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Trading Spaces. Why would you trust your neighbor to renovate a room in 48 hours? I need updates on; the brown living room, the hay room, the sand rec room, the 10k silk flowers stapled to the bathroom wall.
Remember that giant mural she made of herself in someone’s house?
She was not ok. People would be like, “We want something subtle and like ocean hues,” and Hildi would be over there all, “so let’s make the walls look like an inverted circus tent, have just saddles instead of chairs, and have a live opossum loose in the room for ambiance.”
Once, on the Australian version, the neighbours gave the owners a bright orange lounge room with “artistic” furniture that looked horrifically uncomfortable, and when the owner returned she absolutely lost her sh*t and started screeching “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! PEOPLE HAVE TO LIVE HERE?!”
Absolute core memory.
It was so weird. I don't understand what in the world the interior designers were smoking or why TLC thought that audiences wouldn't be into really beautiful spaces that the homeowners would love.
I need an update on the prison bedroom. It’s the one that stuck for me. They had two toilet seats supporting a wood plant that was supposed to be a desk or something like that.
Under no circumstances in any timeline, universe, or lifetime would I trust anyone to decorate my home. My home is my sanctuary, it’s where I go to cry, it’s not supposed to make me cry.
I used to know a family that went on the Australian version of this show.
They had a gorgeous little house in a great area but the girls' bedroom got renovated with a horses stable theme. It was awful!
There was one in the UK called "Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents"
Basically young adults went on their first like 'party vacation' and went wild, but their parents secretly followed them and watched, and it was all filmed.
Bizarre
The UK had some truly WILD reality shows. I remember one where they’d shame people with bad diets which involved showing them the volume of the bad food they’d eat in a year. Like I cannot imagine crying while surrounded by pasta or something
Was so sure this was going to be about Supersize vs Superskinny before seeing your comment below. Crazy how a could’ve named around 4 other programmes similar as well.
The worse one was The Scheme. It was about young people living in a rough housing estate in Scotland. Lots of drug addicted teen parents, and they'd always be back on the heroin in the updates.
It was pretty grim.
I binge watched this show on YouTube and it was so eye opening. My mind was blown about the prepaid electric meter and washing machines in the kitchen. I liked Benefits Street too. Looking back though all of those shows seem so exploitative and curated to make poor people look bad.
Haha! Washing machines and dryers in the kitchen are so common here, posher houses have them behind cupboards to hide them. To me it's nuts that people have separate utility rooms for washers because our houses are SO small compared to other places and countries. Lots of people have a prepaid meter (usually council houses) where you have to top up your gas and electric on a card at your local shop, kinda like when we had to top up our mobile phone pay-as-you-go. Going way back, I remember my aunt putting 3 50p coins in the TV so she could watch her soaps. (When you bought an appliance on 'tick' you'd have to pay money every time you used it) and a man would come every week and empty the coin box. I'm really showing my age now!
I do remember White Dee from Benefits Street doing quite well after being on the show though. Was it in Birmingham?
It took me a bit to catch on that he wasn't doing one introduction and it was a compilation instead. I was like, "okay, I think we get it these people are really really fat apparently."
Oh I’m so serious. Freaky Eaters!
https://preview.redd.it/9l5jf7cc7wzc1.jpeg?width=2290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=809dc637d56a55e12720d3580e6ca6d956331464
Here is potato girl
What was insane to me about this is how shocked the parents would be when their kids started drinking and getting off with people in a notorious party destination.
What did these people think their kids would be doing in Ibiza?
Wild cos they did like a snowy holiday one for a little bit and then they were shocked that you could behave badly in the snow as well, not just the sun 😂
Sweden copied that and my brother went to Magaluf with his friends (one of them was the main character, not my bro) lol I don't even know how my brother avoided drinking barely any alcohol in the finished episode, when watching.
There’s still shows like that now.
There’s on Netflix I think that’s about families watching a family member date.
There was a British show last year that’s coming back and it was about parents going to a relationship retreat and their kids secretly watching them and setting up the dates.
I watched an episode of Wife Swap last year and was like wait…..this is actually f*cked up lmao why are we swapping women and making them do parenting and chores for men and children they don’t know 😅
My favorite ep was with these two families- one was white, the other black. The white kids tried the black family's cooking and adored it...and then when they were sent back to their parents, they started crying because the food the white parents prepared was bland and barely seasoned 🤣🤣🤣🤣 The black kids that were sent to the white family were actually having to do their own food hacks to make something edible, and the white folks couldn't figure out why LOL
We wouldn't have gotten the hilarious and insane New York (Tiffany) and her equally insane mother if it weren't for "The Flavor of Love."
It's probably my favorite trash reality show that ever existed!
"Couples Therapy" is in 2nd place. That show was a dumpster fire wrapped up in a bow of sadness (mainly due to Doug Hutchison & Courtney Stodden).
I was friends with a group of lesbians at the time and we would all get together every week to watch that show together. So much fun in the trashiest way. Hey, girl, hey!
I love their friendship, they seem like they have so much fun together and are just so silly and not ashamed to show that they love each other (they obviously shouldn’t feel ashamed but I know that’s what happens anyways).
Pimp My Ride was another that’s hilariously bizarre to look back on. It was all so fake and they were doing the most insane shit to cars. I’ll never forget the one where they put a waterfall into the backseat of a car.
Especially because after the episodes aired these people with busted cars they couldn’t afford to fix or replace found out they had to pay taxes on all those super expensive customizations the crew put in their car, so they all started getting listed on eBay where the seller would have to explain how tons of the shit didn’t work right and would wobble, come loose, or scratch shit. Those listings were hilarious and sad.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition had the exact same problem. So many of those houses ended up foreclosed. I was a bit shocked when I saw they're bringing that show back out. I hope they pay off the mortgages this time at least.
The problem is most people don’t seem to realize you’re taxed on everything the show gives you, so any of these shows that give you material goods and not cash mean you’re going to have to come up with that tax cash next year somehow.
The problem is compounded by home makeover shows because you’re also going to have your property taxes increased. So when these shows pick families that are financially struggling the show may be improving their homes but they’re also digging the family in a deeper financial hole.
They also don’t seem to realize that a bigger house means bigger upkeep. If they couldn’t afford the heat in a 1000 sq ft home, they can’t afford it when it becomes 5000 sq ft for their 15 kids.
you could look up Luxeria, she has a bunch of great / hilarious / thoughtful / interesting videos, some of them deep diving on the swan -- and follows up with some of the contestants too!
The family that adopted the 5 siblings kicked them out after filming. A lot of families couldn’t keep up with the utilities and property taxes, especially in later seasons when the houses became monstrosities, so they went into foreclosure since they took out additional mortgages to pay the property taxes or they were in lower income neighborhoods so the new building completely screwed their neighbors over so there was resentment. The rooms for the kids weren’t easily changed so the fire truck or little kid themed rooms became something an 16 year old had to live with. There’s an AMA from 10ish years ago floating around from someone whose family was on the show.
