6 Reality Shows That Aren't Just Fake, They're Outright Evil

A decade before Donald Trump was within percentage points of becoming the most powerful man on Earth, The Apprentice was a groundbreaking reality show that saw a bunch of ambitious business-y go-getters undertake a series of business-related challenges, culminating in dramatic boardroom yelling-sessions over stock reality show "DUN-DUN!" noises. At the end of each episode, one loser received Trump's elimination catchphrase, "I am afraid we must part ways." (Paraphrasing.)

Winners were promised the prize of a "top" corporate position in the big boss' company to aid their business careers (thus, the title of the show). Instead, according to the accounts of many past winners, their actual jobs mostly consisted of being a spokesperson for the Trump brand, helping to promote projects by making radio and TV appearances, attending meet-and-greets, and talking to the press. That is, you show up at places as "The Winner Of The Apprentice" and shill stuff for The Donald. Congrats, Business Champions! Now go tell the PIGGY 103 "Morning Asylum" about how Trump Bottled Water "changes the wetness game!"

Such little growth opportunity was offered by The Apprentice that Randal Pinkett, one of the early winners, has the same job now that he had before winning the show a decade ago. Winners did receive a nice paycheck and enhanced public visibility -- as well as extremely not-made-up-sounding titles like "Owner's Representative" -- but the actual corporate significance of the jobs they fought for was laughably overblown.

Trump himself has admitted to it, explaining the deception as being "truthful hyperbole" and stating, "It's a little bit too much to ask someone to be the president of a $800 million building when they haven't had that kind of experience." Which actually makes a lot of sense! Except it's also the entire premise of the show. That'd be like American Idol declaring "There's a bunch of professional singers out there, why should we give a record deal to this random amateur just 'cause they sang really well 37 weeks in a row?"

Naturally, Trump has also publicly bashed many of these contestants, calling the aforementioned Randal Pinkett a terrible failure and dismissing six contestants who spoke out against his presidential campaign as "six failing wannabes" who "just want to get back into the limelight."

The "limelight" he's referring to, for the record, was aspiring executives fighting tooth and nail for a made-up position as a glorified timeshare salesperson. Which, in a way, may actually be an invaluable lesson about job searches in general.

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But alas, outside the editing bay, the show wasn't all it was pimped up to be. For one thing, the show did nothing in terms of actually mechanically improving anyone's car. Pimpee Seth Martino was barely able to even drive his car home after the show -- after all was said and pimped, he ended up having to spend $1700 of his own money to fix the engine. The changes made by the Pimp team were purely cosmetic, and in some cases even damaged the car further -- the extra weight of the new features damaged the wheels and suspension.

In other cases, the new features in the pimped cars didn't even work in real life (as in, they functioned just enough to look cool exactly once, for the camera) and some were legitimately dangerous. Some of the LED lights, for example, got unbearably hot if left on too long. And that's if people even got to keep them -- the show often revoked the luxurious features immediately after the episode had finished filming.

Were these haphazard pimpages the unfortunate result of a short turnaround time? Nope! Contestants had to wait six damned months for the show to finish with their automobiles, despite the rigorous editing to make the whole process look as quick as Xzibit's music career. Participants weren't even reimbursed for their rental car during the half-year carless limbo the show put them through.

And, for good measure, the show exaggerated the bad conditions of people's cars prior to being pimped, thereby completely humiliating them and exploiting stereotypes. We're talking about filling an overweight person's car full of candy wrappers or adding dozens of cigarette butts to make someone's smoking grandma look bad. It's like they were just exploiting these people for money! What kind of a "pimp" does that?

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Oh, and two of the advancing comics happened to be managed by producers of the show, and another made it the following season when the executive producer took him on as a client.

Even if we chalk this up as a classic "all competitive reality shows are really controlled by producers" moment, the show has also taken more deliberate, dare we say "shittier" liberties with their selective editing. Take the case of comedian Ben Kronberg.

Like all the contestants, Kronberg was a professional comic with a resume -- this show isn't for people coming in off the street. He made it to the semi-finals stage of the competition in Season 8. His first joke was an experimental bit where he "flicks through his phone for a few seconds, then through his joke notebook, then looks up at the audience and says, 'What? Like you guys start working right when you get to your jobs?'" He opened a Comedy Central half-hour with this bit, and at the taping for Last Comic Standing, it earned him an applause break.

