In most reality TV shows, there is some tension between what the producers want and what the contestants want. I'm singling out two shows -- one very old and one very recent -- where I feel like this starkly occurred.
Big Brother US, Season 1
This is widely reviled as an awful and monotonous season of television -- it's actually pretty eventful, in my opinion! The show's engineering is not subtle -- from episode 1 it's obvious what the showrunners intended to happen. As for what we got -- I haven't decided if this is a case where it didn't work or a case where it worked too well.
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Contestants become completely obsessed with the backyard after planes start to fly by with defamatory banners about George -- one of the contestants. To defend himself from the negative attention, George convinces the other players that a whole-group mutual quit will result in everyone being awarded prize money, after which they can all move into a house in Toledo.
The Summit, Season 1
The guy who directed this worked on The Challenge and Deal or No Deal Island, both of which are very much worth your time. I'm singling this out because it had my rapt attention for its entire run -- not because of the gameplay, although that's notable -- but because of the perverse game it plays with the viewer.
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This is ostensibly a showcase of camaraderie and teamwork. About ten seconds into the show it becomes obvious that all of the contestants expect a Survivor-style elimination-and-jury format. Show abruptly becomes a succession of efforts to convince the audience this is not happening. This is in fact exactly what is happening -- it is in fact just Survivor's format on a big mountain. For me unwillingness to admit this goes very far past the point of parody, straight into "unfunny" and then back into "funny" again.
Click the "spoiler" button for a more detailed explanation of why I'm recommending the show. (At your peril -- these are genuine spoilers.)
There's a really funny double take on this in Scare Tactics, which was a dumb candid camera show where they tried to get the victims with scary situations.
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The victim for one episode was higher to play an actor in a similar show called something like Scare Antics (I can't recall if it was exactly this) and he thought he was the paid actor. The setup was that he was a doctor in a clinic and the new secretary he hired was the actual victim. The other actor comes in with a wild animal wound, is quickly put in the examination room, then the real victim doctor puts blood make-up and torn clothes and comes out all wounded screaming at the secretary for help, while the other actor comes out in a werewolf costume.
The "we thought this was the victim but is the actress" pulls out a gun and shoots (with blanks) the werewolf actor and drops him to the ground. The victim-who-thought he was the actor panics and the actress also panics because she just killed an innocent man. Basically they spoofed a show losing control.
"If you see me, please just walk on by, walk on by
Forget my name and I'll forget it too."
I feel like Opposite Worlds is the exact kind of show this thread is looking for! Chock full of injuries due to production incompetence, nonsense games, and a fundamentally faulty premise: “would a person living in the past or would a person living in the future be… better? equipped for challenges, I guess?” The winners of each challenge would get to choose whether to live in the “past” or the “future” for that upcoming week, and because the “past” was basically a damp cave the winners chose the future home every week and as a result kept steamrolling the hungry and tired cave-dwellers. Total mess of a show, unhinged premise, 0/10
Ace wrote: Tue Jul 15, 2025 9:20 pm
I feel like Opposite Worlds is the exact kind of show this thread is looking for! Chock full of injuries due to production incompetence, nonsense games, and a fundamentally faulty premise: “would a person living in the past or would a person living in the future be… better? equipped for challenges, I guess?” The winners of each challenge would get to choose whether to live in the “past” or the “future” for that upcoming week, and because the “past” was basically a damp cave the winners chose the future home every week and as a result kept steamrolling the hungry and tired cave-dwellers. Total mess of a show, unhinged premise, 0/10
This show verges on unwatchable and that for me made it incredibly engrossing -- although I'll admit I only made it through seven episodes because it was so incredibly consistent.
It ages interestingly (well? poorly?) because of its portrayal of the Future, which is distinctly Windows XP-era despite the fact that the show was made in 2014.
(As for Scare Tactics: never heard of it!! I'll go in unspoiled.)
