Speaker 1: Oh, welcome to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast with
Speaker 1: the personality of a staff infection. No, no, no, that's
Speaker 1: just me, Robert. We're reading a one star review from
Speaker 1: it two. You're just an annoying lips smacker who needs
Speaker 1: to do better. I mean, look, who for one thing
Speaker 1: is it bad? Is a staff infection bad? There's upsides
Speaker 1: to staff infections. You get time off of work, photographs,
Speaker 1: you have to if you die, deal with a lot
Speaker 1: less bullshit on Twitter. You know, so again. Staff in
Speaker 1: affections are really mixed bag. There's positive sides. Honestly, so
Speaker 1: fucking funny, and I have no idea what it means that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, not even mad. It's extreme. It's yeah, it's clever.
Speaker 1: It's fun to get roasted like that where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very funny. We're like, I'm not quite sure what
Speaker 1: you mean, but you're you're not wrong, right. It flows,
Speaker 1: It's like words flow, and it's just it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like a good It's like it's like when you well,
Speaker 1: I'm getting into dangerous territory here, but when you read
Speaker 1: people being like super shitty on some level. Uh, from
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty years ago, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is sexist or racist, but man, people could put
Speaker 1: together sentences back then. That's not that's not a bad sentence,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's it's horrible, but it's not a
Speaker 1: bad sentence. People used to Yeah, the ship posts were
Speaker 1: a lot more people put a lot more work into
Speaker 1: their ship posts. It's like HP Lovecraft racism. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like this is terrible, but man, quite quite quite quite
Speaker 1: a phrase way to create an entire lure around your
Speaker 1: racing exactly. That's that's so much more effort than people
Speaker 1: put into it these days. Um, David Bell, that's me,
Speaker 1: that's you. You know, you know, you know Dave of
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know, I don't know you know,
Speaker 1: you know Dave. Okay, you know, I think I think
Speaker 1: Dave is going to love this topic. I hope he does. Um,
Speaker 1: I hope he loves it, and I hope you hate it. Sylvie, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just an asshole. I'm a bad person,
Speaker 1: just biting the hand that stops me from committing a
Speaker 1: series of crimes that get us erased and arrested. In
Speaker 1: our podcast Shutdown, Dave, how do you feel about reality TV.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, um mixed feelings. Yeah, yeah, that's the right
Speaker 1: way to feel. Yeah, I don't watch most of you.
Speaker 1: I don't find it interesting, but I don't have anything
Speaker 1: against it unless something horrible was done behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like if if everybody, if there's consent
Speaker 1: and everybody's cool, uh, then we're we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1: I do like, I do like the occasional like British
Speaker 1: bake off, but I wouldn't consider a share. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is unscripted. But am I right in saying that
Speaker 1: reality TV does have the personality of a staff infection? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: where it's where it's gross and infectious, but also you
Speaker 1: might get to take some time off of work, which
Speaker 1: is to enjoy it. Yeah. So you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do this thing. This is going to be
Speaker 1: kind of a loosey goosey episode. We're doing this right
Speaker 1: after the kissing your episodes. Everybody's tired. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be one of these smarmi foxs who's just like
Speaker 1: shipping on the concept of reality TV to seem smart. Right,
Speaker 1: reality TV is broadly speak, it's junk food. You know,
Speaker 1: it is not good for you. But that said, I
Speaker 1: do shipload of things that are bad for me, and
Speaker 1: I would also that it's not new. Game shows have
Speaker 1: always existed. There's always entertainment, junk food, that fucking piece
Speaker 1: of trash Mozart right, like his ship. Everyone knows he ship,
Speaker 1: but like people like to enjoy ship and that's fine. Um,
Speaker 1: I like the Bloodhound Gang, you know, like we're not nobody.
Speaker 1: Nobody in this show is going to be like again,
Speaker 1: there's nothing bad, or like, you're not dumb because some
Speaker 1: of the smartest people I know like turn off from
Speaker 1: like getting their PhD or whatever and like watch you know,
Speaker 1: a bake off show or like Big Brother or some ship.
Speaker 1: It's fine. Listen where we're done here. I will be
Speaker 1: going online and ordering the the four K release of Moonfall.
Speaker 1: I will be doing that, and I will watch the
Speaker 1: special features. I mean, Dave, you've watched Ship with me.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things to put on is people
Speaker 1: hurting themselves horribly while skiing or bass jumping, and I have.
Speaker 1: I have since expanded to wingsuit crashes, some of which
Speaker 1: the people diet of. There's some gnarly wing crash videos
Speaker 1: if you look. That's the old pink missed. But oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: have you looked into um parkour? Parkour accidents are great
Speaker 1: if you really want to be harrowed. Just type gun
Speaker 1: fails into YouTube. There's some ship in there. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's this video and just google and like type gun
Speaker 1: there's some nasty There's a dude who like put a
Speaker 1: bunch of tanner, right, which is this explosive. You shoot
Speaker 1: it and it blows up on a fucking lawnmower and
Speaker 1: shot at it close range and the blade cut his
Speaker 1: leg off. Ship. So again, I'm saying this all not
Speaker 1: to celebrate my own crapulence, but like, we all like
Speaker 1: some stuff that's the entertainments of like junk food, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So this isn't an episode about like trying to I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to make the case that like reality TV
Speaker 1: is bad and you should feel bad for watching it.
Speaker 1: This is about the most fucked up things that have
Speaker 1: ever happened within the broad umbrella of reality or what
Speaker 1: you might call unscripted content. Um, there's not a particular
Speaker 1: thesis here. I just spent a lot of time reading
Speaker 1: about the worst things that have happened in reality TV,
Speaker 1: and I decided to do a podcast None of You
Speaker 1: Can Stop Mace deal with It. Will probably do another
Speaker 1: episode in the future with more of these stories. Is exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before we start, I want to share my very favorite
Speaker 1: reality television story, and this is a story about a
Speaker 1: reality TV show I enjoyed. So when I was in Iraq,
Speaker 1: this is like the second or the third, might have
Speaker 1: been the fourth time. I forget exactly which time it was. Um,
Speaker 1: but we're like, you know, when you're hanging out a
Speaker 1: place like that, we're like going to refugee camps and
Speaker 1: like frontline positions, and in order to get to both,
Speaker 1: you have to spend time and like a bunch of
Speaker 1: random living rooms because that's where everyone's like posted up
Speaker 1: leader of these camps, these like different generals and ship.
Speaker 1: They're all like hanging out in houses, and so while
Speaker 1: you're waiting to get approval to go places, you're just
Speaker 1: like sitting in like usually an air conditioned living room
Speaker 1: with the TV on and a bunch of guys with
Speaker 1: their guns and phones out and ship. And one of
Speaker 1: the times we were out there, this is the same
Speaker 1: reality show kept going on. It came on in like
Speaker 1: two or three different places, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: the name of the show is. I have not brief
Speaker 1: googling has not informed me of it. But the premise
Speaker 1: was that there was this host who would like take
Speaker 1: a rich guy out to the desert, like he would
Speaker 1: They would be like driving a caravan and there would
Speaker 1: be a contrived accident and like one of the cases
Speaker 1: I remember, this guy is like in a little motor
Speaker 1: cade and they get stuck in quicksand and his vehicle
Speaker 1: sinks and he has to get out and he's like
Speaker 1: on top of the vehicle and while that's happening, the
Speaker 1: host dressed as a Komodo dragon comes out and attacks them.
