MetaFilter posts tagged with realitytv

Jon & Kate Plus 8: raising twins and sextuplets on reality TV

jaimev — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:45:19 -0800

You're a couple in your 20s, with twin girls. Desiring to have just one more child, your fertility treatments result in sextuplets. You are the Gosselin family and your reality TV show is about to start a 4th season. You have your admirers and of course, cri tics.

they're more like can openers than iron chefs

heeeraldo — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:47:37 -0800

"Iron Chef America is more bogus than even I had imagined." Iron Chef America is a strange beast. The trans-Pacific knockoff of a beloved and quirky Japanese cooking game show (wikipedia) didn't have a very successful first attempt at localization. The current incarnation seems to have ironed out many of the original kinks, even though it seemed like something wasn't quite right. previously discussed on MeFi: 1, 2, 3 (also mentioned above), and 4. [via Serious Eats]

I don't care if you cry and cut, but you better cry and cut.

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:18:16 -0800

The Near-Fame Experience: A fascinating interview with former contestants of Bravo reality television shows Project Runway and Top Chef, presenting the fickle nature of fame and how it can come at significant professional and personal cost, if at all.

Fauxhawk or faux character?

MythMaker — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:27:03 -0800

Was American Idol's Sanjaya a fraud? Graduate art student Bill Vendall claims that he created the American Idol character "Sanjaya" as an art project. He claims the character is "a symbol for the self referencing nature of progressive evolution." This is being debated around the internets.

Win In China!

Burhanistan — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 08:32:21 -0800

Win in China! A "reality" TV show in China where young would be entrepreneurs compete for a large pile of startup cash to actualize their business ideas. Not everyone is happy about the glorification of capitalism, of course, and one losing contestant may have committed suicide, but overall reaction in China to the show seems positive. Video clips here (also a full length article by the Atlantic if you have a paid subscription).

War on Everything

augustweed — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:53:00 -0800

The Chasers reveal the irrelevant of many surveillance cameras and the ignorance of many Americans by declaring War on Everything.

Is Tyra A Workplace Tyrant?

jonp72 — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:07:47 -0800

America's Next Top Picket Line Writers from America's Next Top Model have gone on strike after the Writers Guild of America West began a campaign to unionize reality TV. How many strikes do you know have their own MySpace page, Television without Pity interview, and a model "working it" on the picket line? Ironically, a previous 1988 writers' strike encouraged the current boom in reality TV, as this article argues.

Meow Meow Meow Meow [ad infinitum]

milquetoast — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:23:03 -0800

Ten contestants. Ten days. They all grew up in shelters -- but one of them will claw his or her way to the top. It's the Meow Mix House, where ten cats will vie to become Meow Mix's Feline Vice President of Research and Development. (And, win or lose, they will all be adopted by families.) The webcams. [ article || via ]

Sex, check. Drugs, check. What, no rock & roll?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:39:38 -0800

Today in the Netherlands, public broadcaster BNN aired the first episode of sex- and drug-themed television show "Spuiten en Slikken"; the punning title translates to either "Shoot Up & Pop (Pills)" or "Squirt & Swallow". [more inside]

Amelie Nothomb's "Sulphuric Acid"

matteo — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:24:53 -0800

Novelist posits Shoah as reality TV show. In her new book titled ’Sulphuric Acid’ published in France, the successful Belgian author Amelie Nothomb describes a “concentration camp reality show”. It's the story of a reality show called “Concentration”. There are ’candidates’ which are arrested in roundups, tattooed and guarded before they are executed one by one following a vote by the spectators.