Wednesday, April 16, 2014

What's the trashiest reality show?

Recently, a friend asked me which reality show is the trashiest. I had to think about it for a solid week because, frankly, there are so many options. 

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is pretty trashy, not because the Roma people are bad at all, but because I feel really guilty that the secretive people have opened up
their culture and homes to Western criticism and the media has portrayed them so atrociously. This is a group where the life expectancy is in the 50s for men. To put it in perspective, America hasn't seen that average age of death since the 1930s. The Romany finally trust mainstream culture enough to agree to filming, and we mock them. Classy.

And I know everyone thinks the Jersey Shore was pretty trashy. It was, but do we really know how many of those fights were scripted? I too would swing punches at $100k and episode. Yes, that's my price (and Pauly D's, too).

But the trashiest show I've ever seen is actually the obscure Battle of the Bods, based on the hit British show Hot Tub Ranking. Running from 2007 through 2009 on Fox Reality Channel, it's shot in tri-round game show format. 

The premise isn't very complex: Five women in swimwear line up and 3 men behind a two-way mirror rank them by face, another body part that is voted on by the women (legs, butt, or something), and then by overall appearance. Then, the women switch places and vote on the men for one round because, as everyone knows, what women look like is much more important than what men look like. (Insert sarcasm here.) There's a small amount of prize money too, if the women can rank themselves by guessing how the men ranked them. This is because there aren't enough jobs where women get paid for being attractive. (Sarcasm.) 

I've watched all three seasons, and during every episode, I scream at the women on the other side of the screen to play strategically by setting aside their personal hang-ups and actually thinking about how guys think. I'll pay you $100 if you can guess whether that ever happens. By the way, you can watch this trash for free on Hulu. You don't even have to have Hulu Plus, that's how good it is. Just make sure your children are fast asleep, because who would want to expose young minds to this stuff? I highly recommend the first episode in the series. Not a round goes by without tears. I can't imagine why parading around naked on television and being ranked like steak would be so upsetting. 

But really, it's trash.

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