Speaker 1: Ship just fucking insane, Like I I don't know what
Speaker 1: was like. I'm sure there's elements of this that I
Speaker 1: was not grasping because there were no subtitles and I
Speaker 1: do not speak Arabic um. But it was it some
Speaker 1: of the wildest ship I've watched on TV. It was
Speaker 1: so good. I don't know what's scarier, being attacked by
Speaker 1: a Komodo dragon or a man dressed like one, because
Speaker 1: they're both very pretty good costume. Yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's like Survivor man wild. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the point was supposed to be, because on
Speaker 1: all of them, people just like react the way you
Speaker 1: would if you suck a photo dragon. Goddamn, Like where
Speaker 1: we America can't talk, but we're like assimilated to our weirdness.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of the same as when you watch
Speaker 1: like the Japanese Brakes shows, Yeah, the Silent Library, where
Speaker 1: it's like you have to be quite in a library
Speaker 1: and they just like do funked up ship to you
Speaker 1: and if you make a noise, you lose, and and
Speaker 1: it's like that actually I think got an American adaptation. Um,
Speaker 1: But like it's that extra context of not understanding the
Speaker 1: language or the extra layer that's like makes it so
Speaker 1: perfect and bizarre. Man, I want to watch that so bad.
Speaker 1: I love that s Yeah, someone will find it now
Speaker 1: that we've talked about it, and we'll find the clips.
Speaker 1: I would love to watch it again, um anyway, Dave.
Speaker 1: On January eleven, nineteen seventy three, PBS began to air
Speaker 1: the first of twelve hour long episodes of an American
Speaker 1: Family to levision documentary about the Louds, an actual family
Speaker 1: and this is probably the very first reality show in history. Now,
Speaker 1: the Louds were upper middle class and lived in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: and over three hours of raw footage of them was
Speaker 1: shot between May and December thirty one ninety one. The
Speaker 1: initial intent was just to kind of chronicle their daily lives,
Speaker 1: but during filming, the relationship between spouses Bill and Pat
Speaker 1: Loud broke down, and the show ends with both parents divorcing.
Speaker 1: Camera's actually caught Pat asking for a divorce on camera.
Speaker 1: She tells Bill, you know there's a problem, and he responds,
Speaker 1: what's your problem? This was picked by TV Guide as
Speaker 1: one of the top hundred TV moments of all time,
Speaker 1: and in some ways, viewers have never moved on from
Speaker 1: the concept of watching unscripted life moments from rich people
Speaker 1: in California right like this. This is broadly speaking, still
Speaker 1: the reality TV What do you do you think? And
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to this? What they have
Speaker 1: had that divorce if they weren't on camera? Who knows?
Speaker 1: I I have not watched the twelve hours of the Louds.
Speaker 1: It's the double slit theory of like, when observed, will
Speaker 1: they divorce? It can't help, right, it can't help. It
Speaker 1: probably gives people just a more sense of like I
Speaker 1: want drama in my life. Yeah, I'm being videotaped all
Speaker 1: the time, So like you start like thinking of your
Speaker 1: life like a TV show. I imagine. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like it could like make it easier for a
Speaker 1: trouble within a merry a marriage to get solved. But
Speaker 1: that said, I don't know anything about this particular couple. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's worth noting that, like reality TV does not
Speaker 1: start far from where it is now, right, like the
Speaker 1: yeah this is this is still the heart of the
Speaker 1: of the genre. Um. So an American family is hugely
Speaker 1: successful and it immediately spawns an imitation by the BBC
Speaker 1: call just the Family Now An American families particularly notable
Speaker 1: because the Loud Family's oldest son, Lance was probably the
Speaker 1: world's first openly gay TV star. Um Like, he's open
Speaker 1: about being gay in the show in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: which is pretty groundbreaking for the time. Um and he
Speaker 1: dies during the AIDS epidemic, which is, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a whole is an interesting person whose life to
Speaker 1: study right this this show and he like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: particularly problematic here, it's just an interesting piece of his
Speaker 1: I mean, it's your typical reality TV coming from PBS
Speaker 1: and BBC as we all know, yeah, classic classic reality
Speaker 1: TV stations. So in the years that followed, the series
Speaker 1: went through the normal life cycle of a successful show.
Speaker 1: There's a handful of parodies, right, like a bunch of
Speaker 1: different like sketch shows do parodies of an American family.
Speaker 1: There's like jokes and sitcoms of the day about moments
Speaker 1: that have happened in the show. Um, and then ten
Speaker 1: years after it airs, there's an attempted reboot that doesn't
Speaker 1: do very well. Right, nothing at all weird here. This
Speaker 1: is like more or less what happens with every successful show.
Speaker 1: Most folks probably figured that was kind of it for
Speaker 1: the genre, which had yet to be named. People didn't
Speaker 1: talk about reality TV is a thing. There's just this
Speaker 1: one weird show that had existed. But a few perceptive
Speaker 1: individuals at the time recognized that something special was afoot.
Speaker 1: Anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide. The
Speaker 1: New Yorker writes quote. Her contribution, which wasn't mentioned on
Speaker 1: the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine after
Speaker 1: the listings, tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and
Speaker 1: a profile of Shelly Winters, Bill and Pat Loud and
Speaker 1: their five children are either actors nor public figures, Mead wrote, Rather,
Speaker 1: they were the people they portrayed on television, members of
Speaker 1: a real family. Producers compressed seven months of tedium and
Speaker 1: turmoil into twelve one hour segments, which constituted, in Mead's view,
Speaker 1: a new kind of art form and innovation as significant
Speaker 1: as the invention of drama or the novel. And I
Speaker 1: think that's true no matter how you like reality TV, Like,
Speaker 1: of course it's hit that point of cultural relevance already,
Speaker 1: it's had that impact. We have the Trump presidency because
Speaker 1: of reality TV, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. The biggest
Speaker 1: shame about reality TV is when it's staged, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same opinion of documentary. Um, we'll get into that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but I think that is interesting. They're just
Speaker 1: looking at it as like it's like the birth of
Speaker 1: the novel, you know, Yeah, it will be with us
Speaker 1: for a long time. It'll it'll be so broad that
Speaker 1: I think it's like any genre where it's sort of
Speaker 1: mixes with other genres. You know. Uh, you could argue
Speaker 1: that just what we're doing, like TikTok uh and like
Speaker 1: the the the YouTube's and so on, our offshoots of
Speaker 1: reality TV because we're following people's lives. Uh, people are
Speaker 1: kind of filming genuine moments, stage moments. It's all, it's
Speaker 1: all part of the same thing. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like with them, and like with novels, there's this
Speaker 1: you know, there's horrible things you can tie to novels.
Speaker 1: You know, Hitler was very influenced by the novels of
Speaker 1: Karl may Um, you're right, yeah, yeah, we probably don't
Speaker 1: have novels caused Hitler. We probably don't have the Bosnian
Speaker 1: genocide without the Pelican brief obviously, Um, you know. But
Speaker 1: also there's good things that novels have brought us to.
Speaker 1: Um probably what assumes good things. I don't read books, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, right, but I do watch Jack Ryan movies.
Speaker 1: I do watch Jack Ryan movies, which it influenced my
Speaker 1: life in a number of ways. Yeah, and I've been
Speaker 1: told they started as some sort of book. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: Jack Reacher series really helped me make peace with the
Speaker 1: fact that, Um, I'm incredibly jacked. Uh. You know, there's
Speaker 1: people it's really hard to be like a jacked white
Speaker 1: dude exactly exactly finally representation exactly. It's it's wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just like the yeah, anyway whatever, that this bit
Speaker 1: has gone on long enough, so yes, yes it had.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting then that it takes like Margaret meets
Speaker 1: right about the how influential this art medium is going
Speaker 1: to be. And it's interesting that it takes like twenty
Speaker 1: years from the first reality TV show before it turns
Speaker 1: into anything, like we have this idea for a long
Speaker 1: time before people figure out what to do with it.