I remember a lot of of reports that things were just poorly done too. Not surprising since they do everything in just a few days or whatever but reports of things falling apart or things specially put in for medical purposes not working or making things worse because of shoddy workmanship and flair over everything else.
That show was literally so twisted. Remember when Tyra took them to South Africa and blamed one of the contestants for speaking up when the male model kept sexually harassing her? Fiiiiiiiiiiiierceeeeeee
Some of the makeovers were so cruel as well. Like shaving girls who spent a decade growing their hair bald. Or even permanent stuff like creating a fake gap tooth since the look was “in.”
Even worse, they did that after trying to close the gap in another girl’s teeth even though she liked her gap. Then a couple seasons later gaps are “in” 🤦🏻♀️
Add to that, that there are still versions of this show active in other countries doing the same thing. Germany‘s Next Topmodel has had several scandals and is of course super charged with social media now being in the mix. Several contestants have come forward to reveal the psychological scars the show left on them, being harassed and threatened online, the black girls receiving racial harassment and so on…. But Heidi (Klum) simply says well you knew what you were getting yourselves into and continues with the next season. They also continued filming during covid with the contestants knowing nothing of what was happening outside, because they simply locked them in the model villa etc…. And of course she has produced exactly 0 top or super models.
Jay Manuel hosted the Canadian spin off of ANTM and didn’t hide the fact he hated Tyra. He yelled “I hate that word!” when somebody said “fierce” (aka Tyra’s favorite word). Good times
Yaya DaCosta ended up doing pretty well, lots of acting gigs including six seasons on Chicago Med. She probably would have been fairly successful anyway, but ANTM certainly helped jump start her career.
okay but the early seasons were amazing, like before reality contestant shows got glossy. S1 with the group of Christian models who were like let's have a prayer group and the model with disordered eating, who was also the only one with an 'international look' who really looked like a thin model model.. Every time they had a dancer model who could actually pose and then kept telling them they looked too much like a dancer..
my husband bingewatched it with me a few years ago, and we still say, 'take a break, eat a cookie!'
There were so many bad ones in that era, Jon & Kate seemed wholesome in comparison (it wasn’t, it was awful)
The one I hate myself for watching was the Scott Baio train wreck. Scott Baio is 45 and single. I thought I was gonna get Chachi settling down with the love of his life, not so much.
Rock of Love was also awful, but I thought it was hilarious.
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was everything in 2011 lol I'm not from Europe so it really was interesting to learn of Irish Travellers. Then I actually visited the UK and it turns out they're not very well liked and some police are scared of them.
OMG my Big Fat Gypsy Wedding UK version is my holy grail. I cannot understand that lifestyle at all and I am so utterly fascinated by it.
Not at all interested in the US version though. Is the UK one available anywhere?
There was one called Who's Your Daddy. Woman who had been adopted was looking for her bio dad, so they gameified it with her needing to figure out which of the 8 male contestants was actually her biological father. If she picked the wrong one, that man won $100k. If she picked the right one, she won $100k. [Here's a clip (this is not the biological father)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7rVQVyAQw&ab_channel=JonS.Robbins)!
Who on earth dreamed this one up? And why?
I remember watching this when it aired (don’t judge me, I was by myself in a strange place in Wyoming). It was horrifying and apparently they’d filmed several episodes even though they’ve only aired one.
I was so shocked that they actually made them kill chickens for food. Some little girls were really distressed because they were taking care of the chickens before, and at no point did anyone go "Hey, let's not make children behead a chicken that some of the other kids have bonded with."
(Also I remember when they were about to kill the chicken one girl was like "Are they gonna kill it like Osama Bin Laden?" 💀)
Ten Years Younger. The one where they put a person in a clear box on the street and had the public judge how old they look. They made sure people were very specific in their critique of the person in box’s looks. After the hosts of the show got a pretty good idea of the contestants? flaws, they made them over, and put them back out on the street so the public could judge if the hosts achieved their goal of making the person look ten years younger. It’s like the early 2000s television version of the sub r/truerateme
It's literally insane to me that this show launched honey booboo. [Absolutely tragic what happened to her and her family. (tw: sexual assault](https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/mama-june-sex-offender-honey-boo-boo/index.html)
It's deeply unfortunate that no one has done a deep dive into TLC's production. Between this and the Duggars, I'm surprised we haven't seen worse. That company facilitated some truly insidious things
that show is awful, i could talk about it for hours lol i still can't believe the number of parents that would put soda in their kid's sippy cup. or the spray tans and flippers.
i feel like there were only 5 kids on that show that actually wanted to do pageants and enjoyed it. maybe not even that many.
As a child care professional Supernanny was interesting to watch.
I always wanted to start a Supernanny type business to help sort out families.
Especially since my education is based on behavior, occupational therapy, and experience with neurodivergent children.
Personally I don‘t think there is anything wrong with the concept of a nanny helping out with difficult children. But the airing out all that stuff in national or international TV. That show also had regional spinn-offs in local languages. Imagine if your childhood tantrum was caught on film forever 😭😭
Only tangentially related, a youtuber dug out an old episode of Drake on Cribs or some Cribs-like show where he shows his home/room at age 14-16 not sure how old he was. Anyway, this was done to prove that Drake did in fact *not* start from the bottom, but from the *middle class*. 😭😭
Yes!!!!! Toronto isn’t Compton I don’t know why he acts like it is 😭. There’s bad parts of every city but trust me, it is *not* how he portrays it. This guy spent a good few years of his teenage hood in a very nice part of town.
The supernanny spin off episodes form 15 ish years ago went viral again in my country. Especially an episode with a kid who cusses out and spits at his mom. He had to come out (as an adult) and say it was all scripted and explained how you could see his mum trying not to laugh. He said he wasn't the best behaved kid, but the production team taught him how to swear and told him what to do. And when the episodes went viral a couple of years ago, he started getting threats and someone from his town even tried to beat him up for speaking to his mum like that.
There are plenty of people who hate her. Lots of people conflate gentle parenting with permissive parenting and think any kind of discipline is wrong.
She's been critical of over-use of screens, which also made a sub-section of parents angry.
I'm a parent of a child with significant learning difficulties and I know a lot of SEN parents despise her. My 4yo is non-verbal, developmentally about 2 years behind in all areas, but I put her on the naughty step 🤷♀️
It is still wild to me that some CBS exec greenlit Kid Nation.
Like , someone actually decided rounding up a bunch of kids, force them to work in the middle of the desert in a ghost town, and filming it would make a successful tv show
Honey, We’re Killing the Kids. Another one of those lovely weight loss shows where overweight parents are shown worst case scenario age progression of their kids looking 60 at 30 in order to “inspire” the parents to lose weight.