When the show actually aired, though, the editors added a graphic of a timer on the screen during that bit to emphasize the passage of time. The camera would then cut to the judges looking displeased and cut into the audience reaction to make the reception sound less enthused. Roseanne berated Kronberg for wasting the audience's time. The show cut it so the audience cheered her, followed by Kronberg asking the crowd if that's how they feel and them cheering even louder. What actually happened was Kronberg asking if they liked the joke and the audience cheered. And then, he asked if they agreed with Roseanne and they also cheered. Which makes them seem less like a crowd out for vengeance, and more like every audience pumped to be at a TV taping.

It wasn't a case of editors trying to make huge chunks of reality footage more watchable or to add a coherent story -- they deliberately turned something into the opposite of what it was, with a professional comedian's reputation on the line. Though it did earn the editors a spot on NBC's summer reality show, Last Editor Standing (Or Sitting. The Point Being, Remaining, Like In The Competition, We Mean. Your First Assignment Is To Edit This Title).

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But then: Controversy. DOG CONTROVERSY. The worst kind of controversy. Besides most kinds.

During the final performance, the winning act secretly swapped in a similar-looking stunt-dog for a high wire maneuver instead of Matisse, the popular dog who people had been voting for the entire competition. This impressive stunt boosted the act to a whole new level, but the show never mentioned on camera that a different dog was being used. More than 13 million unknowing viewers crowned Matisse "Most Talent-Got Organism" (or whatever) and you may think that, really, this is no big deal. A dog still did the stunt, right?

You would be wrong; complaints poured in to Ofcom (the UK version of the FCC) from thousands of viewers who had paid money to vote (half a pound per call!). The government was forced to look into it and came to the conclusion that, in fact, the show had misled viewers via the kind of wacky shenanigans you'd expect in a talent competition held inside an '80s teen movie. They were forced to apologize, and had to refund the money of everyone who voted.

Basically, the entire rest of Britain's talent-having hopefuls were put at a disadvantage by an unannounced stunt-pooch (the contestant said the other dog had to perform the high-wire stunt because -- and this is not a joke -- the main dog was afraid of heights). Looks like Britain's Got Talent doesn't "got" INTEGRITY.

Fair enough.

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The show is entirely fake, but not just "producers pull some strings" fake. Like, "none of the stuff ever happened and it's on the contestants to fake everything" fake.

House Hunters actually rejects contestants who are genuinely in need of a new house, and only builds episodes around people who've already bought one. The show then makes participants do all the work in terms of constructing a deception that they're still house hunting, and it's the participants' job to find the two other houses they're "considering."

One such indentured contestant was Bobi Jensen, who not only had already bought a house with no help from the show, but she also ended up having to ask two of her friends to let them use their houses to pose as houses on the market which they were "considering" buying. The friends had to scrub their places for the TV cameras so Bobi could walk through them and explain exactly why she wouldn't want to live there. Needless to say, Bobi left owing two friends future rides to the airport / help moving / endless any-favors.

None of this is even secret. The show has admitted to it.

You may be thinking, "Why not just not go on the show then?" Which is fair. But who could possibly turn down the chance to say "I could see us having coffee out here, or a glass of wine," on a fake patio of a fake home $600,000 above your budget, on basic cable? That's bucket list territory.

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So in effect, the show is galvanizing the audience to brutally humiliate any acts that the bosses don't want, and influence who the judges keep or dismiss during the audition phase. Producers are essentially pre-eliminating contestants. But again, that's borderline-ish standard "questionable reality show" meddling. Here's where it takes a darker turn:

One of these booed-off-the-stage performers was a circus act. The mother of one of the members was in the audience during their failed audition, and from her vantage point, she witnessed firsthand that the audience was told to boo her (and other acts) by producers on the floor. What makes the story much worse is that this circus act had been recruited by the show to perform. They begged them.

In fact, the show spent seven straight fucking years persuading the group to audition before they finally agreed and it turns out, the show's only aim was to shame them and coerce the audience into booing them off the stage. That's way more evil than Britain's wimpy little Stunt-Dog-gate. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Insane but true facts can be found on Markos' Twitter account. Wes Corwin is a stand-up comedian currently residing in Memphis, TN. You can follow him on Twitter here, or listen to his jokes and/or podcasts here.

For more reality TV bullshit, check out 5 Depressing Realities Behind Popular Reality TV Shows and 17 Depressing Things Popular Reality Shows Don't Tell You.

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