Speaker 1: That I mean that happens sort of with found footage
Speaker 1: as well, because there were like there was some found
Speaker 1: footage films and then we kind of went quiet, and
Speaker 1: then the Blair Witch Project brought it back finally, the
Speaker 1: which is again one of one of the great works
Speaker 1: of humanitarian right, yeah, the Blair Witch Project, without which
Speaker 1: I don't know, we wouldn't have make a genocide just
Speaker 1: before me yeah, yeah, yeah, we would have the VHS
Speaker 1: movies which have solved world hunger. Sure, yeah, we'll go
Speaker 1: with that. So the first show to take reality TV
Speaker 1: forward was The Real World, which debuted an MTV and
Speaker 1: n Rather than watching a family live there life and
Speaker 1: risk the chance that it might be boring, MTV decided
Speaker 1: to throw a bunch of young adults in a house
Speaker 1: and film what happened. Um, the show was successful, but
Speaker 1: it also was not like the kind of successful that
Speaker 1: on its own was going to spawn a world like
Speaker 1: changing industry. You know, um, you know, the real world
Speaker 1: is kind of a proof of concept, but it's not
Speaker 1: as influentialists and later things are going to be the
Speaker 1: key to transmuting these particular these peculiar documentary style shows
Speaker 1: into the thing that devoured television. Happened to be held
Speaker 1: in the head of a Fox executive named Mike Darnell.
Speaker 1: Prior to two thousand, Mike's background had been producing shows
Speaker 1: like When Animals Attack, World, Scariest Police Chases, and a
Speaker 1: variety of other premises now met by random weirdos on YouTube. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: all the shows he gets started with are like the
Speaker 1: things I watched on random YouTubers collect Yeah, that's oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember America's finding some videos where it's like that's YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the only way you can watch people getting hitting
Speaker 1: the balls, and it's like we want that. I I
Speaker 1: would argue reality TV is better than like When Animals Attack,
Speaker 1: because that like that was just YouTube, but it was
Speaker 1: YouTube done in this like really serious tone. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you like I I actually would see
Speaker 1: you could see people like attack videos on when animals
Speaker 1: attack would get reused on like World's Funniest Animals, and
Speaker 1: they would just cover it in a different tone. Uh,
Speaker 1: and like not mentioned the injuries, you know, like because
Speaker 1: they just it didn't matter. It was just it was
Speaker 1: so schlocky. Um, at least Reality TV had, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, people involved a little more drama. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think like because also I always felt gross about like
Speaker 1: America's Funniest Like a lot of these different videos shows less,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of them would have like narration
Speaker 1: that was like generally kind of mean spirited towards the people.
Speaker 1: And I think it's much better to just have context
Speaker 1: free loops of videos of people hurting themselves. That's that's fine.
Speaker 1: And it was a whole industry that, Yeah, YouTube pretty
Speaker 1: much killed. It is kind of funny that agree to
Speaker 1: which that used to be the dominant thing on TV
Speaker 1: and now it's just random dudes. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: YouTubers is the car Crash Channel, which is just compilations
Speaker 1: of car accidents right, yeah, what else? Like, you don't
Speaker 1: need a commentary, No, I don't need I don't need
Speaker 1: a word from anybody. Just get in bed, put on
Speaker 1: the car crashes, and go to sleep. And go to
Speaker 1: sleep to the car crashes. I love sleeping to train crashes.
Speaker 1: There's nothing as soothing as watching a train hit a
Speaker 1: box truck. Yeah. It just goes poof, yeah, just yeah,
Speaker 1: just like you just sends right into the deeply soothing.
Speaker 1: So Darnell is also the mind behind a two hour special.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is how we get to start
Speaker 1: doing these, like when animals attack. But then near the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen nineties, he has an idea for
Speaker 1: a two hour TV special with the title who Wants
Speaker 1: to Marry a Multimillionaire? So this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: show that births all of modern reality TV. Really um.
Speaker 1: It airs on Fox on February two thousand. In her
Speaker 1: book Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Posner describes it this way.
Speaker 1: The special, which predated the game changing Survivor, was a
Speaker 1: hybrid of Miss America and a Male Order bride parade.
Speaker 1: With executive producer Mike Flice of Next Entertainment, Darnell brought
Speaker 1: fifty brides to be to Las Vegas to be auctioned
Speaker 1: off to a complete stranger. The sachet and swimsuits tittered
Speaker 1: nervously and answered pageant style questions to assess their moral
Speaker 1: fortitude and sexual prowess in thirty seconds or less. Groom
Speaker 1: Rick Rockwell was hidden as he and the audience determined
Speaker 1: who deserved the biggest prize of all. A brand new
Speaker 1: multimillionaire husband, nurse and future playboy centerfold, Darva Conjure, Rockwell's
Speaker 1: eventual choice got her first glimpse of her fiance moments
Speaker 1: before they were legally wed on air nearly twenty three
Speaker 1: million view We was tuned in. It's funny how when
Speaker 1: read that academically, it really is horrifying. It's a nightmare, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's like like an auctioning human beings off
Speaker 1: to a rich man. It's pretty bad. Yeah. It's one
Speaker 1: of those where he's like, you had to you had
Speaker 1: to be there. I guess I think if you were
Speaker 1: there a lot of people but no, but it was,
Speaker 1: but they were part of they watched it. Reality TV
Speaker 1: created I think more than most things they hate watch right, yes,
Speaker 1: oh god, yes, yes, um so the series got a
Speaker 1: twenty eight share um, which is basically is a big
Speaker 1: hit in terms people don't use as much anymore to
Speaker 1: talk about success because streaming is kind of like who
Speaker 1: gives a ship about those old terms. But anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a big hit. Mike Darnell declared it the best show ever.
Speaker 1: Uh or Chris Darnell. I think it was Chris ship.
Speaker 1: How many Darnell's we got here? What's Mike? No? It is?
Speaker 1: I think they're both my? Are they both? Mike's the
Speaker 1: TV executives? It all checks out. Mike Flice, who's the producer,
Speaker 1: later bragged Mike and I knew that the National Organization
Speaker 1: for Women would hate us, that this would be the
Speaker 1: most controversial show ever. We thought it was all good,
Speaker 1: but it got so hot, so crazy red hot. They
Speaker 1: said it was the most talked about show since Roots.
Speaker 1: It was the lead sketch on Saturday Night Live. It's
Speaker 1: maybe your reality show that involves auctioning human beings shouldn't
Speaker 1: be compared to Roots. No, you might. You might not
Speaker 1: want to be drawn attention to that, buddy. Yeah no.
Speaker 1: This this also begins this problem, which is the it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of resonates all the way to the Internet obviously,
Speaker 1: which is like, oh, they're talking about us, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't you know, that's not a good measurement of
Speaker 1: whether or not something's good or not. But I mean
Speaker 1: it is for their purposes, because it's a measurement of
Speaker 1: whether or not something can be worth money to advertisers,
Speaker 1: which is all that matters. Now, speaking of advertisers, Dave, No,
Speaker 1: you know what, we can say whatever we want on
Speaker 1: this show because it gets advertisers. So I can say,
Speaker 1: for example, Dave has an island off the coast of
Speaker 1: Indonesia where you can make grab a crude weapon spear
Speaker 1: you know, um, a club you know, like you'd use
Speaker 1: on a seal, a rock, and you can hunt children
Speaker 1: in the open preserves that they keep on this island,
Speaker 1: and they'll get cooked for You don't have to cook
Speaker 1: the child brisket yourself. Takes care of that. I know.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite actually how normally works. Yeah, right, all right,
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of the the appeal. That that's
Speaker 1: the appeal, right normally, since you the ingredients and you
Speaker 1: cook it on the child hunting island, you provide the
Speaker 1: ingredients and cooks the food, right, because that's the most
Speaker 1: fun part of that process, of the child hunting process.
