TVSquad

I'm in Los Angeles right now. From my observations: everyone is perfect looking, the weather is always beautiful, and everyone drives everywhere despite the fact that gas is approximately eleventy billion dollars a gallon and it doesn't appear that anyone is actually, you know, working. LA doesn't exist in any kind of recognizable reality. Let's put it this way: if the guys in Plato's cave were to figure out that the figures being cast onto their walls came from the Sunset Strip, they'd probably opt to stay chained up.

It stands to reason, then, that any genre springing to life in such an environment would bear no resemblance to what the rest of the world calls "reality". TV Squad therefore presents its first annual The Reality Shows Have Writers!? Award, recognizing those shows that in no way reflect a life that any human being on the planet is actually living but, for some reason, call themselves "reality shows."

If this category were a bible story, it'd be the one with the fish and the loaves: it's an idea that never stops giving. I'm excited to see what you guys come up with because I'm positive that my top five "reality shows that don't actually reflect reality" merely scratches the surface of ridiculous. Your nominations + YouTube = Happy Jay.

Here are my preliminary choices:

1. Tila Tequila. Remember that girl who hooked up with other girls at parties because for some reason it made guys go "wooooo!"? Well, apparently that's a TV show now.

2. Flava of Love. Has ever an artist responsible for an achievement as powerful as Fear of a Black Planet ever fallen so far? This show is like watching Picasso sell caricatures at the beach.

3. Farmer Takes a Wife. I had to review this for TV Squad, so I'm intimately familiar with how terrible it is. Apparently all it takes for city women to fall in love with a farmer is seeing him once with his shirt off.

4. Last Comic Standing. This show is to being a stand-up what Homeboys in Outer Space is to being an astronaut.

5. The Real World. Remember when this show was a bold experiment in capturing the way people interact with one another? Well, now it's a bold experiment in capturing all the ways twentysomethings interact with margaritas!

This is only a temporary list. Let me know what you think are the least real reality shows in the comments!