Quotes / Reality TV

"Shows based on reality
Oh, the humanity!
Oh, Ozzy's family
Sho' loves profanity
Whoa, the insanity
Oh, dogs that crap and pee
Home of depravity?
No, they live happily"

— "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Couch Potato"

"500 channels and there ain't much on tonight
But reality shows about some folks' so-called lives
A pretty girl cries 'cause she don't get a rose
But she'll find love next year on her own show
And they call that real"

— James Wesley, "Real"

Doctor: (scoffs) The human race. Brainless sheep, being fed on a diet of— Mind you, have they still got that programme where three people have to live with a bear?
Lynda: Oh, Bear with Me! I love that one!
Doctor: And me. The celebrity edition where the bear—
Both: GOT IN THE BATH!

— Doctor Who, "Bad Wolf"

Look at the Kardashians, they're worth millions. I don't think they were that badly off to begin with but now look at them. You see that and you think, 'What, you mean all I have to do is behave like a fucking idiot on television and then you'll pay me millions?' I'm not judging it... well, I am obviously.

—Daniel Craig

"Reality" show?! HA! I haven't seen ONE hairball yet!

—Mooch, Mutts

The Victorian freak show never went away. Now it's called Big Brother or X Factor, where in the preliminary rounds we wheel out the bewildered to be sniggered at by multi-millionaires.

—Ricky Gervais

The stars of today are people who are becoming appallingly rich by behaving heinously.

—Marina Sirtis, Star Trek: The Next Generation 25th Anniversary panel

Yes, this is the show where William Shatner was covered in afterbirth.

—Topless Robot on Invasion Iowa

Armed & Famous took celebrities, mostly the bad kind, and gave them jobs as police officers. This wasn't that crazy an idea when it was 600 pounds of aikido action star, but when it's La Toya Jackson, that's irresponsibly insane.

—Seanbaby, "The 8 Strangest TV Show Ideas Ever Made"

It’s taking a while for things to get interesting this season, mainly because everyone’s still in that first heady rush of tiptoey politeness and they’ve yet to splinter into two eternally warring factions, like the Hatfields and McCoys if they’d been fighting over who gets to cover their bare tits with their hands for the most money in Nuts magazine instead of cowboy gold.

—Stuart Millard on Big Brother

I’ve watched every episode of every season and spent time watching the live feeds, which means I’ve wasted hundreds of hours listening to strangers talk about food and their bowel movements. What have you done with YOUR life?

—Michael K. on Big Brother

They can call it a "documentary" series even though it's a dirty little secret that even acclaimed documentary filmmakers will coach subjects and have them do multiple takes.

—Drew Magary

There’s only one problem: The show is made up.

—Noah Murphy, "How Bar Rescue Faked Reality"

OH! I'm on an island! OH! I'm all alone on exile island! All I have is fifteen cameras and a medical team if anything really goes wrong. Oh boo hoo hoo, I have to eat worms!

Come chum some of this *$%$, buddy. I have bullet holes in my house and bloodied strangers bursting through my door. I can't turn the freakin' heat on. That's survival, not piddling middle class yuppies arguing over fricking immunity tokens.

—Neal Bailey on Survivor

It's one thing to do this to a fictional character, who is purely imaginary and by default more flat than a real person; It's quite another to reduce an actual living, breathing human to a series of verbal tics and personality quirks.

—Soda Pop Art, "I Don't Buy It — Commercials as Narrative and Social Entropy"

"I see this kind of hypocrisy all the time in online versions of Survivor: Someone will lie, manipulate, and backstab with the best of them, but when it happens to them, all of a sudden they find their morals and get on a soapbox."

— Survivor columnist Ken Kellam

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