Speaker 1: How much does it cost? What does it go for? Oh?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you have to donate a significant
Speaker 1: amount to coke industries. But but really, Dave, can you
Speaker 1: put a price on hunting children on an island off
Speaker 1: the coast of Indonesia? I mean no, but also yes
Speaker 1: if you well, yes, they do, they do, they do.
Speaker 1: But if you sign up for their meal box plan,
Speaker 1: you'll be entered into a raffle to win a spot
Speaker 1: on the next yacht over to the child hunting island,
Speaker 1: which is worth quite a bit. So here's here's our sponsors. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're back, We're back, and we're talking about the only
Speaker 1: mattress made entirely with linen stolen from the graves of
Speaker 1: dead Egyptian peasants. That's right. It is named because the
Speaker 1: ghost of dead Egyptian peasants lingers inside each mattress. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the guarantee. Yeah, I mean, what are they doing
Speaker 1: with all that linen? Nothing? Nothing, tons of wasted linen.
Speaker 1: It sounds super sustainable, yeah, environment exactly, there's so much
Speaker 1: carbon wasted by getting linen that doesn't come from Egyptian
Speaker 1: peasants who were buried in lost desert cities. Um steals
Speaker 1: those corpses and passes the carbon savings onto you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's Yeah, it's convenient, it's good for the environment.
Speaker 1: It's great for the environment. Yeah, and it's affordable. Is
Speaker 1: there promo code? Can we make it even more affordable?
Speaker 1: Promo code? Bastards? And they'll throw in a free ounce
Speaker 1: of mummy dust, which if if my eighteen nineties medical
Speaker 1: textbooks or anything to go by is useful in a
Speaker 1: variety of ailment, stay, you can at least snort it,
Speaker 1: and you've got the grip. You've got the shallots, the
Speaker 1: shingles will cure them all. Mummy dust. Sprinkle it on
Speaker 1: your mac and cheese. It's delicious. That was like three
Speaker 1: and a half minutes of how we do it? Are
Speaker 1: you happy, Sophie? Did you get what you wanted? I
Speaker 1: said that bits getting gold, you made a worse one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. That's that's that's that's how what I've been
Speaker 1: doing since the Bits, Sophie. I missed the bit well
Speaker 1: too bad, So you probably won't be surprised to learn,
Speaker 1: Dave that a show that was premised on basically taking
Speaker 1: the idea of an arranged marriage and making it television
Speaker 1: would turn out to have been unethical in some way. Right,
Speaker 1: So they do this whole competition, right, some lady wins
Speaker 1: this marriage to this fucking multimillionaire Rockwell, but they never
Speaker 1: consummate their marriage, and for a very good reason, the
Speaker 1: woman conjure has it annulled because she learns that Rockwell
Speaker 1: has a long history of violence against women. Um, so,
Speaker 1: you know, good call on on her part. Um comes
Speaker 1: out like right as the show comes out that his
Speaker 1: former girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for
Speaker 1: vandalizing her car, breaking into her home, and repeatedly physically
Speaker 1: assaulting her. Good God, she stated, he said he would
Speaker 1: find me and kill me. Also, Rockwell is not a multimillionaire,
Speaker 1: but that's hardly seems like the primary issue here. Who
Speaker 1: who would have thought that guy who goes on a
Speaker 1: TV show to uh look to like essentially buy a
Speaker 1: woman from an auction, Yeah, would be a liar and
Speaker 1: a violent abuser. Who who? Yeah, so his his former girl. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all this hits the press right after the show
Speaker 1: comes out, and it's a big problem for Fox, because again,
Speaker 1: this is two thousands, so there was just a little
Speaker 1: bit of shame left in the world. Was back when
Speaker 1: we cared it was it was like the rest of
Speaker 1: WIRs in southern California. There was still this like tiny
Speaker 1: layer of water. It's not going to be there in
Speaker 1: a couple of years, you know, just like the water
Speaker 1: in southern California, but it was still a little bit there.
Speaker 1: Now you can kind of see the boats that didn't
Speaker 1: really have enough water, but there was at least something,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, you could pretend like, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: a dry and the rain will come back, It'll be
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah, So there's a little bit of shame,
Speaker 1: and it causes a problem for Fox. Darnell tells the report,
Speaker 1: this is the worst day of my life. What a
Speaker 1: great guy. Um. He gets excoriated by media, who, by
Speaker 1: the way, like all of these journalists yelling at them
Speaker 1: were a lot of the same people who had been
Speaker 1: like raving over how groundbreaking the show was and who
Speaker 1: would who would go on to celebrate other horrible reality things.
Speaker 1: So whatever, Um. But in private, like he pretends that
Speaker 1: this is a horrible day for him in public. In private,
Speaker 1: he is a static Flice later recalled that his first
Speaker 1: reaction was, quote, great more publicity. Mike said, we gotta
Speaker 1: get out in front of this. I'm like, absolutely, fuck,
Speaker 1: it's a restraining order. Let's get an interview with the girl.
Speaker 1: We'll put it on as part of as part of
Speaker 1: the special. We had a whole plan because that's the
Speaker 1: way we like it. Because that's the way we like it.
Speaker 1: What an amazing kind of dude. I love it because
Speaker 1: we had it all as a plan because and then
Speaker 1: something is the shame center of his brain like kicked
Speaker 1: in and like like turned it into because that's the
Speaker 1: way we like it. That is just his ego protecting
Speaker 1: himself from something he knows. I think somewhere deep in
Speaker 1: he shouldn't do this. He is a bad person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when when you become aware that on your show where
Speaker 1: women are auctioned off to the highest bidder, the guy
Speaker 1: buying the auction was a spousal abuser on a horrific
Speaker 1: kind of level of abuse and also lying about being rich,
Speaker 1: you should be like, well, huh, maybe I should rethink
Speaker 1: some things about like not just the show, but my life.
Speaker 1: You know. He's the thing is that I don't know
Speaker 1: much about how the biz works, the specifically the reality
Speaker 1: TV biz. But I imagine that when you're casting reality TV,
Speaker 1: you're looking for outrageous people who are willing to do
Speaker 1: whatever on camera. Yes, and I'm not saying they all are.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that that type of person tends to
Speaker 1: have some personal problems. Yeah, let's say a higher level. Yeah. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: not all of them, not all. Yeah, it's just that
Speaker 1: I can see why that would say attract people who
Speaker 1: are problematic in a lot of ways. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I imagine that's why you have several stories similar
Speaker 1: to this of reality TV where it's yeah, it comes
Speaker 1: out that these people have done something horrifying, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you barely vetted them, they're they're not a professional performer. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you stuck them on TV and made him a star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the best thing to do, you know. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Dave, I don't. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of shame. Um, obviously, Like I think we both chose
Speaker 1: entertainment as career, so we probably have a lower shame
Speaker 1: threshold than a lot of people. Um, But like like
Speaker 1: every now, like on Twitter, I'll just like get see
Speaker 1: a tweet that I think is funny, and I'll share
Speaker 1: it and then someone will like inevitably be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy did this horrible thing, and I'm like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't. It was just a random person on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But then I forget that about it for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. It's incredible that this guy can be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we filmed the whole several hour long TV special with
Speaker 1: like a man who beat the ship out of his
Speaker 1: girlfriend and as a restraining order against him. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: that complete lack of shame. Yeah, it's amazable. I envy it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It would make some things easier, like getting access to
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini. That's like getting money. It makes that a
Speaker 1: lot easier. And then you make YouTube videos about telling
Speaker 1: people how to get money, and you tell them to
Speaker 1: buy your book, which also will help them pick up women.
