Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Bastards of Reality Television

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Robert sits down with David Bell to talk about some fucked up shit that happened in reality shows because, damn, that Kissinger series was hard. FOOTNOTES: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/11/a-catalogue-of-exploitation-the-maker-of-adocumentary-about-the-jeremy-kyle-show-speaks https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/13/jeremy-kyle-show-death-on-daytime-reviewa-shocking-expose-of-the-itv-series https://uk.news.yahoo.com/former-jeremy-kyle-show-viewers-ashamed- 100331877.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig= AQAAAAZWgpvLwCbf6hmmQQWlA3xWu_MZyFTeGYxHHhcO3AJO2qBXMvj8SdwkheQErRgVyOKss5QVZf lkaNF4Hb6rZCr-c4Ohyc_Ctyh- 58oGaoEstnukpGOzWDp_gmNDq1VrqvWn1TEzotD_TIOaQ9wQ5iTFYrUsxN7DcMlAGwByPqRX https://www.the-sun.com/news/4893340/jeremy-kyle-breaks-silence-steve-dymond-documentary/  https://www.the-sun.com/news/4893340/jeremy-kyle-breaks-silence-steve-dymond-documentary/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/fife/3102437/jeremy-kyle-lie-detector-itv-fife/ https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/09/the-reality-principle https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/tv/three-love-island-suicides-raise-concerns-about-reality-show1.69761973 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/25/a-cruelty-free-loveisland-impossible https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jul/18/problem-with-loveisland-people-who-turned-it-down https://ew.com/tv/2020/01/30/ryan-jenkins-jasmine-fiore-megan-wants-amillionaire/ https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/27/why-suicide-is-stillthe-shadow-that-hangs-over-reality-tv-hana-kimura-terrace-house See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, welcome to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast with the personality of a staff infection. No, no, no, that's just me, Robert. Yeah, we're reading a one-star review from iTunes. You're just an annoying lip smacker who needs to do better.

I mean, look, for one thing, is a staff infection bad? There's upsides to staff infections. That's true. You get time off of work. Cool photographs. You have to, if you die, deal with a lot less bullshit on Twitter. So again, staff infections are a really mixed bag. There's positive sides to staff infections.

It's honestly so fucking funny, and I have no idea what it means that I'm not even mad. It's extreme. It's clever. It's fun to get roasted like that where you're like, yeah, that's very funny. Where you're like, I'm not quite sure what you mean, but you're not wrong. Right, it flows. It's like the words flow, and it's just nice stuff. Yeah, I like it good.

It's like, well, I'm getting into dangerous territory here. But when you read people being super shitty on some level from 150 years ago, and it's like, well, this is sexist or racist, but man, people could put together sentences back then. That's not a bad sentence. It's horrible, but it's not a bad sentence. Right, people used to, yeah, shitposts were a lot more eloquent. People put a lot more work into their shitposts. It's like HP Lovecraft racism.

Well, it's like, well, this is terrible, but man, quite a phrase. Wow. Way to create an entire lore around your racism. Exactly. That's so much more effort that people put into it these days. David Bell. That's me. That's you.

Hi. You know, Dave, you know. What? You know. I don't know. You know. You know, Dave. Okay.

You know. I think Dave is going to love this topic. I hope he does. I hope he loves it, and I hope you hate it, Sophie. Okay. I'm just an asshole. I'm a bad person. Biting the hand that stops me from committing a series of crimes

that get us arrested in our podcast shutdown. Dave. Hi. How do you feel about reality TV? Okay. Mixed feelings. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the right way to feel. Yeah. I don't watch most. I don't find it interesting, but I don't have anything against it unless something horrible was done behind the scenes, you know? Yeah. It's like if everybody, if there's consent and everybody is cool, then we're good.

We're good. Yeah. I do like the occasional like British bake off, but I wouldn't consider that reality TV. Oh, sure. Some might say. I mean, it is. It is.

It's unscripted. But am I right in saying that reality TV does have the personality of a staff infection? Yes. Yes. Where it's gross and infectious. But also, you might get to take some time off of work, you know? Which is great.

