TVSquad

Considering how prevalent reality television is these days, it's got to be a pretty daunting task to try and put together a comprehensive list of the best and worst of all time. But Entertainment Weekly thinks they've done just that. They've compiled the top 20 reality shows of all time, but also the ten worst reality shows of all time. All in all, they did a pretty damned good job.

I completely agree with the top six, but they lose me with Jackass at number seven. I have never understood the appeal of filming morons doing stupid things on purpose just to be stupid. But there were some shows missing from the list completely, like Little People Big World, So You Think You Can Dance and Beauty and the Geek. Surely those shows are better than The Hills and The Real Housewives of Sesame Street, or whatever franchise they're spinning now.

For some, watching relationship-based reality programming is not their idea of a pleasant night in. Why should they watch shows about finding and keeping love when it takes so long to find that right person in real life? Yet, since the mid-'60s, viewers have turned-in to watch others search for their soul mate. Or, at least their soul mate of the hour.

Of course, in the time of the Reality Revolution, the way love was found on television changed a bit. Rather than asking a simple set of questions to a set of bachelors or bachelorettes sitting behind a wall, men and women would compete for the love of a well-to-do bachelor or bachelorette, or a rapper/model, or a washed up 80s hair band star. They would even compete to see if their love could withstand an onslaught of temptation.

Sometimes they would find their one true love on these reality show. Other times they would be tossed away, their hearts broken, like a piece of paper. Along the way they would be love, sex, fights, sex, heartfelt moments, and sex. With reality programming being what it is, the viewers ate it all up.

Screener Hell is an semi-regular feature in which lead blogger Keith McDuffee tries to fry my brain with the worst TV has to offer.

(S02E01/S02E02) Do you have any idea how bad a show you have to be to include several scenes of gratuitous nudity and still be boring!? I love nudity. The more unnecessary the nudity, the better. My favorite kind of nudity is that mid-'90s Cinemax nudity where the main character, despite her ongoing undercover investigation into the exotic world of high-class prostitution, decides to take a shower for 20 minutes for no good reason at all. I'll watch pretty much any kind of claptrap if it includes that kind of nudity.

But not this show. Not Foursome. There is no amount of tanned, taut Californian wannabe-actress flesh that could get me to watch another minute of this show. Please, don't think this is because I'm maturing; the show is just that bad...

(S04E10) Hey Pam will you... wait for me one second while I tie my shoe?

For everything that happened this week -- a return to form for those of you who were upset that the previous two episodes strayed from the confines of Dunder-Mifflin -- I believe it's that question (and Pam's reaction to it) that will set up the conflict over the remaining episodes of the season. I'm about as good at reading female facial signals as Rain Man, but even I could tell that Pam's face during the "proposal" wasn't exactly filled with the kind of joy you'd expect it would be. Maybe the producers are just giving us a red herring and Pam's reaction tonight will be the equivalent of Lost's four-toed statue (interesting for a blip, then forgotten about) or maybe things are not all that well in JAM-land.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the rest of the episode first...