Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Snorting his way across the USA
I was going to post this in the Pet Peeves thread, but I feel it deserves a thread in its own.

First of all, as a preface, I'm not a big time TV person and usually only watch it in the morning at the gym or maybe major sports events on the weekends. And I'm not big on reality TV shows either, except that I appreciate that they generally make an attempt to keep things interesting by traveling to interesting places, and instilling competition in to the theme. And plus they know how to film stuff.

Well, there has been this one show, it is a reality TV show, and it is occasionally playing on one of the screens at the gym. It is called 'Chrisley Knows Best.' This show is absolutely none of the above. It's horrid. It's just your average wealthy family being followed around by amateur videographers with no training or experience in cinematographic arts. To top it, It isn't even the slightest bit interesting. There is no actual real drama. The acting is really bad, but then again, ostensibly, they aren't actors, they are real people. Don't ask me what the distinction is, other than by labeling it 'reality TV' they can justify amateurish scripted dialogue. Watching this thing is like watching a train wreck. It's like watching Facebook Kenny make a fool of himself on social media as he earns his 777 type rating in an SR22. Except, the whole Kenny thing is somewhat entertaining and mildly dramatic. Except to his psychiatrist, to which it is majorly dramatic.

Nowadays, with the advent of ebooks and self-publishing outlets like Amazon Kindle Direct and Smashwords and the like, anyone of any level of literacy can compile some chapters together, call it a book, and throw it out there as a published work. I do it myself even. But as a result, there is a LOT of worthless crap out there in e-pub land. This show is the television equivalent.

Let's say we followed @SixPapaCharlie around with a video camera. No, cancel that. That might actually be interesting. No, it would be downright scary. Bad example. Okay how about following @Greg Bockelman around. No, we might see some flight time in a 195 plus all the things that happen in the 737 cockpit that he isn't willing to cop to publicly. Another bad example. Okay I'm having a hard time finding a POA member that works as a prop. Okay wait a minute. Henning. No, I could sell that. Ron Levy. There we go - follow Ron Levy around with a video camera night and day. Other than his daily breakfast meetings with the Chief Counsel, I'm sure his life is fairly mundane. That would be a good analogy.

There must be some demographic that likes this Chrisley show or it wouldn't air, but what that demographic is, escapes me. If I were the network executive, he'd have to pay me, a lot, to subsidize the air time. Actually, that might just be the case.
 
Here's the thing...it is no longer even "reality" TV...it is just "Unscripted" TV...they are ALL fake reality and produced to a tee...including that train wreck you saw. They are just tabloid magazine drama in TV format.

American Pickers...fake...all set up ahead of time and was the brain child of Mike Wolf for that show and scenes are reshot multiple times with produces on site. Items are pre selected and pre negotiated before they even roll cameras.

All those house hunting shows...fake....they find buyers that have already bought and closed on a house then take them to see two others for drama.

Remodel shows...fake...hosts just come in for a few key shots then are out the door leaving all the designs and work to others.

Gold Rush...that show has a production crew of 250 people in Alaska. All of the major deals are set up by the producers.

Pawn Stars...they have actually pulled items OFF their own shelves for someone to come in to "sell" to the shop.

So you are not even watching reality anymore but they are easier and cheaper to produce than scripted sitcoms and dramas.
 
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What..???? You mean Honey Boo Boo wasn't real...????

My whole life is just a waste now.....:lol::lol::loco:
 
Okay how about following @Greg Bockelman around. No, we might see some flight time in a 195 plus all the things that happen in the 737 cockpit that he isn't willing to cop to publicly.

Didn't Greg sell the 195 quite some time ago? He has a new/different toy now. And he doesn't seem to want to put it in a packing crate to move it to Guam. ;)
 
My whole life is just a waste now.....:lol::lol::loco:

You do realize this was likely true before you started watching that, considering it had to be happening long before you willing picked up a remote control and tuned that in... Hehehe.
 
American Pickers...fake...all set up ahead of time and was the brain child of Mike Wolf for that show and scenes are reshot multiple times with produces on site. Items are pre selected and pre negotiated before they even roll cameras.
American Pickers came to my tiny little hometown in Ohio once. Apparently they kept trying to hide all of the good things in "hard-to-get-to" places, so they could get the good shots. I think they also brought some of their own stuff to "buy" from the person in case they didn't find anything they actually wanted.
 
