How Did Bad Reality TV Shows Start?

I'm old enough to remember a time before Reality TV shows though not old enough to remember a time before the reality of TV - so basically I was born some time between the early 1900s, when the TV was invented, and the first season of Survivor. Don't get me wrong, we had shows like America's Most Wanted, where extras would reenact recent unsolved crimes and viewers were encouraged to call the authorities and report information that could lead to an arrest. Instead however, they would usually call to either report the extras reenacting the event, or alternatively, report any black guy. But these shows just weren't sufficiently ubiquitous to warrant coming up with a name for this genre of television.

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Back then television shows taught you how to bake a cake, build a fence or eat healthy. But these days the affable instructor is replaced by stressed out contestants trying to out do each other in scrambling eggs, knocking down walls or running up a hill to desperately appease these deliberately rude judges. Network producers discovered that people didn't really want to learn how to do something themselves, for that takes time and effort; they merely wanted to watch other people struggle to do something under very tense circumstances. The tension is either exaggerated for dramatic purposes; such as when music more suited to disarming a time bomb is played over footage of carrots being chopped, or very real; like when you're asked to marry a stranger.

You can probably tell from my sarcastic tone that I'm not a big fan of Reality TV. It's the same tone I adopt when I utter the words 'I love you,' or 'I do.' But really, what's not to like about these gormless, repetitive shows that make NCIS seem like a flawless masterpiece in comparison? There I go again. Ok, I don't like Reality TV, and I'll examine the more modern iterations another time. Today I want to take you on a trip down memory lane to the shows that started it all. So please follow me as we journey through the sewer pipes and up around the U bend to discover which assholes are responsible for all the shit on our tube.

Back during the turn of the millennium we got our first generation of modern Reality TV shows.

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American Idol

Before X Factor, Got Talent, and singing were invented, this was the original karaoke competition that kicked it all off. It was dark days prior to American Idol discovering that people could create melodies with their voices - back then when people had the urge to sing they just kept screaming the word 'cock'. For our younger readers: this show was a lot like The Voice except instead of swivel chairs, the judges just sat in normal chairs and faced the same direction the entire time. It also helped propel the career of Simon Cowell, a remarkably talented man who was at least as witty as the third funniest guy in an average group of friends, who himself helped propel the careers of a group of equally talented young men: One Direction. Yes, American Idol started the gift that kept on giving in much the same way as the guy who first caught HIV did by screwing a monkey.

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Big Brother

If you thought people with nothing else in common but a vague desire for fame and three months free on their calendar would likely be the most insightful and interesting of us all, and watching them interact with one another would make for riveting television, then you were in for a disappointment. Still, you would expect watching a rag tag group of attention seekers with the combined charisma of my accountant and maturity of a 7th grader whose sole source of amusement was to teach the foreign exchange student the word 'dildo' would at least be funny in a so bad it's good sort of way. No, it's unfortunately right at that balance point of maximum shitness before it starts making its way back to entertaining again. Big Brother was also marketed as one of the first romantic Reality TV shows, a sort of perpetual tease of 'will they, won't they' between the housemates - Will they bore you to tears? Yes. Won't they just shut up already? No. Sorry for the spoilers.

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The Amazing Race

Imagine a travel show directed by Michael Bay but...slightly better; that's The Amazing Race for you. It's essentially a large scavenger hunt where multiple teams attempt to navigate around the world through a series of checkpoints and the first to the end wins a prize. This odd mix makes the pacing too fast to enjoy the scenery like you would a travel show, and the stakes too low to appreciate it as a drama. It feels like going on an expensive trip while suffering from ongoing irritable bowel syndrome, and the toilets are strategically located in somewhat inconvenient places forcing you to run around desperately - You can't really enjoy it in the moment nor does it quite make for a good anecdotal story retrospectively either. Also, reaching the checkpoints sooner is meant to confer certain benefits to the team, yet it would be rather dull if the leading team who crossed the earlier checkpoints first just built an insurmountable advantage. I suspect the producers foresaw this for I couldn't help but notice the Mario Kart effect kick in - the teams in front would constantly be rewarded with bananas and green shells while the ones lagging behind would unexpectedly but constantly be granted lightning bolts, giving them a chance to catch up.

Conclusion

I still don't quite understand our fixation with Reality TV as they undoubtedly provide poor quality entertainment. It probably has something to do with the fact that we value things that are kind of real over things that are entirely fictional. On some level, the excitement in the events unfolding in Breaking Bad is somewhat detracted by the fact that they never happened. Whereas, I suppose, the tedium of the activities in the Professional Golf Tour is somewhat mitigated by the knowledge that they had. However, I still find Reality TV shows excruciatingly dull, and would only ever turn to them if every other channel were airing lotto reruns.

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