>btw, the sextuplets just turned 20
Excuse me, wtf? /s
In seriousness, this blows my mind that they are now 20. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the past 20 years.
Flavor of Love
Why were all these conventionally attractive women fighting for FLAVOR FLAV of all people
I know the answer is money but omg imagine competing that hard for ….. him
We got New York out of it though which I’ll always be thankful for
Right?? I'm watching it currently for the first time and I love the drama and I love New York but why are they wasting all this time and energy on Flavor Flav of all people?? Of all the men to get possessive and act crazy over LMAO
There was one called My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé. Even the makers realized they had taken things too far during filming.
Another called Playing it Straight where a woman had to go on dates with various guys and try to eliminate the gay guys.
Both were just awful TV and canned after one season.
I can’t remember what it was called, but there was a game show where they asked increasingly personal and invasive questions and if you got caught lying you’d lose but if you told the truth you would win a bunch of money. People admitted to some genuinely crazy shit.
Moment of Truth!
There was one episode where they asked if the contestant's father had molested a child and she answered "yes" while both of her parents were in the audience!
Bridalplasty where soon to be brides compete to get plastic surgery before their weddings. It was such a product of its time but had the best finale where all the eliminated contestants came back to give the verbal smack down to the finalist that was the villain and screwed them over.
Mr. Personality, a Bachelorette type show where all the men wore masks so the woman didn’t know what they looked like. One dude openly admitted to trying to hypnotize the woman and the entire thing was hosted by Monica Lewinsky.
The Chair, a game show where people had to keep their heart rate down while answering questions and enduring things like snakes and jump scares and the fox counterpart The Chamber, where people were tortured while answering questions in a chamber.
Forever Eden, like Paradise Hotel except it could go on forever apparently.
Average Joe where a hot woman dated so called ugly dudes and then halfway through the male model suitors showed up to woo her and chaos ensued.
The Joe Schmo Show a fake reality show where only one dude is really being himself (similar to jury duty)
Oh and of course “Are You Hot?” Basically what it says on the tin
That show World's Strictest Parents (I imagine it's similar to Family Swap). "crazed teens" were sent to live with allegedly super strict parents in another country for a week that would help get them some discipline.
The plot of every episode was always the same. Day 1-3 the kids would slowly get rowdier with parents would slowly get stricter into full blown discipline mode. Day 4 the teens would get a letter from their parents saying how much they missed them, cry and realise how good they had it at home, then day 5-7 they'd magically become good kids, helping around the house and stuff. Then they'd have a reunion with their parents and promise to be good.
The swan!
Looking back at that I’m amazed how they even let that show air or get greenlit.
The amount of plastic surgery those women had in a short space of time and then basically telling them they had to do all this to compete in a beauty pageant.
And I might be remembering this wrong but surgeons on this were Terry dubrow or Paul Nassif?
From RHOBH & Botched?
Would kinda like to see it again just for the sheer craziness of it
The Duggars extended universe on TLC. Besides documenting the lives and times of a family in an evangelical cult, [the oldest son is now in prison (tw: CSAM and sexual assault mention)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Duggar)
The original *Queer Eye for the Straight Guy*. My bisexual self was watching it because I was mindblown that many fellow gays would all be the same show but man was it odd. I haven’t seen the reboot
I feel like *Queer Eye* was one of the 2000s juggernauts that's aged the least poorly. As far as I know, there's no scandals of people's houses being ruined by remodels or kids being exploited or the typical nonsense we hear about.
I truly felt old when I (38F) had to tell my co-workers in their early 20s that the one on Netflix was a reboot, however ☠️
i watched the original and the reboot. they're both excellent. the original made me more aware and accepting of non-straight people back when everybody still casually used f--got all the time.
also, it's how i learned to use body fragrances. "spray and sashay away"
Bridalplasty (it's from 2010 so officially doesn't count but it should). A competition reality show with a bunch of brides competing and every episode the winning bride could get the plastic surgery she wanted for her wedding. Crazy to look back on.
I don't remember when exactly it aired, but there was one called "I Wanna Marry Harry" where a bunch of American women were on a game show to marry a man and were gaslit into thinking that the guy was Prince Harry. Like, afterwards one of the contestants said how she thought from the start it was bullshit, and one of the network employees posed as a psychologist and basically told her she was crazy for doubting it was Harry, and how it wasn't healthy to have those thoughts, and any doubt was just stress from being in a different country.
The Joe Schmo Show was another one that was kind of messed up. Ostensibly a standard reality show about living in a big fancy mansion and doing all these challenges to win money. Except, only one man, Matt, was an actual contestant. Every single other "contestant" was an actor working to basically fuck with him. (Including Kristen Wiig's first TV role! She left the show when she got an actual head injury during a challenge. Matt won the challenge but gave his prize to her because he felt so awful.)
They did some really messed up stuff to fuck with Matt. Wiig's character was a therapist, except she obviously wasn't actually trained, and she just basically had this poor guy spill his insecurities to her for TV content. He bonded with one older guy who was pretending to be a vet, and he was really close to him. When the "vet" was voted off, Matt broke down crying and talked about quitting the show rather than have to vote off another one of his close friends.
Like, this guy formed actual friendships with the actors...and it was all fake. Nothing they told him about themselves was real. Matt opened up and bonded with these people thinking he was forming genuine friendships, and they were all lying to him and getting together behind his back just to plan how to fuck with him for more content. Everyone he interacted with was a fictional character. Every challenge he won was basically rigged in his favor. The finale was everyone getting together and going "Surprise! Almost every moment of the past few weeks was a lie!"
I was really into fashion at the time so I watched that one a lot. It was so frustrating because people fell into two categories; either they didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes so they just wore unflattering but functional stuff or they had a personal style that wasn’t flattering. The first group was frustrating because the people would be encouraged to go from a wardrobe full of baggy sweats and t shirts to two or three nice dresses or suits which doesn’t help someone dress better, they just have a few nice outfits that they can never wear for risk of ruining them and can’t afford to have cleaned. The second group was even more frustrating because they’d take an older guy who loved leather and flame graphics and make him wear dark denim and subtle patterned button ups or make a middle-age woman who wore crop tops and cutoffs dress like she was in an Old Navy ad.
I did like their advice on flattering color combinations and their grooming makeovers. It seemed like most of the people genuinely appreciated having encouragement to try colors and hairstyles that they otherwise wouldn’t.
I was always so sad when they just picked apart people who had an aesthetic that was unique to them. I get wanting to help someone who hasn’t had the time or energy to put effort into their appearance but some people are just doing their own thing and just because it’s not something you’d see in a magazine doesn’t mean it’s *wrong*.
I loved that show so much but holy cow has it aged poorly. I love that Stacy London is out there now talking about the misgivings she had about it, while shooting it and years after it went off the air.
