This Candid-Camera wanna be is nowhere -near- the caliber of Candid Camera! It’s back, for the summer I guess, on NBC, after having been put “on hiatus” earlier this year, with a new host–this one is a female (not sure who she is LOL); the host was a male, one of the cast members of the show “Ed.”
I caught it once back in the fall and thought it was just awful–not funny at all, but -mean- and mean to the point that my thought was that it was only going to be a matter of time before one of the unsuspecting “dupes” hurts someone or worse.
Here are examples of the mean-ness: in the fall, the “skit” (or whatever it’s called) took place in a store like K-Mart, where the set-up was that the store was waiting for their millionth customer, to whom they were going to hand off a check for $500 (I think that was the amount); anyway, the show had a guy ask the customer who was waiting in line if he could go first, he only had a few items, and the customer nicely allowed the guy to go first, at which time -he- became the “millionth customer” and got the bonus $500! Naturally, the real customer realizes that they should have been the one to win, and he points this out, nicely at first, to the Spy TV plant. They start to get into an argument over who is really entitled to the “millionth customer” bonus, and it’s starting to look like someone is going to take a baseball bat to someone else when Spy TV steps in and says, “You’re on Spy TV!” The duped real customer is still very angry and I almost wished that he -had- taken a baseball bat to the Spy TV people. Geez! Pure mean, not funny at all. I vowed never to watch the show again…
However, I just happened to catch it again this past Tuesday evening, and yes they are up to the same mean tricks again! This one involved a girl who was supposed to be meeting a guy, sort of a pre-blind-date meeting. Naturally the guy was in on the Spy TV “joke,” – things were going well with he and the girl, in fact, she was very pleased. That is, until she witnessed the following display: they were seated on a patio of a restaurant; an older woman came along the sidewalk,paused, ending up with putting her purse down on the hood of his car. He goes over to the older woman, they get into an argument, and the Spy TV guy actually got physical with the older woman (who looked to be in her sixties at least), wrestling her to the ground. It looked like another customer at the cafe was trying to come to the lady’s aid, but the Spy TV people headed him off. It was just the most awful joke I can think of. Naturally this mortified the woman; she did not want to have anything to do with the guy, and when her “friend” who had set the joke up explained that it was all a “joke” and that she was on Spy TV, she was just stunned, as was I! I hope that she told that “friend” off later, in private.
This is a -really- bad show; I hope that NBC will get the message ASAP and take this thing off! These episodes are -not- jokes, not funny, and they most certainly do not resemble Candid Camera! Allen Funt must be rolling over in his grave. 
MHO
tarragon