Speaker 1: That's another kind of guy without much shame. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And also this does lead to all that because the
Speaker 1: pickup artist culture is heavily related to reality TV show
Speaker 1: and that show with what was a mystery? What was
Speaker 1: it called? I assume it was a mystery because that's
Speaker 1: that's one of them. The guys. Yeah, he definitely was
Speaker 1: in a bunch of reality ships. So when this all
Speaker 1: blows up and there's this big backlash against who wants
Speaker 1: to marry a multimillionaire, everyone kind of assumes that Darnelle
Speaker 1: is going to get fired. Fox cancels the rebroadcast of
Speaker 1: the show, and they had been talking about turning it
Speaker 1: into a series because it was a huge hit, and
Speaker 1: they declined to um and they promised never. Fox promises
Speaker 1: to never be a part of any similar show in
Speaker 1: the future, which is extremely, extremely funny, like yeah, Fox,
Speaker 1: absolutely wow. So it's worth noting that even while the
Speaker 1: heat is on other networks, as soon as Fox is like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we won't turn this into a show like
Speaker 1: up N offers to buy it, of course, other TV
Speaker 1: networks are like, well, we'll make it into a show.
Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck im up N. All we
Speaker 1: have is Voyager reruns right now, up N, please help us.
Speaker 1: Most of that was actually their motto at the time.
Speaker 1: Most of people listening to this podcast right now are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what UPN. That's because this episode of
Speaker 1: our podcast will have more viewers than up and got
Speaker 1: in its entire time on the air. Absolutely, Um, But
Speaker 1: Mike Flye turns up and down. He's like, now, I
Speaker 1: don't want to give this guy to you, and I
Speaker 1: got a better idea. So flies who had produced the show, um,
Speaker 1: takes a variation of the pitch that he and Darnell
Speaker 1: had made to ABC. Now they clean it up a
Speaker 1: little from Middle America, right, and they relaunch Who Wants
Speaker 1: to Be a multi Millionaire with some changes as a
Speaker 1: new series called You're Either This Dave The Bachelor? Yeah, baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where that starts. Yeah, and obviously The Bachelor is
Speaker 1: a lot less problematic, although not to look there, there's
Speaker 1: so much more and all of these shows. I'm sure
Speaker 1: people will be like, no, there's like, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: a bunch of ship happened. It's tough. I've never seen
Speaker 1: a single episode of The Bachelor. No, this is not
Speaker 1: about The Bachelor, but it's funny where it comes from. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Big Brother comes out later into two thousand. It's
Speaker 1: after Who Wants to be a Multimillionaire, and it's actually,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. Big Brother is an import of a
Speaker 1: Dutch show that's itself inspired by the real world, which
Speaker 1: is like this thing that increasingly like up to this
Speaker 1: day is big in reality where like some foreign country
Speaker 1: will make a show that's inspired like these other shows,
Speaker 1: and then like we'll steal that idea and then that
Speaker 1: will like I don't know, it's fine, right, I've noticed that,
Speaker 1: Like I assume it's all owned by the same people,
Speaker 1: but it seems like you just have to change like
Speaker 1: a few words. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not it's not. Honestly,
Speaker 1: there's not really a meaningful difference between like what they
Speaker 1: did with the Office, you know, like it's not fucked up.
Speaker 1: It's just like the way artworks like Foreigner painted this thing,
Speaker 1: like shows where you can legally make a slightly different
Speaker 1: version of this and it's fine. Yeah, yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is fine. I just bring it up because I
Speaker 1: find it interesting, not because it's like bad that they
Speaker 1: imported the idea behind this Dutch show like who gives
Speaker 1: a fuck? So yeah, the War on Terror starts not
Speaker 1: long after you know this this whole period of time,
Speaker 1: and as it gets down to the business of just
Speaker 1: like fucking up a bunch of stuff, Reality TV is
Speaker 1: becoming the biggest thing in US media. The Bachelor is
Speaker 1: a Titanic hit. Basically overnight, it becomes ABC's top rated
Speaker 1: show among eighteen to forty nine year olds, otherwise known
Speaker 1: as the demographic with money. Well, that's what we knew
Speaker 1: it as in two thousand colics. Yeah, definitely there was
Speaker 1: in two thousand, especially smoking cigarettes. So despite the promises
Speaker 1: they'd made in the wake of their disaster with Rockwell,
Speaker 1: Fox committed themselves to reality TV more than any other network.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Posner writes, by February two thousand three, Fox was
Speaker 1: devoting a whopping in ABC thirty three percent of their
Speaker 1: sweeps offerings to reality shows. These percentages increased over the years,
Speaker 1: limiting the number of quality comedies and dramas available to
Speaker 1: viewers and reducing opportunities for union represented actors, writers and crew.
Speaker 1: Instead of firing their previously shamed reality group Guru, Fox
Speaker 1: promoted Darnell to executive vice president of Alternative Programming. So
Speaker 1: they it's they get to bust some unions and give
Speaker 1: a creep a good job and then nice. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the American dream, right, They're good for them. It
Speaker 1: is nice, that is, and we will not be getting
Speaker 1: into it enough. But that is a big part of
Speaker 1: like why reality is so popular with producers and stuff
Speaker 1: like high level producers. Is like, well, you can gotta
Speaker 1: you can get away from a lot of union ship
Speaker 1: with this. That is very true. You have people who
Speaker 1: work for a lot less and you can cut out
Speaker 1: the writer's guild, you know. Yeah, yeah, as a real bummer,
Speaker 1: it's very fun. So with that August title behind him,
Speaker 1: Darnell helped to bring to life a number of the
Speaker 1: most noteworthy early reality shows. There was two thousand ones
Speaker 1: Temptation Island, in which real life couples were separated and
Speaker 1: tempted into adultery. Unbelievable premise Joe Millionaire, in which a
Speaker 1: bunch of women dated a guy they thought was a millionaire,
Speaker 1: only to realize he wasn't right. Isn't the twist? At
Speaker 1: the end, they give him a million dollars they get,
Speaker 1: they get, they split like it's either a million or
Speaker 1: half a million between him and the woman who agrees
Speaker 1: to go out with him after note learning he's not rich, Like,
Speaker 1: if she agrees to still go out with him, then
Speaker 1: they both get money. I don't know what the moral
Speaker 1: is there, Yeah, I mean there's no moral. It's Mike Darnell.