To enjoy it. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not going to do this thing. This is going to be kind of a loosey-goosey episode. We're doing this right after the Kissinger episodes. Everybody's tired. I'm not going to be one of these smarmy fucks who's just like shitting on the concept of reality TV to seem smart, right?

Right. Reality TV is broadly speaking, it's junk food, you know? It is not good for you. But that said, I do shitload of things that are bad for me. Yeah, I would also argue that it's not new. No. Game shows have always existed. There's always entertainment junk food.

Like that fucking piece of trash Mozart, right? Like he's shit. Everyone knows he's shit. But like people like to enjoy shit and that's fine. I like the Bloodhound gang, you know? Like we're not, nobody in this show is going to be like, again, there's nothing bad or like you're not dumb because some of the smartest people I know like turn off from like getting their PhD or whatever and like watch, you know,

a bake-off show or like Big Brother or some shit. It's fine. Listen, we're done here. I will be going online and ordering the 4K release of Moonfall. I will be doing that and I will watch the special features. I mean, Dave, you've watched shit with me. One of my favorite things to put on is people hurting themselves horribly while skiing or base jumping.

Yes. And I have since expanded to wingsuit crashes, some of which the people die in. There's some gnarly wingsuit crash videos if you look. That's the old pink mist. Oh yeah, baby. Yeah. Have you looked into parkour accidents? Parkour accidents are great.

If you really want to be harrowed, just type gunfails into YouTube. There's some shit in there. Oh my God. There's this video. Wander on the live leak and just Google and like type in gunfails. Yeah. There's some nasty. There's a dude who like put a bunch of tannerite, which is this explosive.

You shoot it and it blows up on a fucking lawnmower and shot it at close range and the blade cut his leg off. Of course it did. There's some shit. So again, I'm saying this all not to celebrate my own crapulence, but like we all like some stuff that's the entertainment equivalent of like junk food, right? So this isn't an episode about like trying to, I'm not trying to make the case that like reality TV is bad and you should feel bad for watching it.

This is about the most fucked up things that have ever happened within the broad umbrella of reality or what you might call unscripted content. There's not a particular thesis here. I just spent a lot of time reading about the worst things that have happened in reality TV and I decided to do a podcast. None of you can stop me so deal with it. Probably do another episode in the future with more of these stories. This is exciting.

Yeah. Before we start, I want to share my very favorite reality television story and this is a story about a reality TV show I enjoyed. So when I was in Iraq, this is like the second or the third, might have been the fourth time, I forget exactly which time it was. But we're like, you know, when you're hanging out at a place like that, we're like going to refugee camps and like frontline positions and in order to get to both, you have to spend time in like a bunch of random living rooms because that's where everyone's like posted

up leaders of these camps, these like different generals and shit. They're all like hanging out in houses. And so while you're waiting to get approval to go places, you're just like sitting in like usually an air conditioned living room with the TV on and a bunch of like guys with their guns and phones out and shit. And one of the times we were out there, this, the same reality show kept going on. It came on in like two or three different places. And I don't know what the name of the show is.

I have not brief Googling has not informed me of it, but the premise was that there was this host who would like take a rich guy out to the desert. Like he would be like driving a caravan and there would be a contrived accident. And like one of the cases I remember this guy is like in a little motorcade and they get stuck in quicksand and his vehicle sinks and he has to like get out and he's like on top of the vehicle. And while that's happening, the host dressed as a Komodo dragon comes out and attacks them. Holy shit.

It's fucking insane. Like I don't know what was like I'm sure there's elements of this that I was not grasping because there were no subtitles and I do not speak Arabic. But it was some of the wildest shit I've watched on TV. It was so good. I don't know what's scarier being attacked by a Komodo dragon or a man dressed like one because they're both very similar. It was a pretty good costume.

Yeah. Oh my God. It sounds like it's like Survivor Man or Man vs. Wild. I don't know what the point was supposed to be because on all of them people just like react the way you would if you saw a Komodo dragon. Right. Oh dear. God damn.