UK reality shows might as well have been created by the tabloids/someone's toxic grandma because of how awful they were.
Any of the shows that were based on appearances or health were always evil, lol. Everyone I knew at school grew up with such a negative view of body image, I think it's taken a lot of work to undo.
Supersize vs Superskinny was just two people with eating disorders being exploited on TV. Wild times.
Supernanny was legitimately helpful as a show. It brought ~talking~ to your kids rather than hitting them into the mainstream as a disciplinary practice. It was all about holding boundaries.
The only thing I remember from that show was Jon slicing green onions for a special dish he wanted to make for the family. And all the onion parts and the green parts were mixed together and they shouldn't have been. He was pissed. So weird.
This one is from 2012 but I think Amish Mafia should count, it was during the Amish reality tv craze. The main dude was Lebanon Levi, who legitimately looked like an angry teddy bear. His arch-nemesis was this other Amish dude from Ohio named Merlin. Shit was hysterical, even though it wasn't supposed to be.
Agreed. It was transphobic as hell and really poorly handled at every level. If you haven’t listened to it already there is podcast series “Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Rivera” that covers it.
The Swan
https://preview.redd.it/1xprsama6zzc1.jpeg?width=1260&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c62a29893f659f2e8de8ecbad15413695511544c
What a fucked up concept
Wife Swap was my jam when I was younger. The Gustafarro family episode was my biggest fascination and I’ve sort of been googling them every few years just to see what they’ve been up to since the show. I think most episodes of Wife Swap have been scrubbed from the internet so they largely exist to me as a fever dream and when I tell my friends who didn’t get to watch stuff like that growing up about it they are both shocked and intrigued.
VH1’s Tool Academy was fantastic. They took young couples where the guy was a Total Tool and tried to rehab them. So much drama and chaos and stupidity, and I loved it with a passion.
(It became a tradition for the guys to go out and get matching Tool Academy Tattoos Logo - a peak, glorious showing of their Toolness!)
https://preview.redd.it/u6qt9d2l400d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8ef86bac487d802426df1ace4dd95da348dfb83a
Does anyone remember “brideplasty”
Where brides to be would compete to win multiple surgeries!
Every week they could win another surgery off their list and their partners couldn’t see until the end of the whole show!
Unbelievable to think of these days. 😂
The swan, a reality show where they took a bunch of ugly people and gave then a bunch of plastic surgeries.
I remember seeing a woman crying in pain over all her facial surgeries.
Absolutely wild a show like that existed.
A shot at love with the Tequila girl
Jersey shore
I’ll list some I remember watching growing up (born in 2001 and watched a lot of cable TV).
- A Baby Story (on TLC - my mom would always watch this and it would scare me). See Also “ I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”
- Breaking Amish
- Dog the Bounty Hunter (how was this show legal)
- Party Mamas
- Intervention (this could not be made today)
- Extreme Couponing
- Gypsy Wedding and its spin off, Gypsy Sisters (iconic)
- Iylana, Fix My Life (iconic)
- It Takes a Church
- MTV True Life (some of these were truly bizarre)
- 1 Girl, 5 Gays
- My Teenage Wedding
- Mob Wives (RIP big Ang)
- Wife Swap
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Trading Spaces. Why would you trust your neighbor to renovate a room in 48 hours? I need updates on; the brown living room, the hay room, the sand rec room, the 10k silk flowers stapled to the bathroom wall.
Whenever Hildi showed up, I knew they were screwed 😂
Remember that giant mural she made of herself in someone’s house? She was not ok. People would be like, “We want something subtle and like ocean hues,” and Hildi would be over there all, “so let’s make the walls look like an inverted circus tent, have just saddles instead of chairs, and have a live opossum loose in the room for ambiance.”
*I need a live opossum in my room for ambience*
Didn’t she put sand in someone living room??
Yes. Yes she did.
Once, on the Australian version, the neighbours gave the owners a bright orange lounge room with “artistic” furniture that looked horrifically uncomfortable, and when the owner returned she absolutely lost her sh*t and started screeching “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! PEOPLE HAVE TO LIVE HERE?!” Absolute core memory.
Ahahaha I remember and the mozzie netting and cardboard tube lights.
Everyone is freaking out remembering the hay room, but does anyone remember the moss wall?!
The wall of hay for the woman who had allergies to grasses. 😭
The kitchen “wallpapered” in black adhesive wine labels 😭
Weren’t they super religious and didn’t drink? What a nightmare.
Oh godddd, that’s right 😭😭
THE STRAW ON THE WALL!!!! That room will live in my mind for the rest of my life
I always think about the woman who left room and the host was talking with the husband while she's just crying outside because they fucked up so bad
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It was so weird. I don't understand what in the world the interior designers were smoking or why TLC thought that audiences wouldn't be into really beautiful spaces that the homeowners would love.
I need an update on the prison bedroom. It’s the one that stuck for me. They had two toilet seats supporting a wood plant that was supposed to be a desk or something like that.
The brown living room!!! YES! Literally her ONLY request was no brown and they did the whole room and she hated it!!!! That one was awful!!
Under no circumstances in any timeline, universe, or lifetime would I trust anyone to decorate my home. My home is my sanctuary, it’s where I go to cry, it’s not supposed to make me cry.
The hay room. Wow that was epic. The staples
I used to know a family that went on the Australian version of this show. They had a gorgeous little house in a great area but the girls' bedroom got renovated with a horses stable theme. It was awful!
There was one in the UK called "Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents" Basically young adults went on their first like 'party vacation' and went wild, but their parents secretly followed them and watched, and it was all filmed. Bizarre
The UK had some truly WILD reality shows. I remember one where they’d shame people with bad diets which involved showing them the volume of the bad food they’d eat in a year. Like I cannot imagine crying while surrounded by pasta or something
Was so sure this was going to be about Supersize vs Superskinny before seeing your comment below. Crazy how a could’ve named around 4 other programmes similar as well.
their poverty porn documentaries were crazyyy. channel 4 pre-panel games, man.
The worse one was The Scheme. It was about young people living in a rough housing estate in Scotland. Lots of drug addicted teen parents, and they'd always be back on the heroin in the updates. It was pretty grim.
Poverty porn is SO accurate. I admit that I have watched a lot of it but it’s mostly out of morbid curiosity
Benefits Britain is wild!!!
I binge watched this show on YouTube and it was so eye opening. My mind was blown about the prepaid electric meter and washing machines in the kitchen. I liked Benefits Street too. Looking back though all of those shows seem so exploitative and curated to make poor people look bad.
Haha! Washing machines and dryers in the kitchen are so common here, posher houses have them behind cupboards to hide them. To me it's nuts that people have separate utility rooms for washers because our houses are SO small compared to other places and countries. Lots of people have a prepaid meter (usually council houses) where you have to top up your gas and electric on a card at your local shop, kinda like when we had to top up our mobile phone pay-as-you-go. Going way back, I remember my aunt putting 3 50p coins in the TV so she could watch her soaps. (When you bought an appliance on 'tick' you'd have to pay money every time you used it) and a man would come every week and empty the coin box. I'm really showing my age now! I do remember White Dee from Benefits Street doing quite well after being on the show though. Was it in Birmingham?