Speaker 1: This guy doesn't have morals. Yeah, and just seeing what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just Magan TV. In two thousand four's The Swan,
Speaker 1: a bunch of women are given plastic surgery and other
Speaker 1: risky surgical procedures so they can compete in the beauty
Speaker 1: Badget Man Mike Darnell. Baby, he's the fucking He's the
Speaker 1: Chuck Bearriss of reality TV, is what I'm getting from this. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: he just sat there all day and came up with
Speaker 1: horrible things to do. Yeah, and killed for the government
Speaker 1: on the side. My favorite show he did was the
Speaker 1: short lived series Mr. Personality, in which a woman dates
Speaker 1: a bunch of men wearing masks that they can't take
Speaker 1: off until the show winds, so she has to pick
Speaker 1: the woman she wants to be with without saying without
Speaker 1: a mask. They have one of those now too, they
Speaker 1: have like a blind date, but Dave. This one was
Speaker 1: hosted by Monica Lewinsky. Oh, I mean what we know
Speaker 1: about her now, it's like good for her. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to condemn her for like you gotta like
Speaker 1: what other kind of for one thing? One other kind
Speaker 1: of jobs are open to you. As Monica Lewinsky in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's like not a lot of hiring
Speaker 1: opportunities after going through that ringer, So yeah, get get
Speaker 1: what you can, Monica. But it's it's incredible, it's extreme,
Speaker 1: Like the opening to this show is extremely funny and
Speaker 1: we're just gonna play it well. Please now for indoor
Speaker 1: bow food go it's this season finale Mr Personality. This
Speaker 1: season on Mr. Personality, Hayley Valentine arm, a twenty six
Speaker 1: year old career woman from Atlanta, was introduced to Quantity
Speaker 1: eligible men their faces covered by match because he's touched
Speaker 1: my heart in a different kind of way, like men
Speaker 1: range from unemployed to peacemaker masks. Hold on, do yourself
Speaker 1: a favor. Look up the other Fox show Secrets of
Speaker 1: Magic revealed with the Mask Magician, and I'm almost certain
Speaker 1: they just reused those masks. I'm not. I mean, I
Speaker 1: haven't looked in a while, going by memory look for people.
Speaker 1: For people who aren't watching this, they look like servants
Speaker 1: at an eyes wide shut or yeah, they all have
Speaker 1: the same masks. They all kind of look like M. F. Doom,
Speaker 1: but with a little bit of like, uh, like the
Speaker 1: fucking skeletor from the Masters of the Universe movie. Mixed in.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked that they all have so funny. Here's more
Speaker 1: speaker with a strategy of mind control. Ever, and I
Speaker 1: kept hearing the verse seventeen, the influences really unconscious. Haley
Speaker 1: was forced to send ten suitors packing. Their masks were removed.
Speaker 1: I think this totally sucks. The remaining ten were given
Speaker 1: new colored masks, and the competition taked in. Haley watched
Speaker 1: as a law unraveled and the boys gone wild. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. This is my lovely bedroom and
Speaker 1: two men eliminated themselves. That's what I'm just gonna have
Speaker 1: to do. I can't do this, so another bit of contemtible.
Speaker 1: Like most reality TV, this is men wearing tuxes and
Speaker 1: masks that takes place in what looks like a like
Speaker 1: upper upper middle class like mcmanchion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
Speaker 1: what's amazing about it too, is it's like an eyes
Speaker 1: wide shut orgy on a budget. It's it's I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I'm not saying I have this kind of money, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's like this is like someone who owns like
Speaker 1: a tow truck company, like several old air house um
Speaker 1: which again nothing against that, but I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: It's like a party, but all of the food is
Speaker 1: like from Kirkland. You know, it's like Kirkland. It's like
Speaker 1: a Kirkland brand rich people orgy. Right, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not not wealthy, Like these people have money, but they
Speaker 1: don't have that much. The next clip please, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's I. I picked this one because it's got a
Speaker 1: little bit of that sweet Lewinsky action that I know
Speaker 1: everybody's looking for. She really is just kind of barely
Speaker 1: in it, right, that's Monica behind the two talking now, Pilly.
Speaker 1: He had initially said that he took your breath away
Speaker 1: and that you could get lost in his green eyes,
Speaker 1: but you also said he seemed a little too smooth
Speaker 1: in a big occulating. This is the mind control motivational
Speaker 1: speaker and life coach for teenagers. He's thirty years old
Speaker 1: in the dark green mask. Meet Chris Burg. So I
Speaker 1: love Burg who's into mind control. And he didn't die
Speaker 1: in a bar in Florida like ten years ago he
Speaker 1: had died in a bar and tabbed that or he
Speaker 1: was part of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation program in Iraq,
Speaker 1: like one of the two. It's just it's one or
Speaker 1: the other. Either he is in fact good at what
Speaker 1: he does or yeah, he's been stabbed in the stuff
Speaker 1: at a bar. Florida one an incredible show. Holy shit,
Speaker 1: it's so funny. It's like it's like junk food. Because
Speaker 1: as soon as he was like I'm going to take
Speaker 1: off my mask, I'm like, here we fucking go. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see this. Let's see this weirdo. And
Speaker 1: then he was just some honky. He's just some he's
Speaker 1: just some some hockey. Yeah, he's just some fucking hockey.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. I think it got like five episodes, like,
Speaker 1: which is why Monica Lewinsky is not a staple of
Speaker 1: reality TV to this day, which is tragic. Um, just
Speaker 1: you can see that he's just like throwing ship at
Speaker 1: a dartboard, Like all right, let's put him in masks
Speaker 1: and let's get who's famous that people wouldn't expect to
Speaker 1: see in a show. Monica Lewinsky got her for some money,
Speaker 1: put her in the show. It didn't work, but they
Speaker 1: probably had a list. They probably look at one point
Speaker 1: William Shatner was going to host. You know, like it's
Speaker 1: probably just like we have a list of people who
Speaker 1: we know, we'll do it. Yeah, we know they do it.
Speaker 1: They need work, and like it'll people will be like, well,
Speaker 1: what I gotta I guess I'll try that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're back so yeah, and it's worth It is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to me that, like, having just gone through this,
Speaker 1: the first reality show ever was like pretty complex and
Speaker 1: intelligent entertainment for its day, and there's some like real
Speaker 1: cultural value there, but it winds up as this, you know,
Speaker 1: because reality TV and documentaries could be the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you're just documenting something that you find interesting,
Speaker 1: a slice of you know, life in America, like that family,
Speaker 1: Like that makes sense. It's just they realized quickly that's boring.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's like even you can see in shows
Speaker 1: that are still around, like the Real World when it
Speaker 1: debuted nineteen ninety two, it dealt with a lot of
Speaker 1: ship like aids and drug addiction and like LGBT issues
Speaker 1: in a way that was a lot of folks will
Speaker 1: argue at least I'm not a comprehensive I don't know
Speaker 1: much about the real world, but people who are critics
Speaker 1: of culture will argue was more intelligent than it is today.
Speaker 1: UM Cultural critic LaToya Peterson writes that while growth and
Speaker 1: development were early on parts of the real world, in
Speaker 1: later days it became quote specifically cast for racists, assholes,
Speaker 1: and agitators. It's like a formula. Every season has some
Speaker 1: huge racial altercation. Every season as some kind of woman
Speaker 1: trying to sleep her way into self esteem. Every season
Speaker 1: has a guy coping with a breakup angrily. Right again,
Speaker 1: they saw out people, Yeah we're unstable, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they gave them money and fame. Well. And also
Speaker 1: as we saw with the very first with like Darnell's
Speaker 1: first show and positive notes that like, a big part
Speaker 1: of this change is that folks follow Darnell's lead in bating.
Speaker 1: Advocacy groups like the National Organization of Women are the
Speaker 1: double a CP or of clad with content that where
Speaker 1: people were like have controversies, which will get these groups
Speaker 1: to weigh in, which will cause like journalists to write
Speaker 1: about this controversy, which generates press and views. UM. And
Speaker 1: that's a big part of it too. Clicks. It clicks.