Like we, America can't talk, but we're like assimilated to our weirdness. Yeah. It's kind of the same as when you watch like the Japanese pranks shows. Yeah. The silent library where it's like you have to be quiet in a library and they just like you fucked up shit to you and if you make a noise you lose. And it's like that actually I think got an American adaptation. But like it's that extra context of not understanding the language or the extra layer that's like

makes it so perfect and bizarre. Yeah. Man, I want to watch that so bad. I love that. Yeah. Someone will find it now that we've talked about it and we'll find the clips. Please do. I would love to watch it again.

Please. Um, anyway, Dave, on January 11th, 1973, PBS began to air the first of 12 hour long episodes of An American Family, a television documentary about the Louds, an actual family. And this is probably the very first reality show in history. Now, the Louds were upper middle class and lived in Santa Barbara and over 300 hours of raw footage of them was shot between May 30th and December 31st, 1971. The initial intent was just to kind of chronicle their daily lives. But during filming, the relationship between spouses Bill and Pat Loud broke down and the

show ends with both parents divorcing. Cameras actually caught Pat asking for a divorce on camera. She tells Bill, you know there's a problem and he responds, what's your problem? This was picked by TV Guide as one of the top 100 TV moments of all time. And in some ways, viewers have never moved on from the concept of watching unscripted life moments from rich people in California, right? Like this is broadly speaking still the art of reality TV. What do you, do you think, and I don't know the answer to this, what they have had that

divorce if they weren't on camera? Who knows? I have not watched the 12 hours of the Louds, you know, the double slit theory of like when observed, will they divorce? It can help, right? It can't help. It probably gives people just a more sense of like, I want drama in my life. I'm being videotaped all the time.

So like you start like thinking of your life like a TV show, I imagine. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it could like make it easier for a trouble within a marriage to get solved. But that said, I don't know anything about this particular couple. But it's worth noting that like reality TV does not start far from where it is now, right? Like the yeah, this is this is still the heart of the of the genre. So an American family is hugely successful and it immediately spawns an imitation by the BBC called just the family.

Now an American family is particularly notable because the Loud family's oldest son Lance was probably the world's first openly gay TV star. Like he's open about being gay in the show in like 1973, which is pretty groundbreaking for the time. Right. And he dies during the AIDS epidemic, which is you know, there's a whole is an interesting person whose life to study, right? This show and he like there's nothing particularly problematic here.

It's just an interesting piece of history. I mean, it's it's your typical reality TV coming from PBS and BBC, as we all know. Yeah, classic, yeah, classic reality TV stations. So in the years that followed, the series went through the normal life cycle of a successful show. There's a handful of parodies, right? Like a bunch of different like sketch shows do parodies of an American family. There's like jokes and sitcoms of the day about moments that have happened in the show.

And then 10 years after it airs, there's an attempted reboot that doesn't do very well, right? Nothing at all weird here. This is like more or less what happens with every successful show. Sure. Most folks probably figured that was kind of it for the genre, which had yet to be. Named. People didn't talk about reality TV as a thing.

There's just this one weird show that had existed. But a few perceptive individuals at the time recognized that something special was afoot. Anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide. The New Yorker writes, quote, her contribution, which wasn't mentioned on the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine after the listings tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and a profile of Shelley Winters. Bill and Pat Laud and their five children and either actors nor public figures, Mead wrote.

They were the people they portrayed on television, members of a real family, producers compressed seven months of tedium and turmoil into 12 one hour segments, which constituted, in Mead's view, a new kind of art form, an innovation as significant as the invention of drama or the novel. And I think that's true no matter how you like reality TV, like. Of course. It's hit that point of cultural relevance already. It's had that impact.

We have the Trump presidency because of reality TV, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The thing about reality TV is when it's staged, right? Yeah. Like it's the same appeal as a documentary. We'll get into that. But yeah.

But I think that is interesting. They're just looking at it as like it's like the birth of the novel, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It will be with us for a long time. Oh, yeah. Forever. It'll it'll be so broad that I think it's like any genre where it sort of mixes with

other genres, you know? You could argue that just what we're doing like Tik Tok and like the the the YouTubes and so on are offshoots of reality TV because we're following people's lives. People are kind of filming genuine moments, stage moments. It's all it's all part of the same thing. Yeah. And you know, it's like with them and like with novels, there's this, you know, there's horrible things you can tie to novels, you know?