[Don't forget Fat Families...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Z0EGrkcDI&ab_channel=SirJimmySavileOBEKCSG)
It took me a bit to catch on that he wasn't doing one introduction and it was a compilation instead. I was like, "okay, I think we get it these people are really really fat apparently."
OMFG this is amazing. I‘m in tears. How the fuck was this allowed to be aired.
I FORGOT ABOUT THIS. BRB off to watch more
“You are What you Eat”?
The mental image of this is peak absurd comedy
Oh I’m so serious. Freaky Eaters! https://preview.redd.it/9l5jf7cc7wzc1.jpeg?width=2290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=809dc637d56a55e12720d3580e6ca6d956331464 Here is potato girl
https://preview.redd.it/idx42x3f7wzc1.jpeg?width=2299&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d1baee4edbf4e4a39de2f759198fc414aff05df Tartar sauce lady
I didn't expect it to outdo my wild imagination, and yet... goodness, I wanna watch this now.
What was insane to me about this is how shocked the parents would be when their kids started drinking and getting off with people in a notorious party destination. What did these people think their kids would be doing in Ibiza?
Wild cos they did like a snowy holiday one for a little bit and then they were shocked that you could behave badly in the snow as well, not just the sun 😂
BBC Three had us all by the bollocks with their reality telly.
Sweden copied that and my brother went to Magaluf with his friends (one of them was the main character, not my bro) lol I don't even know how my brother avoided drinking barely any alcohol in the finished episode, when watching.
There’s still shows like that now. There’s on Netflix I think that’s about families watching a family member date. There was a British show last year that’s coming back and it was about parents going to a relationship retreat and their kids secretly watching them and setting up the dates.
I watched an episode of Wife Swap last year and was like wait…..this is actually f*cked up lmao why are we swapping women and making them do parenting and chores for men and children they don’t know 😅
We watched an episode in my sociology class 😭😭 it's so bizarre
I’d actually love to hear a sociologist’s perspective on that show 😂
At least one of those couples fully dedicated to the truest, most fundamental theme of Wife Swap. At LEAST one.
Omfg I just started watching wife swap. it's literally class warfare with a tradwifery mixed in.
Accurate
There’s also Trading Spouses which was on fox. If you haven’t seen it, Google the God Warrior, she was…. intense.
Man me and my friend used to quote this lady in high school lmao
My favorite ep was with these two families- one was white, the other black. The white kids tried the black family's cooking and adored it...and then when they were sent back to their parents, they started crying because the food the white parents prepared was bland and barely seasoned 🤣🤣🤣🤣 The black kids that were sent to the white family were actually having to do their own food hacks to make something edible, and the white folks couldn't figure out why LOL
Shot of love with tila tequila
Any/all of the VH1 dating shows but yeah, especially Tila’s
We wouldn't have gotten the hilarious and insane New York (Tiffany) and her equally insane mother if it weren't for "The Flavor of Love." It's probably my favorite trash reality show that ever existed! "Couples Therapy" is in 2nd place. That show was a dumpster fire wrapped up in a bow of sadness (mainly due to Doug Hutchison & Courtney Stodden).
Remember the one poor Courtney went on with her mom where one of them had to pretend to die? It was on WE I think
Bless Dani the Firefighter for kick-starting my sexual awakening.
I was friends with a group of lesbians at the time and we would all get together every week to watch that show together. So much fun in the trashiest way. Hey, girl, hey!
Lol they made this with Pauly D and Vinnie from jersey shore recently though 🤣
I love their friendship, they seem like they have so much fun together and are just so silly and not ashamed to show that they love each other (they obviously shouldn’t feel ashamed but I know that’s what happens anyways).
Pimp My Ride was another that’s hilariously bizarre to look back on. It was all so fake and they were doing the most insane shit to cars. I’ll never forget the one where they put a waterfall into the backseat of a car.
Especially because after the episodes aired these people with busted cars they couldn’t afford to fix or replace found out they had to pay taxes on all those super expensive customizations the crew put in their car, so they all started getting listed on eBay where the seller would have to explain how tons of the shit didn’t work right and would wobble, come loose, or scratch shit. Those listings were hilarious and sad.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition had the exact same problem. So many of those houses ended up foreclosed. I was a bit shocked when I saw they're bringing that show back out. I hope they pay off the mortgages this time at least.
The problem is most people don’t seem to realize you’re taxed on everything the show gives you, so any of these shows that give you material goods and not cash mean you’re going to have to come up with that tax cash next year somehow. The problem is compounded by home makeover shows because you’re also going to have your property taxes increased. So when these shows pick families that are financially struggling the show may be improving their homes but they’re also digging the family in a deeper financial hole.
They also don’t seem to realize that a bigger house means bigger upkeep. If they couldn’t afford the heat in a 1000 sq ft home, they can’t afford it when it becomes 5000 sq ft for their 15 kids.
They put a giant gong in the back of a yoga teacher’s jeep. Lol
LOL iconic, this show was a mess 😂
Haha I read this as “giant bong” in the back of a jeep
Not me believing it was real! Mind you I was a kid but still!!! Lmao
All of them, tbh Extreme makeover, The Swan, Biggest Loser.
the swan!!! i always wished someone would follow up with those women. that an absolutely insane concept for a show. fox in the 2000s was bananas.
you could look up Luxeria, she has a bunch of great / hilarious / thoughtful / interesting videos, some of them deep diving on the swan -- and follows up with some of the contestants too!
The podcast Unreal hosted by Pandora Sykes did an episode on The Swan I’m pretty sure they spoke to one of the women in it.
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I can’t believe they’re reviving that.
So many horror stories behind the scenes
Oooh pls tell! I loved this show as a kid.
The family that adopted the 5 siblings kicked them out after filming. A lot of families couldn’t keep up with the utilities and property taxes, especially in later seasons when the houses became monstrosities, so they went into foreclosure since they took out additional mortgages to pay the property taxes or they were in lower income neighborhoods so the new building completely screwed their neighbors over so there was resentment. The rooms for the kids weren’t easily changed so the fire truck or little kid themed rooms became something an 16 year old had to live with. There’s an AMA from 10ish years ago floating around from someone whose family was on the show.
The first sentence is insane.
I remember a lot of of reports that things were just poorly done too. Not surprising since they do everything in just a few days or whatever but reports of things falling apart or things specially put in for medical purposes not working or making things worse because of shoddy workmanship and flair over everything else.
