Someone here once mentioned “Joe HIV Negative”.
The Swan.
A group of women want complete makeovers. They have to perform the makeovers on each other with slight guidance from actual surgeons. After three months time or what have you, they are in a pageant to pick the “best” makeover. Hopefully no one dies or ends up too terribly deformed, but that’s all part of the suspense.
This was kind of like my idea. A group of people who all need a liver transplant or will die within 6 months compete in zany contests in hopes of being moved to the top of the donor list. Only one of the contestants doesn’t really need a transplant at all and the show is fixed so that he will win no matter what. At the end of the show the producers announce that a brand new liver has arrived. Then the plant announces that he doesn’t really need a liver transplant, but he is kinda hungry, so he eats a plate of liver in front of the dying contestants.
Alright… back to therapy for me.
Over the course of a season, 10 ragged, half-starving, hollowed-eyed waifs compete with one another for the affections of an affluent suburban couple.
Only the winner gets adopted.
Stephen King wrote a story in the 1980’s about a group of ghetto kids who are offered a lot of money if they will allow themselves to be put on a deserted island and be hunted down by rich guys with paint guns. Only when they got there the guns were real. I guess hilarity didn’t ensue in the story, but on Fox-TV it might.
I once wrote a story when a guy discovers his wife is cheating on him. He kidnaps both the wife and her lover, puts them in separte rooms and feeds them meat, telling each one that it is the flesh of the other. After keeping them for three months, he lets them go and arranges to have them met up.
And there’s the reality show that’s the opposite of the Osbournes—the Osmonds! I have a sick, sick mind.
More of a game show, really, but how about What’s up YOUR ass? A show where contestants will compete for cash and prizes through competitions to find out who can lodge the largest foreign object in his/her rectum. Regis Philbin to host. Celebrity competitions to raise money for charity.
Paging Richard Gere.
The perfect slogan: That Would Be the Butt, Bob.
Surely you know, but just in case you don’t…
http://www.snopes.com/risque/homosex/gerbil.htm
On the other hand…
My idea is for the show to tell children their parents died and whisk them away to live in an orphanage cum work farm for a few weeks, then tell them it was all a joke and take them back to their parents but as they approach the home they say, no, actually this is the practical joke, your parents really are dead, then they turn around and go back to the orphanage.
Lessee … have people compete for the chance to meet and dine with a celebrity : the catch? It’s Yoko Ono. We’ll call it “Oh, no! Ono!”
I think Stephen King would have a lot of great ideas for an evil reality show… Another story of his, The Long Walk, would be really evil (and entertaining too!); 100 contestants walking non-stop till only one stands!
The last time I played this game they started doing them…
A friend of mine suggested a look inside the daily routine of a funeral home. When it came out I thought it was a joke.
WB’s American Superstar is pertty horrific. Preying your equals or betters is abhorrent, but preying on the stupid and the deluded is just sick.
I think Cyril Kornbluth wrote this into a story in the '50s (The Marching Morons). Can we therefore credit him with the invention of the “reality show”? Or does that credit go to Alan Funt?
How about “Hookin’!” ? A show where both male and female contestants work as prostitutes; whoever finishes the night having turned the most tricks and/or made the most money wins the big cash prize, the merchandise supplied by sponsors, and gets to keep his/her earnings.
Less Is More
The show starts at a low enough point- obese contestants compete to lose weight. Each week, the contestant who’s shed the most weight gets some cash. The diet food becomes more and more inedible. The temptations grow greater and greater- from just a good meal, to the opportunity to eat a gourmet desert off the naked body of a celebrity.
But things get even lower at the halfway point.
The prizes increase. The only acceptable diet food offered the contestants is a gruel which tastes like cardboard. And the producers begin offering a radical weight loss plan- amputation. The final contest would have the contestants fighting for a lifetime of wealth, and amputation is the only way to win. Without knowing what the others are doing (or even if everybody else has backed out and that they’ve already won by default) each contestant would have to decide how much of their body they’re willing to lose.
“John. you’ve given up your entire left arm. This is enough to place you . . . dead last! You win nothing!”
“Susan, you’ve given up both legs, one arm, and a kidney. This phenomenal sacrfice makes you . . . second place! You win our runner up prize- nothing!”
“Mary, you’ve lost both legs, both arms, a kidney, a lung, most of your liver, most of your large intestine, your nose and both ears. You win! You’re now one of the wealthiest people in the world!”
“But we have a consolation prize for our losers. Take these remotes and press the green button. Yes, behind those curtains you’ve just raised with your remotes are tanks containing your perfectly preserved body parts. They’re still live and viable for reattachment by our surgeons. But, there’s more! Take these remotes and press the blue buttons. Yes, each of you will recieve those sausage grinders you’ve just activated! Yes, the Fleischman grinder is a quality product! Note how easily it pureed your amputated limbs and organs! How smoothly it ground the flesh, destroying any possible hope of saving them!”
“Now Mary and I will toast her success with these martinis flavored with your tears! Ah! The only thing sweeter than success are tears of ultimate sorrow!”
Mine is would have a big brother style house set up.
Put in twenty people.
Tell them that when they leave they each win a million dollars.
They only way they can leave is when they discover and kill the Al-Quaeda agent among them.
Putting in an actual Al-Queada agent would not be part of the plan.
Or just do Big Brother with 10 year-olds and no adult supervision.
“Return of the Stanford Prison Experiment” (working title)
The Stanford Prison Experiment, as reported in the Wikipedia entry, was a landmark experiment in psychology. College students who participated in the experiment were randomly divided into prisoners and guards. The two-week experiment was halted after six days because the situation quickly got out of hand, with the “guards” becoming progressively sadistic.
The reality show version:
The contestants are initially divided into guards and prisoners, through a simple enough challenge. The winning half of each gender starts as guards, and the losing half as prisoners. The guards then cart the prisoners off to the “jail,” a cellblock set up on the studio lot.
Each week, the guards put the prisoners through a day in the life of a penal inmate. At the end of the episode, the guards vote to kick off the show two prisoners of each gender – and the prisoners vote to kick off two guards of each gender. The prisoners then compete in a special challenge. The winner (of each gender) becomes a guard, and one of the guards becomes a prisoner! The losing (?) prisoner and the other guard (again, of each gender) are off the show.
It’s better to be a guard than a prisoner – but the overall winner is whoever spends the most time as a prisoner.
Coming this fall on Fox Cable. It’s got everything Fox could want – a hostile environment, plenty of opportunity for back-stabbing and conniving, and good-looking 20 somethings getting frisked and chained. (Post-show therapy included.)
The Perfect Pet
The contestants would meet and get to know eachother for a few days at the start of the show. During this time the show would focus on minor things-making the contestants do household chores, wear the proper uniforms, and be respectful to the staff of the show. After seperation, things would get more extreme. Contestant uniforms would be changed each week until they wore only boots, a rubberball gag, and a butt-plug. Chores would gradually go from mopping floors and grocery shopping, to shaving the master/mistresses legs, to brushing their teeth, to sexually servicing the master/mistress and their friends. The contestants would have almost no contact with eachother and none with the oustide world. They would not be told if any of the others had dropped out. To win the final prize, contestants would have to participate in an orgy in which they are used by both genders, insulted, and engage in scat and watersports.
The final episode would be shot after everybody has gone home. It would focus on how the contestants have lost their jobs, reputations and families.