Hitler was very influenced by the novels of Karl May. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. We probably don't have. Novels caused Hitler. Yeah.

Novels caused Hitler. We probably don't have the Bosnian genocide without the Pelican brief, obviously. Right. Of course. You know, but also there's good things that novels have brought us to probably one assumes good things. I don't read books, you know. Right.

But I do watch Jack Ryan movies. I do watch Jack Ryan movies, which have influenced my life in a number of ways. Yeah. And I've been told those started as some sort of book. Yeah. The Jack Reacher series really helped me make peace with the fact that I'm incredibly jacked. You know, there's a lot of people. Right.

It's really hard to be like a jacked white dude. Exactly. Exactly. Finally. Representation. Exactly. It's wonderful. Yeah.

Just like the, yeah. Anyway, whatever. This bit's going on long enough. So. Yes. Yes it has. Yeah. So it's interesting then that it takes like Margaret Mead's right about the, how influential

this art medium is going to be. And it's interesting that it takes like 20 years from the first reality TV show before it turns into anything. Yeah. Like we have this idea for a long time before people figure out what to do with it. That, I mean, that happens sort of with found footage as well. Yeah. Because there were like, there was some found footage films and then we kind of went quiet

and then Blair Witch Project brought it back. Yeah. So the, which is again, one of, one of the great works of humanitarian. Right. Yeah. The Blair Witch Project. Without Witch, I don't know. I don't know.

We wouldn't have, I don't know, the VHS movies. Make a genocide joke for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't have the VHS movies which have solved world hunger. Sure. Yeah.

We'll go with that. So the first show to take reality TV forward was the real world, which debuted in MTV in 1992. Rather than watching a family live their life and risk the chance that it might be boring, MTV decided to throw a bunch of young adults in a house and film what happened. The show was successful, but it also was not like the kind of successful that on its own was going to spawn a world like changing industry, you know. Right.

You know, the real world is kind of a proof of concept, but it's not as influential as some later things are going to be. The key to transmuting these particular documentary style shows into the thing that devoured television happened to be held in the head of a Fox executive named Mike Darnell. Prior to 2000, Mike's background had been producing shows like When Animals Attack, World's Scariest Police Chases, and a variety of other premises now met by random weirdos on YouTube. Right?

See? Like all the shows he gets started with are like the things I watch on random YouTubers collect. Yeah. Oh yeah. Remember America's Funny Some videos where it's like that's YouTube? Yeah. That's the only way you can watch people getting hit in the balls and it's like we want

that. I would argue reality TV is better than like When Animals Attack because that yeah, like that was just YouTube, but it was YouTube done in this like really serious tone. Yeah. I don't know if you like I actually would see. You could see people like attack videos on When Animals Attack would get reused on like World's funniest animals and they would just cover it in a different tone and like not mention the injuries, you know, like because they just it didn't matter.

It was just it was so schlocky. At least reality TV had like, I don't know, people involved a little more drama. Yeah. I think like because also I always felt gross about like America's funniest, like a lot of these different videos shows less American, but like a lot of them would have like narration that was like generally kind of mean spirited towards the people. Right. Which better to just have context free loops of videos of people hurting themselves.

That's that's fine. And it was a whole industry that yeah, YouTube pretty much killed. It is kind of funny to agree to which that used to be the dominant thing on TV and now it's just random dudes. One of my favorite YouTubers is the car crash channel, which is just compilations of car accidents. Right. Yeah.

What else? Like you don't need a commentary. No, I don't need I don't need a word from anybody. No, you just get in bed, put on the car crashes and go to sleep and go to sleep to the car crashes. I love sleeping to train crashes. There's nothing as soothing as watching a train hit a box truck. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It just goes poof. Yeah. Just like your dreams. It just sends you right right into the land of dreams. Deeply soothing. So Darnell is also the mind behind a two hour special.

So you know, this is how we get to start doing these like when animals attack, but then near the end of the 1990s, he has an idea for a two hour TV special with the title, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? So this is going to be the show that births all of modern reality TV, really. It airs on Fox on February 15, 2000. In her book, Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Posner describes it this way. This special, which predated the game-changing survivor, was a hybrid of Miss America and the Mail Order Bride Parade.