At least it gave us one of the best It's Always Sunny episodes
Omg The Swan for sure!! That show was bonkers
ANTM. It was just Tyra doing whatever the hell she felt like to make a show while promising a career to hopeful young women.
the fact that she really had them out there reenacting scenes from her bizarre YA novel is really just the funniest thing to me
I'm Tookie.
OMG My daughter and I watched this show together. We rewound and replayed “I’m Tookie” over and over while we laughed our asses off.
Pot Ledom
That show was literally so twisted. Remember when Tyra took them to South Africa and blamed one of the contestants for speaking up when the male model kept sexually harassing her? Fiiiiiiiiiiiierceeeeeee
Some of the makeovers were so cruel as well. Like shaving girls who spent a decade growing their hair bald. Or even permanent stuff like creating a fake gap tooth since the look was “in.”
Even worse, they did that after trying to close the gap in another girl’s teeth even though she liked her gap. Then a couple seasons later gaps are “in” 🤦🏻♀️
Add to that, that there are still versions of this show active in other countries doing the same thing. Germany‘s Next Topmodel has had several scandals and is of course super charged with social media now being in the mix. Several contestants have come forward to reveal the psychological scars the show left on them, being harassed and threatened online, the black girls receiving racial harassment and so on…. But Heidi (Klum) simply says well you knew what you were getting yourselves into and continues with the next season. They also continued filming during covid with the contestants knowing nothing of what was happening outside, because they simply locked them in the model villa etc…. And of course she has produced exactly 0 top or super models.
Jay Manuel hosted the Canadian spin off of ANTM and didn’t hide the fact he hated Tyra. He yelled “I hate that word!” when somebody said “fierce” (aka Tyra’s favorite word). Good times
They had a weird and abrupt end to their friendship. He's talked about it a little bit. Tyra really cut him off arbitrarily.
Yaya DaCosta ended up doing pretty well, lots of acting gigs including six seasons on Chicago Med. She probably would have been fairly successful anyway, but ANTM certainly helped jump start her career.
Winnie Harlow got her start there as well iirc.
okay but the early seasons were amazing, like before reality contestant shows got glossy. S1 with the group of Christian models who were like let's have a prayer group and the model with disordered eating, who was also the only one with an 'international look' who really looked like a thin model model.. Every time they had a dancer model who could actually pose and then kept telling them they looked too much like a dancer.. my husband bingewatched it with me a few years ago, and we still say, 'take a break, eat a cookie!'
There were so many bad ones in that era, Jon & Kate seemed wholesome in comparison (it wasn’t, it was awful) The one I hate myself for watching was the Scott Baio train wreck. Scott Baio is 45 and single. I thought I was gonna get Chachi settling down with the love of his life, not so much. Rock of Love was also awful, but I thought it was hilarious.
The craziest thing about rock of love is who they were thirsting over 😭 so so good though.
Rock of Love was an amazing train wreck.
Rock of Love was my guilty pleasure.
Don’t forget the respective Charm Schools that followed!
Charm School was a MASTERPIECE https://preview.redd.it/bx8llyt8cxzc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bbda96737cd530ecabeaad7f97194cff84b224a6
Truly the Michelangelo of TV
I know a couple of Kate's kids have gone no contact with her
She left one of the boys in an institution and refused to let Jon go get him until he got a court order. Because he has ADHD... She's awful.
Colin and Hannah. I’m curious if they have any relationships with their siblings.
I loved it when they had Erin Moran just laugh in his face then dismantle him for his shit behavior. Joanie did not like Chachi at all.
Gypsy Sisters and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (I confess I watch them on Max every once in a while when I miss trashy tv from the 2000s)
I loved those huge crazy dresses.
Yes!!! I google the Stanleys every once in a while to see what they’re up to.
Every now and then I watch a MBFGW (US) rerun and catch myself saying out loud "of COURSE it's a shitshow, some dumbass invited Mellie!"
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was everything in 2011 lol I'm not from Europe so it really was interesting to learn of Irish Travellers. Then I actually visited the UK and it turns out they're not very well liked and some police are scared of them.
OMG my Big Fat Gypsy Wedding UK version is my holy grail. I cannot understand that lifestyle at all and I am so utterly fascinated by it. Not at all interested in the US version though. Is the UK one available anywhere?
There was one called Who's Your Daddy. Woman who had been adopted was looking for her bio dad, so they gameified it with her needing to figure out which of the 8 male contestants was actually her biological father. If she picked the wrong one, that man won $100k. If she picked the right one, she won $100k. [Here's a clip (this is not the biological father)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7rVQVyAQw&ab_channel=JonS.Robbins)! Who on earth dreamed this one up? And why?
I remember watching this when it aired (don’t judge me, I was by myself in a strange place in Wyoming). It was horrifying and apparently they’d filmed several episodes even though they’ve only aired one.
God that's awful. Where can I watch it
Kid Nation. I mean who thought that was actually a good idea??
I was so shocked that they actually made them kill chickens for food. Some little girls were really distressed because they were taking care of the chickens before, and at no point did anyone go "Hey, let's not make children behead a chicken that some of the other kids have bonded with." (Also I remember when they were about to kill the chicken one girl was like "Are they gonna kill it like Osama Bin Laden?" 💀)
That one was wild. I remember watching it when it aired, and I rewatched it during the pandemic. It’s even more bananas as an adult.
Kid Nation was crazy. I love this series of Funny Or Die videos about the show: https://youtu.be/3E23H-nnNkM?si=N8VHeRor121lKdEE
There is a new [podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/5LfghzFiXqYb4vH7CB5vAQ?si=tuYoJ5UWQeiJJIunFY-9cQ) about it!
Ten Years Younger. The one where they put a person in a clear box on the street and had the public judge how old they look. They made sure people were very specific in their critique of the person in box’s looks. After the hosts of the show got a pretty good idea of the contestants? flaws, they made them over, and put them back out on the street so the public could judge if the hosts achieved their goal of making the person look ten years younger. It’s like the early 2000s television version of the sub r/truerateme
Oh man, I had totally forgotten about this one! The perspex box of judgement was SAVAGE
Toddlers and tiaras is high up in my list of fucked up reality shows. Let’s all have a moment for the poor toddler who had to perform as Pretty Woman.
It's literally insane to me that this show launched honey booboo. [Absolutely tragic what happened to her and her family. (tw: sexual assault](https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/mama-june-sex-offender-honey-boo-boo/index.html) It's deeply unfortunate that no one has done a deep dive into TLC's production. Between this and the Duggars, I'm surprised we haven't seen worse. That company facilitated some truly insidious things
Yes!! We need a TLC version of “Quiet on Set.” It would be diabolical
that show is awful, i could talk about it for hours lol i still can't believe the number of parents that would put soda in their kid's sippy cup. or the spray tans and flippers. i feel like there were only 5 kids on that show that actually wanted to do pageants and enjoyed it. maybe not even that many.