Speaker 1: It's all that clicks. It's it's triggering the libs, and
Speaker 1: it's all built upon the same idea, which is that
Speaker 1: like any reaction is there is a reaction there for succeeds,
Speaker 1: even if the reaction is someone saying that's not funny,
Speaker 1: They're like we did it, and it's like did you though,
Speaker 1: Like it's funny to me. The kind of what's happening
Speaker 1: here is the way bullies work, right, which is like
Speaker 1: if you react to them at all, you're giving them
Speaker 1: what they want that we have just applied to like
Speaker 1: all of culture now and reality is kind of how
Speaker 1: that happens, where it's like, well, I guess the way
Speaker 1: everything should work is that if you get people to
Speaker 1: react by being shitty, then than the person being shitty wins,
Speaker 1: right exactly, like if you run a show that's just
Speaker 1: someone going out in public and taking dumps in the
Speaker 1: ground at a mall. All right now, Dave, I told
Speaker 1: you that in confidence. We'll have our pitch meeting with
Speaker 1: the h one in a week and maybe you can
Speaker 1: have multiple versions of that. It's like volcano and deep impact.
Speaker 1: You can never get too much of mull shitter. That's
Speaker 1: that's gonna be gold and it's spin off. Who wants
Speaker 1: to watch a multimillionaire ship in a fucking a Spencer's
Speaker 1: gifts exactly. Oh, that'd be great because people at first
Speaker 1: they'd be like, something smells like ship, but they'd look
Speaker 1: and there's all the novelty ships and they're like, which
Speaker 1: one is it? Like one of them is? God. I
Speaker 1: want to go into a spencer's gift and leave a
Speaker 1: real dump and then solve the novelty ones. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: find it for months. Anyway, this is going to be
Speaker 1: stolen by Fox in like a week and make somebody
Speaker 1: forty seven million dollars. I mean that could legitimately be
Speaker 1: like a sub chackass. It could be. It could make Yeah.
Speaker 1: In two thousand one, VH one launched it's Celebriality Block.
Speaker 1: The lynchpin of this was the surreal life based off
Speaker 1: the real world and people who were only celebrities in
Speaker 1: the loosest sense of the world, like at this point,
Speaker 1: Flavor Flav would live together on camera. Flavor Flav became
Speaker 1: a lot more famous later, but um, he was you know,
Speaker 1: this is kind of what like blew him up into
Speaker 1: being a reality star. It was huge. The production company
Speaker 1: behind it, fifty one Minds Entertainment, started spinning off next
Speaker 1: from Entertainment Weekly quote. That's when they found Megan Hauserman,
Speaker 1: a former playboy model who appeared on season three If
Speaker 1: the WB turned c W reality competition Beauty and the Geek.
Speaker 1: She and her partner Alan Scooter Zackheim took home the
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollar prize with her bombshell
Speaker 1: looks and sassy wood. Houserman became a fan favorite on
Speaker 1: Rock of Love with Brett Michaels Think The Bachelor but
Speaker 1: with poisons Michaels as its prize, and it spent off
Speaker 1: I Love Money and Rock of Love Charms School. Fifty
Speaker 1: one Minds decided to give the model her own show,
Speaker 1: Megan Once a Millionaire. The funny thing about Megan was
Speaker 1: her stated ambition, which was to marry a millionaire, says Cronin.
Speaker 1: So we said, what if we filled a house with
Speaker 1: millionaires and they were competing for you as their trophy wife.
Speaker 1: Here we go. This is um I sort of know
Speaker 1: what's to come here. Yeah, this does not sound like
Speaker 1: a TV show from Mr Timmy Dave. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a spell to in the world. But a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of studio executives were convinced it would be
Speaker 1: a hit. So VH one Green lights, this motherfucker. In
Speaker 1: the casting notice, they asked for a quote single men
Speaker 1: of the highest degree with a net worth of a
Speaker 1: million dollars or more. Now, rather than rely entirely on
Speaker 1: traditional casting, they sent producers to nightclubs to throw parties
Speaker 1: where rich guys would audition by just like being at
Speaker 1: a nightclub. Um, they sound like the worst parties. Imagine
Speaker 1: that sounds yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. Imagine working
Speaker 1: a service job at one of those parties. What an
Speaker 1: absolute That's that's the that you could write a horror
Speaker 1: movie just about one of these nights. There aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of ethical reasons to make and deploy a chlorine
Speaker 1: gas bomb using the cleaning chemicals commonly found in any bar,
Speaker 1: but this would have been one, right. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think they would have arrested you. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have been self defense. We all agreed this with self defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um yeah, they do this thing. Um And one
Speaker 1: of the men they find through this process is Ryan Jenkins,
Speaker 1: a thirty two year old real estate developer from Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a perfectly rounded individual that I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll have no problems around him. Now. One one casting
Speaker 1: producer later recalled of him, Ryan Jenkins had one of
Speaker 1: the best personalities on this planet. He was intriguing, he
Speaker 1: knew it. He wasn't the best looking guy in the world,
Speaker 1: he just had this charisma. So all reality shows have
Speaker 1: a process for vetting candidates. This was clearly necessary after
Speaker 1: the first Millionaire show blew up due to its lead
Speaker 1: Mail being an abusive monster with a restraining order against him.
Speaker 1: Every network and production company, though, did this in a
Speaker 1: different way. The most Rigorou shows included the kind of
Speaker 1: like applications included the kind of information you need to
Speaker 1: get a mortgage you have to file it, every address
Speaker 1: you'd ever had, every job you've had. There were psychiatric
Speaker 1: ski screeners, inc. Block tests, Etcetera. Entertainment Weekly continues. The
Speaker 1: other key component is the criminal background check, which involves,
Speaker 1: in parts, searching court interest records in every county a
Speaker 1: candidate has ever lived. When it came time to run
Speaker 1: checks on all of Megan's potential millionaires, VH one turn
Speaker 1: to Collective Intelligence, a Washington State based company the network
Speaker 1: had been working with since two thousand three, but Collective
Speaker 1: only specialized in US based criminal searches, so for Jenkins
Speaker 1: a Canadian citizen. The company subcontracted out the search to
Speaker 1: another firm, Straight Line International. Ryan Jenkins's record came back
Speaker 1: clear and he was invited to join the cast. So
Speaker 1: this is gonna go. Yeah, is a Canadian? You know
Speaker 1: they're they're nice people. Sure, no problems there. Megan Wants
Speaker 1: to Marry a Millionaire launched on August second, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: and it is one of the cringest shows I've ever experienced.
Speaker 1: Let's watch the introduction. Okay, I've a milk and when
Speaker 1: a man who takes her there, a gentleman extraun enough
Speaker 1: wants me wants Megan gets oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, what Megan wants Megan gets. That's that's the
Speaker 1: good stuff. Dave. Wait, you already explained who Megan is, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a playboy model whose primary ambition is to marry
Speaker 1: a millionaire. I still feel like saying, who does she
Speaker 1: thinks she is? It's just like, my god, all right,
Speaker 1: I mean, good good for her, I guess, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm saying that definitely not good. Good for
Speaker 1: her for wanting a millionaire and knowing what she wants,
Speaker 1: and I get I assume this will end really happy
Speaker 1: with her getting a millionaire. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: she gets rich eventually. So there you go. Uh so,
Speaker 1: Ryan Jenkins in this episode, like the first that it's
Speaker 1: interminably long. She's just like meeting all of these guys,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievably awkward. Um some of them are like creepy
Speaker 1: old dudes who are like really weird and it's it's whatever,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's they're all creepy in some way.
Speaker 1: They're all the kind of people who would show up
Speaker 1: on a show with this premise. Um, so it's horrible.
