrinkable, the food slightly less than mediocre. I liked how they were all dressed up and acted to try to make an immersive experience, but it fell down when they almost forcibly pulled us all out the back door before our food arrived to watch some street entertainers juggle flaming swords and such in the back parking lot. It didn’t take long to realize the goal of that was to lighten our wallets more than to genuinely entertain us. After that, while we were trying to eat, several chorus girls in full regalia lined up between the wall and our tables (and if you’ve seen the show you know how small that space was) to do a few dance numbers. It might have been a good business idea but it was horribly executed. And then seeing the show now I know why. The owner not only has no business sense but also no clue. About anything.
My opinion of some reality shows:
There was a short-lived competition style show (ala Top Chef or Design Star) called Work of Art that I really enjoyed. It was interesting to see the artists working and I was fascinated by the ones who just could not pull anything together until the very last minute and then blew everybody away with the result. That’s probably why they say that you have to suffer for your talent: if it needs high pressure to reach fruition that’s a recipe for misery and health problems.
Just recently I discovered Hotel Impossible on Netflix and enjoyed that very much. The consultant who turned the hotels around was IMO a fair, practical and very business-savvy guy. He would be a hard-ass when needed, but he also jumped to get the workers the things they needed to do their jobs when the owners were clueless. It was formulaic but not cliche. The only downside to the show was that in the second season the producers seemed to be choosing worse and worse dives for Anthony to try to turn around and that started to seem cliche and stupid. I wanted to see a mix of dives and formerly-fantastic-now-on-hard-times hotels.
Most of the ones I don’t like the premise of I just don’t watch (Biggest Loser, etc). I did start to watch Undercover Boss because the premise sounded good but it quickly became apparent that it was all about letting the CEO grandstand and show the world what a great, forgiving, generous guy he was. Peee-uke!
Was it on Entourage where an actor is overheard on the phone to his parents, “They got me a gig on some reality show! It’s called Intervention!”
I’d think the same thing would be true these days; do people really think they’re just in some random documentary about addiction, without figuring out what’s coming? I’ve seen some episodes where the addict greets Jeff and indicates that he knows who he is, but of course by then the intervention is under way.
I have always been baffled why anyone who wasn’t dealing with a hoarder personally would even be interested in these shows.
It was pretty stunning to me just how similar the hoarders are though, even the one I knew. The complete delusion and refusal to face reality is amazing to see when you see it time and time and time.
Mr. Abs and I love Survivor. We only watch Bar Rescue to see if Jon Tapper gets so worked up that he has a stroke or brain aneurysm while dealing with the idiot bar owners.
I watched Storage Wars until I learned that the producers seeded some items in the units. Also, there was one asshole who would outbid people just to be a jerk and cause he could.
Update:
Watching the latest FNS* it was very clear they have no clue how to cater to millenials. One contestant had the bit of “hashtag” and Susie Fogelson and Bob Tuschman and the hosts have no clue wtf that has to do with cooking. Giada even says hashtag has no taste. Thing is, I teach high schoolers and my son is in high school so if a food host adds peppers to a marinara sauce and says “hashtag spicy Italian” they get it or saying “hashtag asia-southwest mashup” is speaking to them. Some days every day is a hashtag this and hashtag that. The guy speaks to a younger crown and no one one the show gets it.
OK so the guy is an arrogant prick and proud of it and the judges hate him and have really disrespected him unlike the other contestants. He is in the bottom three and the judges start to eliminate another contestant. Hashtag Prick smiles because he didn’t get eliminated and a host changes her vote so he is kicked off because the didn’t like him smiling for surviving another week.
In a nutshell, FNS is showing everything wrong with the channel and why it had become irrelevant.
*Which launched the career of Guy Fieri FWIW
[quote=“Saint_Cad, post:57, topic:685571”]
Update:
Watching the latest FNS* it was very clear they have no clue how to cater to millenials. One contestant had the bit of “hashtag” and Susie Fogelson and Bob Tuschman and the hosts have no clue wtf that has to do with cooking. Giada even says hashtag has no taste. Thing is, I teach high schoolers and my son is in high school so if a food host adds peppers to a marinara sauce and says “hashtag spicy Italian” they get it or saying “hashtag asia-southwest mashup” is speaking to them. Some days every day is a hashtag this and hashtag that. The guy speaks to a younger crown and no one one the show gets it.[.QUOTE]
Millenials aren’t FN’s target audience; ergo, why would they cater to them? Giada’s right, though: A hashtag in and of itself hasn’t any taste. The dish itself has to have SOME kind of taste before you go around hashtagging the hell out of it.
I stopped watching FNS this season because of that arrogant prick. He only was there for the draaaahma. There’s one every season. I don’t give a flying fuck if he was the only millenial contestant. He was rude AND disrespectful AND knew it.
There are a lot of things wrong with FN (there’s a whole thread over at Chowhound about it if you’re so inclined, btw). Catering to millenials seems to be very low priority on the “what’s wrong” scale. As I said above, they aren’t FN’s target audience.
Correction: Hashtag Prick smirks at the contestant who is about to be told she’s going home and looks back at the judges like, “I knew there was no way you would send awesome, hip, #me home.”
Just like one of the first posts, I watched Bar Rescue pretty much for the first season. It flew apart for me for a couple of reasons: the owner who was pretty much a sexist (I know, they all are), but this guy was older, and seemed like an immigrant (not that that has to do with anything other than separating him from the pack). He was violent (I know), but by the end of day 5, he was Tapper’s best friend. No one goes through a change of heart that quickly.
The other was one filmed in my neck of the woods. I read later how bad the new stuff Tapper put in was, ie, cheap flooring that they pasted over the old, wallpaper that came down in a matter of weeks, etc.
But it stands to reason: how can you do a really good job of remodeling an entire bar in only a couple of days?
Plus, with all the mold, moldy grease, roaches and rats all over the place, where the hell are the local health boards? Don’t they ever inspect these places? Why do these places need Tapper to come in and clean them up?