With executive producer Mike Fleiss of Next Entertainment, Darnell brought 50 brides to beat a Las Vegas to be auctioned off to a complete stranger. They sacheted in swimsuits, tittered nervously, and answered pageant style questions to assess their moral fortitude and sexual prowess in 30 seconds or less. Groom Rick Rockwell was hidden as he and the audience determined who deserved the biggest prize of all, a brand new multi-millionaire husband. Nurse and future Playboy centerfold, Darva Conger, Rockwell's eventual choice, got her first glimpse of her fiancé moments before they were legally wed on air, nearly 23 million

viewers tuned in. It's funny how when read that academically, it really is horrifying. It's a nightmare, right? That's like an auctioning human beings off to a rich man? Yeah. It's pretty bad. Yeah, it's one of those where you're just like, you had to be there, I guess. I think if you were there, a lot of people at the, but no, but it was hugely successful.

A bit more horrified there too, yeah. But they were part of it. They watched it. Yeah, reality TV created, I think, more than most things, the hate watch, right? Yes. Oh, God, yes. Yes. So, the series got a 28 share, which is basically is a big hit in terms people don't use as

much anymore to talk about success because streaming has kind of, like, who gives a shit about those old terms. But anyway, it's a big hit. Mike Darnel declared it the best show ever, or Chris Darnel, I think it was Chris, shit. How many Darnels we got here? What's Mike? No, it is. I think they're both Mikes.

Are they both Mikes? I think they're both Mikes. I mean, they're TV executives. It all checks out. Mike Fleiss, who's the producer, later bragged, Mike and I knew that the national organization for women would hate us, that this would be the most controversial show ever. We thought it was all good, but it got so hot, so crazy red hot. They said it was the most talked about show since Roots, it was the lead sketch on Saturday

Night Live. The most talked about show since Roots. Maybe your reality show that involves auctioning human beings shouldn't be compared to Roots. You might not want to be drawing attention to that, buddy. Yeah. No, this also begins this problem, which is the, it's kind of resonates all the way to the internet, obviously, which is like, ooh, they're talking about us. And it's like, yeah, that doesn't, you know, that's not a good measurement of whether or

not something's good or not. But I mean, it is for their purposes, because it's a measurement of whether or not something can be worth money to advertisers, which is all that matters now. Right. Speaking of advertisers, Dave. Oh no. You know what? We can say whatever we want on this show, because it gets advertisers.

So I can say, for example, Dave, that has an island off the coast of Indonesia where you can make, grab a crude weapon, spear, you know, a club, you know, like you'd use on a seal, a rock, and you can hunt children in the open preserves that they keep on this island. And they'll get cooked for you. You don't have to cook the child brisket yourself. Oh, that's great. It takes care of that.

I know. That's great. It's the opposite, actually, of how b**** normally works. Yeah, right. Right. Right. But that's kind of the appeal there, right? That's the appeal, right?

Because b**** sends you the ingredients and you cook it, on the child hunting island, you provide the ingredients and b**** cooks the food. Right. Because that's the most fun part of that process, of the child hunting process. Right. How much does it cost? What does it go for? Oh, I mean, you know, you have to donate a significant amount to Koch Industries.

But really, Dave, can you put a price on hunting children on an island off the coast of Indonesia? I mean, no, but also yes, if you're b****, right? Well, yes. They do. They do. But if you sign up for their meal box plan, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a spot on the next yacht over to the child hunting island, which is worth quite a bit. So here's our sponsors.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters

in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. Standing inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message

that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. We're back.

And we're talking about the only mattress made entirely with linen stolen from the graves of dead Egyptian peasants. That's right. This is named because the ghost of dead Egyptian peasants lingers inside each mattress. That's the guarantee. Yeah. I mean, what are they doing with all that linen? Nothing.

Nothing. Tons of wasted linen. Yeah. That sounds super sustainable. Yeah. Exactly. Good for the environment. Exactly.

There's so much carbon wasted by getting linen that doesn't come from Egyptian peasants who were buried in lost desert cities, steals those corpses and passes the carbon savings on to you. Yeah. It's convenient. It's good for the environment. It's great for the environment. Yeah.

