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Recently in Really Ridiculous Reality Shows Category
With only one episode left of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (this season, anyway), the editing monkeys are trying to squeeze out some ridiculous quotes while obviously saving the cream of the crop for next week's "family sized" finale. That doesn't mean "Ah-choo!" wasn't fun and disturbing... emphasis on the latter. Here's a quick look at what you're probably very glad you missed:
We're a week into the grand experiment known as The Jeff Probst Show, the new daytime chat program starring the guy who is better known for forcing a bunch of castaways on a lush tropical island to compete in challenges and then interrogating them over a bonfire. So far, it's been a strange ride, as the Survivorman has traded tribal warfare for gushy sit-downs with cancer victims, corporate drones-turned Starbucks employees and two of the richest people in America. If you can't get a handle on what this show is trying to be, you're not alone. Here are the ten burning questions we've got about The Jeff Probst Show after its first week on the air.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo has come under fire for a new reason every single day since it first premiered. Most recently, the Huffington Post reported that some of the people of McIntyre, Georgia, aren't so happy with the way TLC is portraying their town -- sure, the Shannons are crazy, but the b-roll of junkyard cars, stray animals and abandoned buildings are hurtful to the proud people of tiny Southern town. McIntyre's population is about 650 and nearly 40 percent of the families had an income that put them below the poverty level, according to the most recently Census survey, and, as citizen Carolyn Snead puts it, "I don't mind it, it's just that it doesn't give a good image for the county since it is a small county, and it's a really family-oriented county, and we are basically, you know, church goers down here, and a lot of the things they do ... we don't agree with it." I believe that when Snead says "they," she's talking about TLC -- and if that's the case, I agree with her.
I am not above Dance Moms -- Season 1 was a surprise hit, and the beginning of Season 2 made for some of the best candid reality TV-viewing in recent history. The second half of this season, however, definitely lost some of the magic. Everything good and bad with the current state of Dance Moms was seen in last night's finale, "Nationals 90210," which says two things: 1) There's still so much potential in this Lifetime series and 2) The current storylines have peaked, and it's time for a change. If Abby and the gang don't straighten some factors up by next season, we doubt we'll make it through much more of her drama... after all, ahhhveryone's replaceable.
We're hooked on Bravo's Gallery Girls, mostly because the ladies of the cast have been so consistently terrible since the pilot that, like a car crash or a Honey Boo Boo Child, we cannot look away. In this short first season, we've met so many awful people and seen so many crappy work environments that we're left with a long list of questions that we really hope are answered before the season finale in three weeks. If anyone has any explanations for us, we'd love to hear them, pronto.
We're actually excited for the head-to-head match-up of The Voice and The X Factor on Wednesday, but it sure as hell isn't because of the talent competing (or the awful auditions that make our ears bleed). Instead, we've got many other reasons why we let these two singing competition shows clutter up our DVRs.
There's been some controversy over the news that the Shannon family only makes between $2,000 and $4,000 an episode -- a figure that June scoffs at. To that I say: Good for her. I hope that TLC is shelling out lots of money to this clearly low-income family, especially considering poor Sugar Bear has to work seven days a week to provide for his ladies. Rather than getting too deep into Honey Boo Boo politics, though, let's just enjoy the more bizarre and unsettling moments of "Shh! It's a Wig."
Last week, I was far too devastated to see the removal of Glitzy to even talk about what happened (though he lives on as the new Posh Pigs mascot!) in "What Is a Door Nut?" -- though I will say that watching children get tossed around in/near/by ATVs was at best disconcerting. Fortunately, I've recovered from my Glitzy withdrawal just in time to witness the crazy events of last night's "A Bunch of Wedgies" that further indicate an upcoming apocalypse:
Bravo has recently aired two cases of cast members quite obviously cheating on their partners, and we're trying to figure out which incident was more disturbing:
Hell's Kitchen aside, competitive cooking shows have never fared all that well on network television. While cable series like Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star and Chopped have lasted for multiple seasons and will probably run until the end of time, America's Next Great Restaurant and Iron Chef USA (the original, William Shatner-hosted attempt to bring Japan's Iron Chef franchises stateside) are just some of the many network-based shows that were... well, chopped after one season. Considering that history, the future for ABC's new cooking show Time Machine Chefs, which premiered a one-off special episode last night, doesn't look all that bright.
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