New A&E Series: Last Chance Driving School

[realjd]

Lizard Lick Towning >>>>> Operation Repo.

The Miami one is my favorite of the fake tow truck shows.

[bulkyorled]

Some of Operation Repo does look staged, a bit of it doesn't make sense but I'm sure they tow cars away where no one comes out but who wants to see that? Big deal a car getting towed where no one comes out screaming and yelling. Some it seems a little too real to me but a lot of it seems farfetched I suppose. If anyone saw the episode where they went up Browns Cyn Rd and towed the Prius away from those kids pretending they're knights wizards and princesses, that seemed ridiculous.

I agree about the pawn shows though. Pawn Stars is better, the other one is a bunch of ghetto trash coming in trying to get something for nothing then when they don't get it they erupt and security takes them out. But even Pawn Stars is a bit worn out to me. I feel like they also try and get something for nothing and he's always got someone he knows who can appraise the smallest crap that no one's ever seen before. If someone came in with a 16th century bag of carrot chips he'd somehow have someone who knows about these things and can appraise it and tell them everything they know about their item is wrong

[texaskdog]

Repo: completely fake.  Would be nice if they were real and just amped up a bit, like Cops.  If they started cops today it would be, well, Reno 911

Pawn Stars started out real.  They make it look like its a "not really busy" pawn shop, and that the guys work.  In reality the guys stay in back now except for the show, the shop is 50% merch (you can occasionally see that), a lot of the stuff (Chumlee is an idiot e.g.) is obviously all staged, and a lot of their skits.  If it wasnt for TV they couldnt afford to bring all the experts in.

[bulkyorled]

The thing with Repo that gives some of it away is that they make it seem too glamorous. We're gonna need a new type of show here soon or it'll kill A&E again. They don't do their classic "biography channel" stuff like they use to.
What did they do? Run out of Biographies...?

[realjd]

It's the same reason the SciFi channel became SyFy and started focusing on ghosts. Or that the History Channel now is all about aliens. Or that The Learning Channel is 100% focused on wedding drama.

[texaskdog]

No, the History Channel is all about pawning.  Learning Channel is all about midgets.  SciFi is about pro rasslin.  MTV is all about fake reality.  Home & Garden is all about choosing houses.  Lifetime is all about wifeswapping.

[agentsteel53]

SciFi is about pro rasslin. 

never would've guessed.

all my TV comes from Netflix.

[algorerhythms]

Which channel is for "Ow My Balls"?

[triplemultiplex]

"TLC" hasn't stood for "The Learning Channel" for over a decade.  Just as well since in practice, it is now the Freak Show Channel.
midgets
insane people getting married
dipshits who think they're psychic
pedophilia pageants
addicts
people with disgusting amounts of children
garbage hoarders
Sarah Palin

See? Nothing but freaks.

Which channel is for "Ow My Balls"?

Just give Spike another year or two.
(Great reference, btw; "Idiocracy" is some of Mike Judge's finest work.)

The amazing thing is, none of these objectively dumb shows discussed in this thread are something anyone demanded.  We didn't even care that we got the channels they're on.  Those channels were just lumped in with our cable or satellite package that we got so we could watch sports and movies and well-written shows the broadcast networks were too stupid or too spineless to air.  They are filler shows on filler networks that really don't need to exist.
What's worse is once people paid attention to some of these stupid shows, they spread like a cancer into formerly good channels like History or Discovery.  Before you know it, there's nine shows with idiots waving gizmos around in the dark, and every career held by ill-tempered, cursing rednecks is suddenly worth televising.

[formulanone]

The fact that there are multiple shows where a pack of vultures pick over the carcass of somebody's life is definitive proof that there are too many channels.

Quoted for truth.

Watched about five minutes of Last Chance Driving School, and realized that all the sound and visual effects were meant for an audience about one-quarter my age. Face it, this isn't really an interesting enough of a topic for a twenty-two minute show...this coming from someone who watches people drive cars in circles and fancy shapes about 30 weekends a year.

This is why we need less channels, not more.

[bulkyorled]

I thought of this thread the other night, I saw an Op. Repo. episode where Matt had to take a shit and they swung around the corner at a high speed and flipped a car they were towing with the camera guy inside. Not a new episode I dont think but what the hell...

[DaBigE]

Anyone else ever caught an episode (or two or three) of Wrecked on the Speed Network?

[hm insulators]

Even the Weather Channel half the time isn't broadcasting the current weather because they're showing mostly nonsense such as "Ice Pilots" and "Turbine Cowboys." And even the long-form programming that is weather-related, such as "Storm Stories" gets monotonous real fast--they seem to show about the same three episodes over and over again.

[tchafe1978]

The thing with all these reality shows that have popped up in the last decade, is that they really aren't reality. They're certainly not my reality. They must call them reality shows becuase they're not scripted, even though half of them feel more scripted and fake than pro wrestling. Most of these shows are hell-bent on getting people to create drama between themselves. If it wasn't for the drama, it wouldn't get the ratings. Even one reality show I like, Deadliest Catch, wouldn't be as exciting if it just focused on the fishing, or the horrible weather. You gotta have the drama. And that's the thing I hate about reality shows. I can't stand all the drama!

[texaskdog]

Are there any that are truly reality?  Some of the ones I enjoyed Restaurant Stakeout (all fake), Storage Wars (seems to be pretty fake), Pit Boss (a lot of staged things), Undercover Boss....Gene Simmons..  Thinking Ice Road Truckers is all real but they dont try to make it exciting other than making you think someone will fall thru the ice or off a cliff.

[texaskdog]

I thought of this thread the other night, I saw an Op. Repo. episode where Matt had to take a shit and they swung around the corner at a high speed and flipped a car they were towing with the camera guy inside. Not a new episode I dont think but what the hell...

Took me about 3 episodes to figure out this is 100% fake

[formulanone]

It's reality from the standpoint that life is generally 99.5% mundane and average, and 0.5% exciting. Problem is, like a person with some sort of mental disorder or Munchausen's Disease, the reality must be distorted into something much more important than it really is...a good time to cut to commercial, followed by something far less interesting when you return to the source of the mystery.

To fill in the blanks of boredom, make sure some basic or average life event the viewers can relate to (birthdays, anniversaries, waiting at a post office) is dramatized and amplified with sponsors and unsavory language to make it seem believable. Also, make sure to have someone who always brags about how unpolitically-correct they are and how they always speak their mind...as if that's something of a unique trait, since most people outgrew when they were six years old.

[texaskdog]

It's reality from the standpoint that life is generally 99.5% mundane and average, and 0.5% exciting. Problem is, like a person with some sort of mental disorder or Munchausen's Disease, the reality must be distorted into something much more important than it really is...a good time to cut to commercial, followed by something far less interesting when you return to the source of the mystery.

To fill in the blanks of boredom, make sure some basic or average life event the viewers can relate to (birthdays, anniversaries, waiting at a post office) is dramatized and amplified with sponsors and unsavory language to make it seem believable. Also, make sure to have someone who always brags about how unpolitically-correct they are and how they always speak their mind...as if that's something of a unique trait, since most people outgrew when they were six years old.

Sadly people who watch these "reality" shows get depressed because their lives aren't that exciting.  Life by nature is boring or exciting if you make it that way.  I love traveling, highlight of my year, but is there anything more boring than travel shows?

[formulanone]

Hah...probably the only travel thing I'll watch for five minutes is Rick Steves European tours, and that's only because I start the channel surfing at Channel 2 (PBS).