And it's affordable. Is there promo code? Can we make it even more affordable? Yeah. Promo code bastards and they'll throw in a free ounce of mummy dust, which if my 1890s medical textbooks or anything to go by is useful in a variety of ailments. Yeah. You can at least snort it.

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How we do it? Are you happy, Sophie? I hate it. Did you get what you wanted? I said, that bit's getting old, so you made a worse one. Yeah. It's great. That's what I've been doing since the d*** bit, Sophie.

I miss the d***'s bit. Well, too bad. So you probably won't be surprised to learn, Dave, that a show that was premised on basically taking the idea of an arranged marriage and making it television would turn out to have been unethical in some way, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they do this whole competition, right?

Some lady wins this marriage to this f***ing multi-millionaire Rockwell, but they never consummate their marriage. And for a very good reason, the woman conjure has it annulled because she learns that Rockwell has a long history of violence against women. So, you know, good call on her part, it comes out right as the show comes out that his former girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for vandalizing her car, breaking into her home and repeatedly physically assaulting her. Good God.

She stated, he said he would find me and kill me. Also Rockwell's not a multi-millionaire, but that hardly seems like the primary issue here. Right, who would have thought that a guy who goes on a TV show to look, to like essentially buy a woman from an auction would be a liar and a violent abuser? Who would have thought? Who would guess? And a scumbag. Yeah.

Yeah. So, his former girl, yeah, so all this hits the press right after the show comes out and it's a big problem for Fox because, again, this is 2000, so there was just a little bit of shame left in the world. This was back when we cared. It was like the rest of wars in Southern California. There was still this like tiny layer of water. It's not going to be there in a couple of years, you know, just like the water in Southern

California, but it was still a little bit there now. You can kind of see the boats that didn't really have enough water, but there was at least something, you know. Right. Yeah. You could pretend like, oh, it's just a dry, dry spring. The rain will come back. It'll be all right.

Yeah. It'll be fine. There's a little bit of shame and it causes a problem for Fox. Darnell tells a reporter, this is the worst day of my life. What a great guy. He gets excoriated by media who, by the way, like all of these journalists yelling at them were a lot of the same people who had been like raving over how ground-breaking the show was and who would go on to celebrate other horrible reality things, so whatever.

But in private, like he pretends that this is a horrible day for him in public. In private, he is ecstatic. Fleiss later recalled that his first reaction was, quote, great, more publicity, Mike said. We got to get out in front of this. I'm like, absolutely. Fuck. It's a restraining order. Let's get an interview with the girl.

We'll put it on as part of the special. We had a whole plan because that's the way we like it. Because that's the way we like it. What an amazing kind of dude. I love it because we had it all as a plan because, and then something in the shame center of his brain like kicked in and like turned it into, because that's the way we like it. Because that is just his ego protecting himself from something he knows, I think, somewhere deep in him.

You shouldn't do this. Yeah. That is a bad person. Yeah. When you become aware that on your show where women are auctioned off to the highest bidder, the guy buying the auction was a spousal abuser on a horrific kind of level of abuse and also lying about being rich. You should be like, well, maybe I should rethink some things about like, not just the show,

but my life. Right. You know. Here's the thing is that I don't know much about how the biz works, specifically the reality TV biz, but I imagine that when you're casting reality TV, you're looking for outrageous people who are willing to do whatever on camera. Yes. And I'm not saying the all are.

I'm just saying that that type of person tends to have some personal problems. Yeah. Let's say a higher level. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Again, not all of them. Yeah.

It's just that I can see why that would say attract people who are problematic in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, it's I imagine that's why you have several stories similar to this of reality TV where it's yeah. It comes out that these people have done something horrifying and it's like, yeah, because you barely vetted them. They're not a professional performer and you stuck them on TV and made them a star. Yeah.

It's not the best thing to do. No, it's like, you know, Dave, I don't have a lot of shame. Obviously. Same. Same thing. We both chose entertainment as careers. So we probably have a lower shame threshold than a lot of people. Yeah.