Another terrible show is "Big Brother." My girlfriend likes it for some reason. I'm not sure what it's even about even though I've probably tried watching it four times now with her. Not sure why I've tried four times... That's like saying I tried touching fire four times in a row-- It's still gonna be painful every time.
 
Another terrible show is "Big Brother." My girlfriend likes it for some reason. I'm not sure what it's even about even though I've probably tried watching it four times now with her. Not sure why I've tried four times... That's like saying I tried touching fire four times in a row-- It's still gonna be painful every time.

As best as I can tell, it's dumb people sitting around in a kitchen or a hot tub babbling about the other dumb people.

There was some "marathon" on the other night of some "after hours" version of it where one of the idiots put dishwasher soap in a washing machine and another talked about how her life was going to be great just as soon as she left her small home town. Meanwhile some dude walked around with his shirt off.

This was learned by leaving the TV on in the office on some channel that was chosen for background noise, and then finding this stuff on hours later. I kinda stared at the train wreck for a while, while I waited for my iPad to finish updating.
 
What about Kount's Kustoms? I was thinking of asking them to paint my plane.
 
This is why I don't have cable anymore. American tv is just ****e anymore. All the decent shows are just blatant rip offs of foreign shows. Most of my time watching the boob tube is spent watching British murder mysteries. It seems that the tv channels get something good going like let's say, longmire, then they cancel it do they can show reruns of dog the bounty hunter. They did the same thing with one of the greatest shows to ever come out, Nero Wolfe !
These companies do this crap because they don't have to pay actors and large production budgets. It is easier to get some clowns together at a storage shed, plant dome cheap crap in it and tell them to bid the amount of calories they ate the day before.
They wonder why people are getting rid of cable at an absurd rate.
 
Pawn Stars...they have actually pulled items OFF their own shelves for someone to come in to "sell" to the shop.
Speaking of Pawn Stars, I met Rick briefly when I went to Vegas, this past June. He opened a bar next to the pawn shop and I caught him as he was going in to bartend a few nights during the week. Not a friendly guy.
 
Speaking of Pawn Stars, I met Rick briefly when I went to Vegas, this past June. He opened a bar next to the pawn shop and I caught him as he was going in to bartend a few nights during the week. Not a friendly guy.
Look at him. Would you leave your kids alone with that guy? He looks like he owns a windowless van with the words "free candy" on the side.
When my ex and I went to Vegas four or five years ago she went to his shop and said the same thing, said they were all aholes.

Speaking of children, whatever happened to the guy who had that reality show about the gun shop in Baton Rouge ? Wasn't he molesting his granddaughter or daughter and got caught?
 
Hmmmm so sac is on facebook then... Follows kenny. Then we have likely crossed paths in one of those groups... So which one is he...

Well I don't "follow" him in the sense that I click on the button that says "follow", but I've been looking at his Failbook through links.

I'm actually fairly anti Facebook, but some foreign based coworkers faked a Facebook page of me with lots of drunken shots at bars with me all over Azian chicks and it was pretty ugly. After that was cleared up I made my own, for no other reason than to make sure that didn't happen again.
 
Did the tour of American restoration (one way to cut my gambling losses) met Rick's kid, not a nice guy, full of himself!

Did the Kount's Kustom tour also, they seemed nice.
 
Look at him. Would you leave your kids alone with that guy? He looks like he owns a windowless van with the words "free candy" on the side.
When my ex and I went to Vegas four or five years ago she went to his shop and said the same thing, said they were all aholes.

Speaking of children, whatever happened to the guy who had that reality show about the gun shop in Baton Rouge ? Wasn't he molesting his granddaughter or daughter and got caught?
I agree completely, I shouldn't have been surprised in the way he acted but I was. You expect them to be a certain way based off the TV show but it all changes meeting them in person. The family isn't in the gig for their fans, because they don't give one about them. Money talks and that's all they care about, clearly.
 
Only reality show I watch is "Battlebots". Unscripted, and probably not too much is rigged. Yes, they're not "robots", but it's fun to watch two armored/armed RCs knock each other silly.