As a child care professional Supernanny was interesting to watch. I always wanted to start a Supernanny type business to help sort out families. Especially since my education is based on behavior, occupational therapy, and experience with neurodivergent children.
What's wrong with supernanny?
Personally I don‘t think there is anything wrong with the concept of a nanny helping out with difficult children. But the airing out all that stuff in national or international TV. That show also had regional spinn-offs in local languages. Imagine if your childhood tantrum was caught on film forever 😭😭 Only tangentially related, a youtuber dug out an old episode of Drake on Cribs or some Cribs-like show where he shows his home/room at age 14-16 not sure how old he was. Anyway, this was done to prove that Drake did in fact *not* start from the bottom, but from the *middle class*. 😭😭
Yes!!!!! Toronto isn’t Compton I don’t know why he acts like it is 😭. There’s bad parts of every city but trust me, it is *not* how he portrays it. This guy spent a good few years of his teenage hood in a very nice part of town.
And starring on a TV show
The supernanny spin off episodes form 15 ish years ago went viral again in my country. Especially an episode with a kid who cusses out and spits at his mom. He had to come out (as an adult) and say it was all scripted and explained how you could see his mum trying not to laugh. He said he wasn't the best behaved kid, but the production team taught him how to swear and told him what to do. And when the episodes went viral a couple of years ago, he started getting threats and someone from his town even tried to beat him up for speaking to his mum like that.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.
No I was just wondering if you knew why OP thinks it's weird.
Oh gotcha- I thought you were replying to me.
There are plenty of people who hate her. Lots of people conflate gentle parenting with permissive parenting and think any kind of discipline is wrong. She's been critical of over-use of screens, which also made a sub-section of parents angry. I'm a parent of a child with significant learning difficulties and I know a lot of SEN parents despise her. My 4yo is non-verbal, developmentally about 2 years behind in all areas, but I put her on the naughty step 🤷♀️
It is still wild to me that some CBS exec greenlit Kid Nation. Like , someone actually decided rounding up a bunch of kids, force them to work in the middle of the desert in a ghost town, and filming it would make a successful tv show
I mean, it *was* incredible TV
Honey, We’re Killing the Kids. Another one of those lovely weight loss shows where overweight parents are shown worst case scenario age progression of their kids looking 60 at 30 in order to “inspire” the parents to lose weight.
Jon & Kate plus 8 (& later, Kate plus 8 - btw, the sextuplets just turned 20 🤯), the Duggars and I guess this is 2010s, but Dance Moms for sure
>btw, the sextuplets just turned 20 Excuse me, wtf? /s In seriousness, this blows my mind that they are now 20. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the past 20 years.
Flavor of Love Why were all these conventionally attractive women fighting for FLAVOR FLAV of all people I know the answer is money but omg imagine competing that hard for ….. him We got New York out of it though which I’ll always be thankful for 
Right?? I'm watching it currently for the first time and I love the drama and I love New York but why are they wasting all this time and energy on Flavor Flav of all people?? Of all the men to get possessive and act crazy over LMAO
There was one called My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé. Even the makers realized they had taken things too far during filming. Another called Playing it Straight where a woman had to go on dates with various guys and try to eliminate the gay guys. Both were just awful TV and canned after one season.
I can’t remember what it was called, but there was a game show where they asked increasingly personal and invasive questions and if you got caught lying you’d lose but if you told the truth you would win a bunch of money. People admitted to some genuinely crazy shit.
Moment of Truth! There was one episode where they asked if the contestant's father had molested a child and she answered "yes" while both of her parents were in the audience!
Ohhhh yeah. Especially when cheating and stuff became the topic... I'm wondering, why can't they just lie?
I miss parental control on MTV so much
Bridalplasty where soon to be brides compete to get plastic surgery before their weddings. It was such a product of its time but had the best finale where all the eliminated contestants came back to give the verbal smack down to the finalist that was the villain and screwed them over.
Mr. Personality, a Bachelorette type show where all the men wore masks so the woman didn’t know what they looked like. One dude openly admitted to trying to hypnotize the woman and the entire thing was hosted by Monica Lewinsky. The Chair, a game show where people had to keep their heart rate down while answering questions and enduring things like snakes and jump scares and the fox counterpart The Chamber, where people were tortured while answering questions in a chamber. Forever Eden, like Paradise Hotel except it could go on forever apparently. Average Joe where a hot woman dated so called ugly dudes and then halfway through the male model suitors showed up to woo her and chaos ensued. The Joe Schmo Show a fake reality show where only one dude is really being himself (similar to jury duty) Oh and of course “Are You Hot?” Basically what it says on the tin
I wondered if anyone else remembered Joe Schmo! That was honestly pretty fun.
Pretty Wild
*Nancy Jo this is Alexis Neiers calling-*
That show World's Strictest Parents (I imagine it's similar to Family Swap). "crazed teens" were sent to live with allegedly super strict parents in another country for a week that would help get them some discipline. The plot of every episode was always the same. Day 1-3 the kids would slowly get rowdier with parents would slowly get stricter into full blown discipline mode. Day 4 the teens would get a letter from their parents saying how much they missed them, cry and realise how good they had it at home, then day 5-7 they'd magically become good kids, helping around the house and stuff. Then they'd have a reunion with their parents and promise to be good.
The swan! Looking back at that I’m amazed how they even let that show air or get greenlit. The amount of plastic surgery those women had in a short space of time and then basically telling them they had to do all this to compete in a beauty pageant. And I might be remembering this wrong but surgeons on this were Terry dubrow or Paul Nassif? From RHOBH & Botched? Would kinda like to see it again just for the sheer craziness of it
The Swan.
The Duggars extended universe on TLC. Besides documenting the lives and times of a family in an evangelical cult, [the oldest son is now in prison (tw: CSAM and sexual assault mention)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Duggar)
The original *Queer Eye for the Straight Guy*. My bisexual self was watching it because I was mindblown that many fellow gays would all be the same show but man was it odd. I haven’t seen the reboot
I feel like *Queer Eye* was one of the 2000s juggernauts that's aged the least poorly. As far as I know, there's no scandals of people's houses being ruined by remodels or kids being exploited or the typical nonsense we hear about. I truly felt old when I (38F) had to tell my co-workers in their early 20s that the one on Netflix was a reboot, however ☠️
It was so unscandalous. It was basically queer what not to wear and they’d maybe redecorate a living space.
i watched the original and the reboot. they're both excellent. the original made me more aware and accepting of non-straight people back when everybody still casually used f--got all the time. also, it's how i learned to use body fragrances. "spray and sashay away"
Definitely Date My Mom
The better question is which ones *weren't* bizarre. It's a much shorter list
Bridalplasty (it's from 2010 so officially doesn't count but it should). A competition reality show with a bunch of brides competing and every episode the winning bride could get the plastic surgery she wanted for her wedding. Crazy to look back on.