But like every now like on Twitter, I'll just like get, see a tweet that I think is funny and I'll share it. And then someone will like inevitably be like, oh, you know, this guy did this horrible thing and I was like, well, no, I didn't. It was just a random person on Twitter. But then I feel bad about it for the rest of the day. It's incredible that this guy can be like, oh, we filmed a whole several hour long TV special with like a man who beat the shit out of his girlfriend and has a restraining

order against him. Right. Just that complete lack of shame. Yeah. It's incredible. I envy it. Yeah. Yeah.

It would make some things easier like getting access to a Lamborghini. Yeah. That's why I was going to say getting money. Getting money. It makes that a lot easier. Yeah. And then you make YouTube videos about telling people how to get money and you tell them to buy your book, which also will help them pick up women.

That's another kind of guy without much shame. Yeah. Yeah. It just leads to all that because the pickup artist culture is heavily related to reality TV show and that show with what was it mystery? What was it called? I assume it was mystery because that's one of them guys. Yeah.

He definitely was in a bunch of reality shit. So when this all blows up and there's this big backlash against who wants to marry a multimillionaire, everyone kind of assumes that Darnell is going to get fired. Fox cancels the rebroadcast of the show and they had been talking about turning it into a series because it was a huge hit and they declined to. And Fox promises to never be a part of any similar show in the future, which is extremely funny. Wow.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Fox, absolutely. Yeah. Wow. So it's worth noting that even while the heat is on, other networks, as soon as Fox is like, well, I guess we weren't turned this into a show, like UPN offers to buy it. Of course.

Other TV networks are like, well, we'll make it into a show. I don't give a fuck. Yeah. I'm UPN. All we have is Voyager reruns right now. Right. We're UPN. Please help us.

That was actually their motto at the time. Yeah. Most of the people listening to this podcast right now are like, I don't know what UPN is. That's because this episode of our podcast will have more viewers than UPN got in its entire time on the air. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, but Mike Fleiss turns UPN down.

He's like, no, I don't want to give this guy to you. And I got a better idea. So Fleiss, who had produced the show, um, takes a variation of the pitch that he and Darnell had made to ABC. Now they clean it up a little for middle America, right? And they relaunch who wants to be a multi-millionaire with some changes as a new series called, you remember this, Dave? The Bachelor.

Yeah. Yeah, baby. Yeah. That's where that starts. Yep. Yeah. And obviously the Bachelor is a lot less problematic, although not to, look, there's so much lore in all of these shows.

I'm sure people will be like, no, there's, like, yeah, of course a bunch of fucked up should happen. Right. It's tough. I've never seen a single episode of The Bachelor. No. No. And this is not about The Bachelor, but it's funny where it comes from.

Yeah. Yeah. So Big Brother comes out later in 2000. It's after Who Wants to Be a Multi-Millionaire, and it's actually, this is interesting. Big Brother is an import of a Dutch show that's itself inspired by the real world, which is, like, this thing that increasingly, like, up to this day is big in reality, where, like, some foreign country will make a show that's inspired by, like, these other shows, and then, like, we'll steal that idea, and then that'll, like, I don't know.

It's fine. Right. I've noticed that, like, I assume it's all owned by the same people, but it seems like you just have to change, like, a few words. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, honestly, there's not really a meaningful difference between, like, what they did with the office, you know?

Like, that's not fucked up. It's just, like, the way art works, like, some foreigner painted this thing. It reminds me of, like, game shows, where it's, like, you can legally make a slightly different version of this, and it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, this is fine. I just bring it up because I find it interesting, not because it's, like, bad that they imported

the idea behind this Dutch show, like, who gives a fuck. So the war on terror starts not long after, you know, this whole period of time. And as it gets down to the business of just, like, fucking up a bunch of stuff, reality TV is becoming the biggest thing in U.S. media. The Bachelor is a Titanic hit. Basically, overnight, it becomes ABC's top-rated show among 18 to 49-year-olds, otherwise known as The Demographic with Money. Well, that's what we knew it as in 2000.