The ring announcer is funnier than hell, too....

http://www.slate.com/articles/video...w_more_entertaining_than_fighting_robots.html

Ron "In the blue square...." Wanttaja
We used to watch the Japanese ninja warrior and mxc, just for the commentary. "Right you are Ken".
Then the us networks had to make crappy copies with zero appeal and horrid announcers. The us versions are so watered down and boring, what a shame.

 
We used to watch the Japanese ninja warrior and mxc, just for the commentary. "Right you are Ken".
Then the us networks had to make crappy copies with zero appeal and horrid announcers. The us versions are so watered down and boring, what a shame.

I loved the old MXC! So funny. Japanese game shows are ridiculous.
 
Speaking of Pawn Stars, I met Rick briefly when I went to Vegas, this past June. He opened a bar next to the pawn shop and I caught him as he was going in to bartend a few nights during the week. Not a friendly guy.

Did the tour of American restoration (one way to cut my gambling losses) met Rick's kid, not a nice guy, full of himself!

Did the Kount's Kustom tour also, they seemed nice.

My sister lives in Vegas and is a server at that Toby Keith bar. She says all the pawn stars guys are some of the rudest douche nozzles. And this is a bar owned by Toby Keith, so you know there are a lot of douche nozzles that come in there.
 
We used to watch the Japanese ninja warrior and mxc, just for the commentary. "Right you are Ken".
Then the us networks had to make crappy copies with zero appeal and horrid announcers. The us versions are so watered down and boring, what a shame.


Wipeout was at least worth a few chuckles at times, as a very weak sauce knockoff of the Japanese stuff.
 
Nobody mentioned "Undercover Boss"? Amazing how they find these "team members and/or associates" to help out each week. The only thing I even semi-believe is the CEO is clueless.

BTW, ever meet a really nice Pawn Broker?

Cheers
 
We used to watch the Japanese ninja warrior and mxc, just for the commentary. "Right you are Ken".

Loved MXC; it was like combination of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Woody Allen's movie "What's Up Tiger Lily".

Favorite MXC: One episode had some weird guys in Chinese costumes, with white makeup, who hopped everywhere they went. Just kind of shrugged it off at the time.

Years later, I happened to tune by an old Asian film that had the same types of characters. Turns out they were the Chinese versions of vampires, who are in rigor mortis and can only move by hopping.

And they say you can't learn anything on television......

Ron Wanttaja
 
I saw about 5 minutes of that Survivor show about 15 years or so ago and, after having actually lived in the middle of a rainforest for a summer (study abroad program in college), I could tell in the first 10 seconds it was fake. The girls were way too put together. The second you step into a rainforest, you're covered in sweat, mosquito bites and spiders. There were a couple girls in my program who tried to wear makeup, but gave up after the first couple days. That's the first and last time I've watched a reality show... unless you consider Facebook a reality show.
 
My sister lives in Vegas and is a server at that Toby Keith bar. She says all the pawn stars guys are some of the rudest douche nozzles. And this is a bar owned by Toby Keith, so you know there are a lot of douche nozzles that come in there.

I'm pretty sure signing up to be a waitress in Vegas comes with a disclaimer that you'll be dealing with douche-nozzles for a living.

It's Vegas. Where are there not douche-nozzles if you're anywhere near the strip? Heck, in a pinch I can even fill in as one when I'm bored and drunk there.

Pro tip: The little one story casino next to the IP in the little u-shaped loop on the strip has $1 bottles of beer. I can't remember the name.

Walk there with friends, order like three rounds all at once. Get loaded there, at a whopping price of someone whipping out a $20, and then head to a bar at the Bellagio across the street for stupid-people-watching. One drink over there will run you more than it cost to get the entire group hammered.

Then find a fun craps table somewhere. A loud one. It's about all that's interesting in Vegas anymore.
 
My sister lives in Vegas and is a server at that Toby Keith bar. She says all the pawn stars guys are some of the rudest douche nozzles. And this is a bar owned by Toby Keith, so you know there are a lot of douche nozzles that come in there.
o_O Jeez... There's no excuse for that. The Pawn Stars in all honesty are absolute nobodies. It's only a matter of time before their show is taken off and they'll be back to square 1. I hope they can enjoy it while it lasts. After my encounter with Rick, I haven't had the desire to watch them anymore. :no:
 
My trips to sin city these days consist of hitting a couple of good buffets and riding a few roller coasters.
 