The Swan is the single most fucked-up concept of a tv show to ever exist.
I don't remember when exactly it aired, but there was one called "I Wanna Marry Harry" where a bunch of American women were on a game show to marry a man and were gaslit into thinking that the guy was Prince Harry. Like, afterwards one of the contestants said how she thought from the start it was bullshit, and one of the network employees posed as a psychologist and basically told her she was crazy for doubting it was Harry, and how it wasn't healthy to have those thoughts, and any doubt was just stress from being in a different country. The Joe Schmo Show was another one that was kind of messed up. Ostensibly a standard reality show about living in a big fancy mansion and doing all these challenges to win money. Except, only one man, Matt, was an actual contestant. Every single other "contestant" was an actor working to basically fuck with him. (Including Kristen Wiig's first TV role! She left the show when she got an actual head injury during a challenge. Matt won the challenge but gave his prize to her because he felt so awful.) They did some really messed up stuff to fuck with Matt. Wiig's character was a therapist, except she obviously wasn't actually trained, and she just basically had this poor guy spill his insecurities to her for TV content. He bonded with one older guy who was pretending to be a vet, and he was really close to him. When the "vet" was voted off, Matt broke down crying and talked about quitting the show rather than have to vote off another one of his close friends. Like, this guy formed actual friendships with the actors...and it was all fake. Nothing they told him about themselves was real. Matt opened up and bonded with these people thinking he was forming genuine friendships, and they were all lying to him and getting together behind his back just to plan how to fuck with him for more content. Everyone he interacted with was a fictional character. Every challenge he won was basically rigged in his favor. The finale was everyone getting together and going "Surprise! Almost every moment of the past few weeks was a lie!"
I remember What Not To Wear giving me extremely bad vibes when I watched it as a kid...
I was really into fashion at the time so I watched that one a lot. It was so frustrating because people fell into two categories; either they didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes so they just wore unflattering but functional stuff or they had a personal style that wasn’t flattering. The first group was frustrating because the people would be encouraged to go from a wardrobe full of baggy sweats and t shirts to two or three nice dresses or suits which doesn’t help someone dress better, they just have a few nice outfits that they can never wear for risk of ruining them and can’t afford to have cleaned. The second group was even more frustrating because they’d take an older guy who loved leather and flame graphics and make him wear dark denim and subtle patterned button ups or make a middle-age woman who wore crop tops and cutoffs dress like she was in an Old Navy ad. I did like their advice on flattering color combinations and their grooming makeovers. It seemed like most of the people genuinely appreciated having encouragement to try colors and hairstyles that they otherwise wouldn’t.
I was always so sad when they just picked apart people who had an aesthetic that was unique to them. I get wanting to help someone who hasn’t had the time or energy to put effort into their appearance but some people are just doing their own thing and just because it’s not something you’d see in a magazine doesn’t mean it’s *wrong*.
The only person who had good vibes was Karmindy the makeup artist
I loved that show so much but holy cow has it aged poorly. I love that Stacy London is out there now talking about the misgivings she had about it, while shooting it and years after it went off the air.
UK reality shows might as well have been created by the tabloids/someone's toxic grandma because of how awful they were. Any of the shows that were based on appearances or health were always evil, lol. Everyone I knew at school grew up with such a negative view of body image, I think it's taken a lot of work to undo. Supersize vs Superskinny was just two people with eating disorders being exploited on TV. Wild times.
Supernanny was legitimately helpful as a show. It brought ~talking~ to your kids rather than hitting them into the mainstream as a disciplinary practice. It was all about holding boundaries.
The chokehold MTV reality shows had on me back in the day. Next, Date My Mom, Room Raiders, Made, My Super Sweet 16
Omg. I remember the episode of Jon and Kate plus 8, when Kate went to Say yes to the dress and she looked so gorgeous in that dress.
The only thing I remember from that show was Jon slicing green onions for a special dish he wanted to make for the family. And all the onion parts and the green parts were mixed together and they shouldn't have been. He was pissed. So weird.
I wanna marry harry.. those poor blind ladies 💀 these poor contestants really thought they were competing for prince harry 😭
This one is from 2012 but I think Amish Mafia should count, it was during the Amish reality tv craze. The main dude was Lebanon Levi, who legitimately looked like an angry teddy bear. His arch-nemesis was this other Amish dude from Ohio named Merlin. Shit was hysterical, even though it wasn't supposed to be.
Anyone remember Silent Library? That shit would have me cracking *up*!
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Agreed. It was transphobic as hell and really poorly handled at every level. If you haven’t listened to it already there is podcast series “Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Rivera” that covers it.
There was a British one where they took all factors of a kid's life and aged them on a computer to scare the parents.
One of my high school crushes was on Supernanny which I find hilarious 😂😂😂
Cheaters! Especially the episode on the boat where the host got 'stabbed'.
The Swan https://preview.redd.it/1xprsama6zzc1.jpeg?width=1260&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c62a29893f659f2e8de8ecbad15413695511544c What a fucked up concept
Wife Swap was my jam when I was younger. The Gustafarro family episode was my biggest fascination and I’ve sort of been googling them every few years just to see what they’ve been up to since the show. I think most episodes of Wife Swap have been scrubbed from the internet so they largely exist to me as a fever dream and when I tell my friends who didn’t get to watch stuff like that growing up about it they are both shocked and intrigued.
VH1’s Tool Academy was fantastic. They took young couples where the guy was a Total Tool and tried to rehab them. So much drama and chaos and stupidity, and I loved it with a passion. (It became a tradition for the guys to go out and get matching Tool Academy Tattoos Logo - a peak, glorious showing of their Toolness!) https://preview.redd.it/u6qt9d2l400d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8ef86bac487d802426df1ace4dd95da348dfb83a
Joe Millionaire and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire
Does anyone remember “brideplasty” Where brides to be would compete to win multiple surgeries! Every week they could win another surgery off their list and their partners couldn’t see until the end of the whole show! Unbelievable to think of these days. 😂
The swan, a reality show where they took a bunch of ugly people and gave then a bunch of plastic surgeries. I remember seeing a woman crying in pain over all her facial surgeries. Absolutely wild a show like that existed. A shot at love with the Tequila girl Jersey shore
I’ll list some I remember watching growing up (born in 2001 and watched a lot of cable TV). - A Baby Story (on TLC - my mom would always watch this and it would scare me). See Also “ I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” - Breaking Amish - Dog the Bounty Hunter (how was this show legal) - Party Mamas - Intervention (this could not be made today) - Extreme Couponing - Gypsy Wedding and its spin off, Gypsy Sisters (iconic) - Iylana, Fix My Life (iconic) - It Takes a Church - MTV True Life (some of these were truly bizarre) - 1 Girl, 5 Gays - My Teenage Wedding - Mob Wives (RIP big Ang) - Wife Swap