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TOP 10 WORST REALITY SHOWS OF 2014

TURK182: This is Reality TV Guide, and we came to make everyone feel better about themselves. I’m Turk182!

XTRA MAN: I’m Xtra Man.

GOSSIP WOMAN: I’m Gossip Woman.

LOUD MOUTH: My name’s Loud Mouth.

POPS ROSS E.: I’m Pops Ross E.

JACK S.: I’m Jack S.

JOE AVERAGE: And I’m Joe Average, the intern.

TURK182: Today, the staff at Reality TV Guide are getting together to talk about the 10 Worst Reality Shows of 2014.

LOUD MOUTH: This was a list that the entire group decided on as a whole.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Warren Mitchell Editorial

When Does Reality TV Become A Guilty Pleasure? – EDITORIAL

Reality TV has been called everything in the book: sterile, fabricated, wooden, brainwashing, corny, dumb as sand, and manipulative. Yet, for every reality show we can avoid, there are others that we can’t stay away from. Why is that? Why do we continuously get drawn into a typical catfight on the Real Housewives franchise? Or a typical Kim Kardashian scene on Keeping Up with the Kardashians? Or a typical short-term romance on The Bachelor? Or even a typical Johnny Bananas appearance on The Challenge? Why do we continuously watch these shows when other reality shows like ABC’s 2012 bust, The Glass House, fail so terribly? How bad does a reality show have to get until, for some reason, it’s actually good?

The second thing that a reality show can provide us is hope for something intelligent. When you watch something real happen, you want to learn something from it. Reality shows like COPS, Deadliest Catch and Man vs. Wild work with critics because they go into their everyday professional lives with a high emphasis on authenticity. Improvement shows like Intervention, Extreme Makeover and The Biggest Loser work because you’re actually seeing people change some habits that are hard to control. There are shows that defy criticism because they aim to not only be real, but also educational. When your show airs on Discovery, History, Food Network, A&E, or even TLC, that’s basically how you’re going to get that education. Yet, that can even be found in the most absurd reality shows.

Take a look at 16 and Pregnant, a popular reality show on MTV. Since its debut in 2009, the docu-series has showcased several teenage females juggling high school and impending pregnancy. It’s gone on for five seasons now, and there have been three spin-offs chronicling the stars’ transition to motherhood: Teen Mom, Teen Mom 2, and Teen Mom 3. The topic of teenage pregnancy has been criticized for years, because females aren’t supposed to get pregnant before they turn 18. Even worse, the father can go to jail if he’s above the age of 18. The legal system can really shudder at a written report of a teenage pregnancy, let alone a TV show about it. 16 and Pregnant got a lot of criticism, and it continues to get criticized, considering that new pregnant teens come in each season. The criticism for the Teen Mom franchise has been even more relentless, because most of the women prove to be unfit mothers. Same goes for the fathers. Yet, why do those shows continue on?

Let’s get one thing clear: it’s not because of the revolving door of pregnant teens. It’s because of the real-life focus that it centers around: parenthood. This is something that happens every day. Even for those above the age of 18. On 16 and Pregnant, each episode spends most of the time featuring the girls struggle to understand the consequences and responsibilities, but all the criticism that their parents and peers give them must immediately go out the window when the baby is born. The miracle of life is too precious to criticize, unless it’s the spawn of Satan. And trust me, these girls were nowhere near him. For the Teen Mom franchise, it doesn’t have that “giving birth” aspect to distract the nay-sayers, but these girls still face the task of becoming parents. Most of these girls do try to learn about those responsibilities, and they do try to get it right. The biggest guarantee from those shows is that these girls are learning about that kind of maturity, even when results vary. A storyline that highlights a deadbeat dad on a reality show can be made up easily. The birth of a child on a reality show cannot be made up. 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom are examples of reality shows that are two different sides to a coin. They can be trashy and fabricated, but they have so many topics to explore. These two reality shows have as much to do with “reality” as sitcoms have to do with “comedy”.

The third thing that a reality show can provide us is hope for something different or subtle.

Now, to support this claim, we turn to Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Yes, Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a source of subtle reality TV. Here’s why. Each family member

With the recent cancellation of FOX’s Utopia, you can only wonder where it went wrong and why it isn’t a guilty pleasure. Put simply, it wasn’t a good format. It sounded good at first, but it came out bland. Mainly because it set its goals too big without really thinking about its cons. To have a new reality show run for a full 365-day span on its first season alone is impossible, because it’s too high of a goal to achieve. Plus, the format overall felt too familiar. Same thing with MTV’s Jersey Shore. A lot of people called it the trashiest show that reality TV has ever put out. Its fans, on the other hand, were big enough to give it a guilty pleasure status. What I’ve come to realize is that… it’s neither one. Truth be told, it was just a fad that had no long-term potential. All it did was put a random disguise over an overused concept. Sure, it’s polarizing and offensive, but above all of that, it was sterile. We’ve seen it before so much, especially during its time period, that instead of pushing people’s limits, it pandered to the demographic that was more likely to watch it. It didn’t have that long shelf-life that Keeping Up with the Kardashians has because it’s already been done, and we’ve already seen it.

Even when it has a tried-and-true format, a guilty pleasure reality show needs to grab your attention in a new way. You’ve seen fake celebrities pretend to be fake celebrities. You haven’t seen a fake celebrity put on a 4-hour wedding special. You’ve seen catfights happen on reality TV. You haven’t seen a woman flip over a table at a restaurant. You’ve seen relationships fail on reality TV. You haven’t seen a guy dump his first choice for someone at second-best. You’ve seen greedy competitors cheat their way to victory. You haven’t seen Johnny Bananas get thrown into a trash can. When that show can provide that moment that’s uniquely new, it has a chance at staying on the air and staying fresh in everyone’s mind.

And at the end of the day, that’s all it takes. A reality show needs to be interesting, it needs to be attention-grabbing, and it needs to set itself apart from the other similar shows. It can even do all three of those. Either way, those qualities can make a reality show so bad and, at the same time, so good.