Two data points:
1) Back in the 60s, there was an outdoorsman fishing show called The Flying Fisherman, starring Roscoe ("Gadabout") Gaddis. One summer, he and his crew packed in to the same lake in the High Sierras where my father, brother, and I were camping. Fishing was miserable, but they finally caught one. My father was watching closely, and they finally apologized to him for filming Mr. Gaddis catch that same fish five or six times in different spots around the lake. After that, I could never watch the show without presuming it was faked. I still feel the same way about most other wilderness documentaries.
2) A close friend of mine owned a struggling restaurant, and finally called "Restaurant Impossible" for assistance. The remodeling crew came out two weeks before Robert Irvine showed up, and they had all the plans laid out, permits pulled, and supplies purchased *before* Mr. Irvine presented his on-screen inspirational ideas for the remodeling of the building. In the "before" scenes, old restaurant equipment was planted, and debris was placed in the walk-in to make it look like more of a wreck than it ever was. Total garbage show.
 
My trips to sin city these days consist of hitting a couple of good buffets and riding a few roller coasters.
The Bellagio Buffet and In N Out are my two go to joints in Vegas. ;)
 
o_O Jeez... There's no excuse for that. The Pawn Stars in all honesty are absolute nobodies. It's only a matter of time before their show is taken off and they'll be back to square 1. I hope they can enjoy it while it lasts. After my encounter with Rick, I haven't had the desire to watch them anymore. :no:
Deadliest Catch; Dog, The Bounty Hunter; and Duck Dynasty all survive. And you can find COPS on somewhere nearly 24/7. Studios make them on the cheap, sell them to the networks, and probably make a bundle where the principals in the show get squat. And the more stupid, grotesque, rude, or obscene, the more it sells.
 
Deadliest Catch; Dog, The Bounty Hunter; and Duck Dynasty all survive. And you can find COPS on somewhere nearly 24/7. Studios make them on the cheap, sell them to the networks, and probably make a bundle where the principals in the show get squat. And the more stupid, grotesque, rude, or obscene, the more it sells.

DC isn't cheap. In fact the current controversy over DC is that the boats will take quota at below market price just to take it, because they make their real money off of the TV show -- screwing the rest of the fleet. In other words, Discovery is subsidizing the cost of your crab dinner. Haha.

DC may also be close to running out of steam. 12 years is an impressive run, but the fishing stories are all long covered. It's mostly about the train wreck lives of some of the show's participants now. They went too far into the train wreck thing with Elliott and lost viewership.

A few principals in that show also really made out well. Not all.

And of course some of the train wrecks are simply made up now anyway. Taking weeks of footage and finding a few minutes of a sleep deprived person acting bipolar isn't that hard.

Write a script around it, and something that took weeks or months to play out on a boat, looks like it was a daily thing. Yay editing.
 
In n out used to be a must on every trip. But then we got in n out in salt lake, the novelty has worn off.
Ha! It's just a special treat for me when I go west.
 
Since you guys were talking about Reality Shows... just saw this on the news: "Ice Road Truckers" Star Dies in Plane Crash . I've never seen his show, but apparently he was one of us... a pilot. Ironically, the article states he was coming home to start filming a documentary about plane wreck recoveries.

Just saw that. Thought it was an interesting twist to this thread. RIP.

I have no idea how IRT lasted as long as it did/does/whatever.
 
What?!? No one mentioned Airplane Repo?

There was a seminar at OSH about Airplane Repo. Dummy that I am I thought it was about ACTUALLY repossessing airplanes but it was one of the producers talking about the TV show. Fortunately there were no commercials, but I didn't sit through the whole session.
 
What about Naked & Afraid? I think its dumb they have to blur everything out when the entire premise of the show is they're NAKED while surviving in some pretty horrific environments. To Cajun's point, it's not like anyone is attractive after the first couple of hours spent in the swamp/rain forest/desert. They're sick, insect bitten, and starving for 3 weeks and it sure looks convincingly miserable. I like that they make no bones that the crew is there to film them and rescue them if necessary, but I have no doubt that a lot of it is trumped up and overblown.
 
But the Pickers are fun, interesting, with a lot of cut ins of historical facts and photos.

Since when does a show have to be "real" to be interesting? Whether people believe it is real or know better, it is still fun.
 
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