The rise of reality TV programming over the past two decades has been driven in large part by the fact that reality shows are cheap to produce. Labor costs are a big reason why. What does that mean for the people who work on these shows? Allow some of them to tell you.
The first trailer for The Sex Factor, the porn competition webseries hosted by Duke porn star Belle Knox, buries the juiciest part at the end. We already knew about the roster of porn star judges and the million-dollar prize, but this is the first time The Sex Factor has revealed that Belle Knox will do a scene with…
You can only take Love & Hip Hop Atlanta so seriously. Though ostensibly part of the candid reality television genre, it is at its alternately withered and overflowing heart a soap opera filled with a cast of fair-to-decent improv performers. "It's fake till it's real," is how my friend Derrence put it to me this…
Lindsay Lohan's alleged handwritten list of everyone she's ever had sex with made huge waves in the gossip press—In Touch alone milked it for 5 stories, dragging out the revelation of a few famous names—and that's probably exactly how Lindsay wanted it. She's now using the story to tease the season finale of Lindsay.
TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo returned for a third season last night. Where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday that concerned TV viewers were losing their shit over these people who can't seem to keep theirs (or anything else up their asses) in. Now, the Honey Boo Boo family seems just kind of...normal.
Every year, Americans are treated to a long procession of assemblies in which Hollywood's most creative minds boldly suggest there is intrinsic entertainment value in watching people give prizes to themselves. On Sunday, we passed the first of these. And yet, for the 71st straight year, the most deserving martyrs of…
TLC has a new show called Sex Sent Me to the ER, which airs on Saturdays at 10 p.m. for maximum viewer shame. Last night's episode featured a Seattle woman named Liz who once had to go to the hospital in the midst of a three-hour orgasm. For the show, she and her boyfriend Eric reenacted the night for TLC's cameras, a…
"Who discovered America?" "Obama."
Last season, VH1's Basketball Wives franchise documented a sustained nadir in humanity, and a peak of the kind of extreme human behavior that viewers ostensibly sign up for when they tune in to watch a bunch of women who have been hired to argue with each other do so. Tami Roman eviscerated a woman for coughing.…
So much new love and sex is thriving in the four-person, two-couple pod profiled on Showtime’s reality series Polyamory: Married and Dating. Tonight’s Season 2 premiere is something of a cram session to catch us up: Kamala is dating her business partner Jason, who is 10 years her junior. Michael, Kamala’s husband, has…
The dramatic feud between Teresa Giudice and the government of the United States of America is exploding faster than a fight at a child's christening after some guests find out they weren't invited to help pick out baby-themed charms for the Pandora bracelets in the christening gift bags like Jacqueline was, even…
Professional reality star/amateur table flipper Teresa Giudice and her walking choad of a husband, Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice, have been indicted on fraud and tax charges.
Lindsay Lohan is getting exactly what she needs to jump-start her career: a reality show to air on OWN in 2014. Before that, Oprah will give her a stern-talking to in the form of an interview, set to tape in August when Linds is out of rehab.
Last night's episode of Big Brother nabbed the show's highest ratings since its season premiere about two weeks ago. About 6.25 million people watched; the only network show to grab more eyeballs was 60 Minutes.
Last night's episode of Toddlers & Tiaras was so packed with hilarious/stupid moments that I couldn't even focus on one family — the clip reel above spans the entire episode, wherein we met 2-year-old Khloe (named after the Kardashian, communicates solely in banshee wail), 4-year-old Brooklyn (aggressively flatulent,…
That headline could signal only one thing: the return of Toddlers & Tiaras. Well, it could signal the apocalypse too, I suppose. Really, the clip reel above from last night's season premiere is all about the first 9 seconds, which made me laugh harder than anything I can remember. Alexa says, "Wheeee!" and I feel her.
Ke$ha is "happy" that she drank her own pee on her reality show. This is what pride looks like in 2013.
The bundle of paranoia and sporadic searing insight that is Courtney Love was on Opie and Anthony's Sirius show Thursday. During her appearance, she mentioned that she was going to appear on a network reality show soon. This is a "big thing," she said, and her described wariness of "doing TV" made it sound like this…
It's kind of a cliche at this point to lament the loss of once venerable institutions of televised knowledge such as The History Channel and The Learning Channel to the scourge of "reality" TV.
Remember Josh Weed, the Mormon blogger who came out last year as a gay man who's been happily married to a woman for 10 years? He and his wife Lolly told more of their story last night on VH1's I'm Married to A... last night. Josh and Lolly's love bears endless dissection for the questions it raises (specifically…
