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    Noisy PipRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 2:03pm

    I admit to watching this *and* Average Joe (at least the first season) back in the day and I never once felt bad for the contestants. They were semi-terrible people, of the harmless variation, and I cannot deny there was a certain amount of glee, mixed with horror, in witnessing them believe the utterly and truly fantastical lie that Prince Harry was on a dating show.

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      UmbrielNoisy Pip
      12/05/17 3:53pm

      Until they start conscripting contestants, I can certainly sympathize with your lack of sympathy for the contestants. Can anyone who voluntarily appears on a dating reality show really be accurately described as out of anyone’s league?

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      Noisy PipUmbriel
      12/05/17 4:11pm

      You make an excellent point!

      Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
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    dystopikaRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 2:35pm
    Illustration for article titled

    How about The Joe Schmo Show which had a “Truman Show” premise where one “regular person” was tricked into thinking he was part of a reality show, though all the other contestants were actors and it was scripted. Kristen Wiig was on there!

    Or how about THE SWAN, in which a group of ugly duckling contestants competed to get plastic surgery in order to turn themselves into... a SWAN!

    “The Moment of Truth”, which featured polygraph tests and ruining people’s lives, might be the most excruciating and unwatchable for me.

    Some truly terrible things have been produced under the banner of “social experiments” for reality television... but all of these things actually made it to air. I just think about all the reality programs that didn’t even make it that far. Must be a lifetime of found-footage horror movies to be found in unaired reality show pilots.

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      Noisy Pipdystopika
      12/05/17 3:23pm

      Joe Schmo was actually good, as I recall! The “Schmo” they chose was a genuinely nice person, and pretty much every one involved in the farce was actively rooting for him.

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      dystopikaNoisy Pip
      12/05/17 5:11pm

      YES! I remember liking Joe Schmo!!

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    The One True OpinionRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 2:17pm

    Today I learned Average Joe stayed on for four seasons. Did they all air on NBC or did the back three get shoved to cable?

    Admittedly I never paid much attention to early 2000s television, mainly because it was so terrible. But I remember getting a chuckle out of the print ad for Average Joe’s debut that boldly declared “YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE!” after it followed five other reality shows of a similar premise.

    The only other thing I know about Joe is that the first season wrapped with the two supermodels picking each other in the end, creating a “wah-waaaah” climax. If that happened in every season, it truly wasn’t worth watching.

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      TyrannorabbitThe One True Opinion
      12/05/17 5:51pm

      It went the other way in the third season. I distinctly remember feeling like she must’ve been essentially scripted to throw the Joes a bone after the first two seasons.

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    Bob SacamanoRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 1:19pm

    Probably because the girls would still say yes after finding out it was Carson Wentz. Oh, I won’t be a princess but still married to a millionaire, whatevs.

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    UselessbeautyRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 2:40pm

    The Simpsons did a really good joke about these sort of bullshit shows back in about 2003 - when they go to England one of the shows playing at West End is Joe Millionaire in: The Cherry Orchid.

    There’s a smash cut to inside the theatre on stage he says to the woman he’s next to “I don’t really have a cherry orchid” to which she reacts with shock.

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    TyrannorabbitRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 12:55pm

    I still hate myself for watching three seasons of Average Joe.

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    EdKedRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 1:29pm

    Was that what this show was all about? I never really paid much attention beyond wondering how they got the contestants so into the idea of dating a third-rate Prince Harry impressionist. I just never suspected it was something so blatantly gaslight-y.

    Still, it’s a generally awful genre, and if you have it in you to enjoy the Bachelor family of shows, you have enough ugliness in your soul to enjoy this fiasco.

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    UmbrielRandall Colburn
    12/05/17 3:42pm

    <moved>

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