Reality TV gets even darker
UnReal, a surprisingly absorbing series on Lifetime, offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the chaos and drama surrounding the production of a Bachelor-style dating competition program. Starring Shiri Appleby as a flawed staffer who works to manipulate relationships on set in order to film outrageous footage, UnReal is based on Sarah Gertrude Shapiro’s short film Sequin Raze, which premiered at SXSW in 2013. While UnReal recently ended its 10-episode run, it is set to return — promising to remain “despicable and juicy”—for season 2 next year.
It’s the show outside of the show, and the manipulation that comes with it, that has made UnReal such a revelation. I’m aware of the artifice of romantic reality television, that by now both the contestants and the viewers should know that it’s all a game. But what I didn’t realize was that producers are apparently paid to do absolutely anything — from plying already-disoriented contestants with alcohol to outright lying to them — to spark on-camera meltdowns. UnReal allowed me to witness and revel in all that and now I look at all reality shows very differently.
We live in a post-Real Housewives, post-Honey Boo Boo world and again, it’s common knowledge that what makes a show worth watching the most is people making fools of themselves on screen. The truth off-camera, however, can sometimes be even more brutal.
Josh Duggar, of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, has checked himself into a long-term rehabilitation center to be treated for sex addiction in the wake of further revelations about his sordid private life. The decision comes after the 27-year-old family values lobbyist confessed to having a porn addiction and being unfaithful to his wife after being outed as a user of the Ashley Madison affairs website. In 2003, a 15-year-old Duggar was treated at a faith-based rehab facility after admitting that he had inappropriately touched five of his underage sisters in the breast and genital region.
Josh’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, said that their disgraced son has “brought great insult to the values and faith we hold dear.” In July, TLC officially canceled 19 Kids and Counting, which ran for 10 seasons.
“Let’s give them what they want: ponies, princesses, romance, love. I don’t know, it’s all a bunch of crap anyway,” said the fictional executive producer Quinn King in UnReal. We rarely give a thought to the intense, absurd, psychological, and emotional state into which a show’s participants, whether real or made up, have been deliberately placed. More than the rapid, breathless escalation that has become the norm for TV storytelling today, perhaps this is television’s harsher reality.