Speaker 1: And in his introduction, Ryan Jenkins describes himself as quote
Speaker 1: a little bit of Prince Charming, a little bit of
Speaker 1: a bad boy. And here's here's here's him showing up
Speaker 1: on screen for the first time. Okay, hello Ogan, look
Speaker 1: we're matching already, we are matching. Have you met any
Speaker 1: Canadians before? Never looks about time, don't you think absolutely?
Speaker 1: Let you know a little secret please to Ryan whispers
Speaker 1: in my ear, you're gonna love Canadian bacon. Oh oh
Speaker 1: fuck fuck that was a dick thing, right, I think? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably I just lost a year of my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah that that takes a lot out of you. My god,
Speaker 1: just the facial hair on Oh it's horrible, legal. I
Speaker 1: mean this was you know, the early two thousands. Every time. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't defend it. I know there's a different time
Speaker 1: back then, but still that facial hair. You're gonna love
Speaker 1: Canadian bacon's flat because yeah, flat and flat, not not
Speaker 1: quite cooked. Right. Yeah, here's the thing, if he was
Speaker 1: actually just talking about Canadian bacon, that would be delightful, right,
Speaker 1: if he just wants to like cooker some Canadian He
Speaker 1: was not. He was not, but that would have made
Speaker 1: him a winner. He probably could have gotten all the
Speaker 1: way to the top that way. But no, it's probably
Speaker 1: Yeah about his like tapeworm dick, like his flat, floppy,
Speaker 1: floppy tapeworm dick? Is it Canadian big in like round two?
Speaker 1: Like it's like a it's wrong, it's not right. It's
Speaker 1: like poutine. You're not supposed to put it in your body.
Speaker 1: It just exists because we you know, because America, the
Speaker 1: one time we pull our punches, it's with Canada. And
Speaker 1: look at this nonsense that exists. Now, look what we
Speaker 1: let happen. I'm gonna I'm going to need Garrison to
Speaker 1: fact check everything you just said. So Ryan advanced to
Speaker 1: the final round of the show. Um Hauserman liked him,
Speaker 1: although she saw some quote unquote red flags, like the
Speaker 1: fact that his rolex was fake and that he only
Speaker 1: brought a single pair of pants for five weeks of filming. Amazing,
Speaker 1: all right, I wish I could, I wish I could
Speaker 1: act better than him, but I do only own a
Speaker 1: single pair of pants. Dave. I know this about having
Speaker 1: lived with you, but also, you're not a millionaire. That's true.
Speaker 1: I'm not. You're right. Yeah, I can't. I can't afford
Speaker 1: multiple pairs of pants. You're right. That's why. That's why
Speaker 1: I only have one pair. I'm the victim here, You're right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. Yeah, it is weird for him. It's weird
Speaker 1: for him. Um. So she thought he was sweet, um,
Speaker 1: and she almost picked him as the winner. She looked
Speaker 1: him up on Facebook one night during shooting and got
Speaker 1: his phone number and called him privately to tell him
Speaker 1: she planned to pick him. But then she told the
Speaker 1: show's producers what she planned to do, and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh no, absolutely not. Um. They justified this as saying
Speaker 1: he wasn't likable and was just putting on a show
Speaker 1: for her, and she eventually agreed to send him home. Quote,
Speaker 1: he was really upset, and I was upset also, so
Speaker 1: that's a shame. She planned to call him once filming
Speaker 1: was over and explained that she had just been doing
Speaker 1: what her producers wanted. The show flopped, but Hauserman remained
Speaker 1: in contact with Ryan. He told her that after she
Speaker 1: sent him home, he was so upset that quote, I
Speaker 1: went to Vegas and I met a girl. Um As
Speaker 1: is normally the case on reality shows. Producers hired several
Speaker 1: of the failed contestants of this show for other projects,
Speaker 1: and so four years later, in two thousand nine, Ryan
Speaker 1: Jenkins has cast for a show called I Love Money three,
Speaker 1: vying her two d and fifty thousand dollar prize because
Speaker 1: you know, he's not actually a millionaire and he could
Speaker 1: really use the cash. Entertainment Weekly continues he kept calling
Speaker 1: her on the phone, his wife, saying, I'm going to
Speaker 1: win this and you and I are going to have
Speaker 1: the life I've always promised, recalls Mark Cronin, co founder
Speaker 1: of fifty one Minds Entertainment, the production company behind Money,
Speaker 1: Megan the Surreal Life and the majority of the h
Speaker 1: one wildly successful celeb reality shows of that era. Then
Speaker 1: he would ask her where were you last night? Because
Speaker 1: he's in Mexico shooting the show and she lives in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. He was very jealous and very suspicious of her.
Speaker 1: We were actually making a story of it on the show.
Speaker 1: We were like, look at this guy. He's obsessed with
Speaker 1: this model he married. Cronin continues, it was funny until
Speaker 1: it wasn't funny at all. I guess why it stops
Speaker 1: being funny. I have an idea. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: It's pretty it's not funny. On August fifteen, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: soon after I Love Money three wrapped fire, his his
Speaker 1: wife's strangled and mutilated body was found stuffed in a
Speaker 1: suitcase tossed to a dumpster in Buena Park, California. I
Speaker 1: wonder what happened? Yeah, So Jenkins goes on the run,
Speaker 1: and as this all gets public, TMZ finds out that
Speaker 1: he has an extensive criminal record, um including an arrest
Speaker 1: in two thousand five for assaulting a girlfriend in Calgary,
Speaker 1: which v H one and fifty one mind said was
Speaker 1: not on his background check. Uh. Jenkins eventually kills himself
Speaker 1: in a hotel room in British Columbia in auguste. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's this whole big story, big big, ugly
Speaker 1: story for the reality TV industry. Yeah, collective intelligence gets
Speaker 1: most of the blame for this, and they wind up
Speaker 1: laying off their workforce. Um. The whole nightmare reportedly leads
Speaker 1: to an increased willingness for production companies and networks to
Speaker 1: pay for thorough background checks. So that's good. It feels
Speaker 1: like everybody in America should go to jail for a day.
Speaker 1: It feels like we all got to go to jail
Speaker 1: for that one. It's just like our culture everything. Everybody
Speaker 1: should just for your shift and then you're the guard next,
Speaker 1: because like we got to get through everybody, right, we
Speaker 1: should all feel fucking ashamed. If some refugee comes into
Speaker 1: the country, it's like, hey, sorry, it's been so tough
Speaker 1: over in Ethiopia or Ukraine. Glad you're here. You gotta
Speaker 1: go to jail for a day. Now. There was this
Speaker 1: show like fifteen years ago. No one has stopped it
Speaker 1: from happening. He stopped it obvious that this person was Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: we know you new here, but every American has some
Speaker 1: collective responsibility for this show. I mean, listen, in our defense,
Speaker 1: he did say he was kind of a bad boy,
Speaker 1: so this is this would fall under the kind of
Speaker 1: a bad boy ages. Yeah, he's like, that's what he
Speaker 1: actually whispered. He's like in her ear, he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: a murderer. I am. I am going to be a murderer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh my fucking god. Now the good news, Dave, is
Speaker 1: that sketchy, violent dudes getting through vetting is no longer
Speaker 1: the main threat faced by reality shows. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about what is in part two of this series, Dave.
Speaker 1: How you like in reality is in reality? And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm mixed feelings always on reality, so you know, I
Speaker 1: can't can't complain, but really I don't have many compliments
Speaker 1: for it either. Yeah. I feel the same about reality
Speaker 1: as I do about Reality TV, which is I feel
Speaker 1: like we could do better. Yeah, I feel like we
Speaker 1: could do better. You know. Um, But you know who's
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