ValleyGirl said it: "Zany, retarded, nonsensical but I laughed all the way through it."

Exactly. The show, as prime-time TV goes, is pitiful.
As the one-upsmanship of reality TV goes, it's incredible.
And that's not necessarily a good thing.

Think about it: What kind of idiots come up with this stuff?
I mean, take Brian (the actor/writer on the Joe Schmo Show) ... He was probably a high-school cut-up who has a job throwing out juvenile ideas in a room full of other high-school cut-ups and they come up with a reality-based show.
Brian's squirrel-tag commercial is cute. It's funny for all of the 30 seconds that it's on. But that's about the extent of Brian's writing. And I'm not too sure he wrote that commercial.

Now Look at MBFOF ...
Folks, we could have written a better introductory scene. We could have hired our high-school sweetheart to do a better job at being the hostess (and yes, our sweetheart was better looking) ... and we could have come up with a lot more real-life issues that would have made the show better while sticking to the basic premise.
Look at the "pick your fiance" facade. How lame was that???
She has 10 handsome guys to choose from and then they say, "oh, but it would be too easy" and then spring Steve on her??
Steve, by the way, looks like an overweight Rowan Atkinson trying to do his best Chris Farley/John Belushi imitation.
He is kind of funny, though.

Here's a better idea: You put 11 guys out there, tell "Randi, Randi, Randi" to pick out four and if she doesn't pick your mark, then you tell her that she's just eliminated those four guys.
Then with the remaining group, you have them do some kind of competition (a question/answer game where we're looking for her "ideal" match works perfectly here) which is totally rigged so that Steve wins.
Now she is responsible for picking him and has to take some ownership in the situation.
It took 10 seconds to come up with that idea. Imagine how much money the writers were paid to come up with the slop they threw at us.
And that was just the first 10 minutes of the show.

I'll still watch it, though. Train wrecks are healthy -- except for the passengers.
This show, it's been reported, came close to not making it to post production. I think the scenes from coming episodes tell us why. I think we're about to see the closest call with an on-screen murder with Randi's dad.

Oh, and House of Dreams? I like it. TGFT (Thank God for TiVo) It's got a "Real World" intro, Survivor-like rules and a Big Brother attitude. Believe it or not, my favorite part is watching them build the house ... I hope that they give the dayum thing to Tony.
Besides, the house is probably on Florida swampland and the fact you've got to have your windows capable of enduring 110-mph winds should tell you something.
Maybe they ought to give the house to the obnoxious bartender after all, eh?

• RE: Imagine a pear on sticks,TeamJoisey, 11:15 AM, 01-21-04
• RE: Imagine a pear on sticks - good visual!,HyperTyper, 04:12 PM, 01-24-04
  • RE: Imagine a pear on sticks - good visual!,RebelYell, 04:30 PM, 01-24-04
• RE: Imagine a pear on sticks,ValleyGirl, 06:06 PM, 01-25-04
  • RE: Imagine a pear on sticks,RebelYell, 06:50 PM, 01-25-04

Train wrecks are healthy -- except for the passengers.

Everything you said was right on, but this one sentence summarizes all of reality TV.

Wish I'd said that.