The cool demographic that smokes cigarettes. Yeah, definitely. That was in 2000, especially, smoking cigarettes. So despite the promises they'd made in the wake of their disaster with Rockwell, Fox committed themselves to reality TV more than any other network. Jennifer Posner writes, by February 2003, Fox was devoting a whopping 41% and ABC 33% of their sweeps offerings to reality shows. These percentages increased over the years, limiting the number of quality comedies and

dramas available to viewers and reducing opportunities for union-represented actors, writers, and crew. Instead of firing their previously shamed reality guru, Fox promoted Darnell to executive vice president of alternative programming. So they get to bust some unions and give a creeper a good job. Isn't that nice? Yeah. That's the American dream right there.

Good for them. It is. Nice. We will not be getting into it enough, but that is a big part of why reality is so popular with producers and stuff like high-level producers is like, well, you can get away from a lot of union shit with this. That is very true. You have people who work for a lot less and do a lot more.

And you can cut out the writer's guild, you know? Yep. Yeah. It is a real bummer. It's very fun. So with that August title behind him, Darnell helped to bring to life a number of the most noteworthy early reality shows. There was 2001's Temptation Island in which real-life couples were separated and tempted

into adultery. Unbelievable premise. Joe Millionaire in which a bunch of women dated a guy they thought was a millionaire only to realize he wasn't. Right. Isn't the twist at the end they give him a million dollars to? They split like, it's either a million or half a million between him and the woman who agrees to go out with him after learning he's not rich.

If she agrees to still go out with him, then they both get money. I don't know what the moral is there. Yeah. I mean, there's no moral. It's Mike Darnell. This guy doesn't have morals to the things he does. Right. It's putting dugs in a jar.

Yeah. And just seeing what happens. Yeah. It's just Megan TV. Yeah. In 2004's The Swan, a bunch of women are given plastic surgery and other risky surgical procedures so they can compete in a beauty pageant. Oh, man.

Mike Darnell, baby. He's the fucking, he's the Chuck Barris of fucking reality TV is what I'm getting from this. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. He just sat there all day. He just came up with horrible things to do.

Yeah. And killed for the government on the side. My favorite show he did was the short-lived series, Mr. Personality, in which a woman dates a bunch of men wearing masks that they can't take off until the show ends, so she has to pick the woman she wants to be with without seeing them without a mask. They have one of those now too. Probably. They have like a blind date one now.

But Dave, this one was hosted by Monica Lewinsky. Oh, shit. Shit. I mean, what we know about her now, it's like good for her. I mean, I'm not going to condemn her for like, you got to like, what other kind of, for one thing, what other kind of jobs are open to you as Monica Lewinsky in the early 2000s? Right. Like, not a lot of hiring opportunities after going through that ringer.

So, yeah, get what you can, Monica. Yeah. But it's, it's incredible. It's extra, like the opening to this show is extremely funny and we're just going to play it now. Play it, please. Now, friend or beau, pool or go, it's the season finale of Mr. Personality. This season on Mr. Personality, Hailey Valentine-Arp, a 26-year-old senior career woman from Atlanta,

was introduced to 20 eligible men, their faces covered by masks. Hopefully, it won't matter what you look like because he's touched my heart in a different kind of way. They look like. The men range from unemployed to- Peacemaker masks. Well, hold on. Do yourself a favor.

Look up the other Fox show, Secrets of Magic, revealed with the Masked Magician. Oh, no. I'm almost certain they just reuse those masks. I'm not, I mean, I haven't looked at it in a while, I'm going by memory, but for people, for people who aren't watching this, they look like servants at an eyes wide shut orange. Yeah. They all have the same masks. They all kind of look like MF Doom, but with a little bit of like, like the fucking Skeletor

from the Masters of the Universe movie mixed in. I'm shocked that they all have the same masks. It's so funny. Yeah. Here's more. Motivational speaker with a strategy of mind control. Ever so often, I kept hearing the numbers 17, 17. 80% of the way we get influences is really unconscious.

Hailey was forced to send 10 suitors packing. Their masks were removed. I think this totally sucks. The remaining 10 were given new colored masks and the competition kicked in. We're going to beat his ass. Hailey watched as a luau unraveled in the boys gone wild. That's what I'm talking about. This is my lovely bedroom.

And two men eliminated themselves. That's what I'm just going to have to do. I can't do this. So another bit of context, like most reality TV, this is men wearing tuxes and masks that takes place in what looks like a like upper middle class like McMansion. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's amazing about it too is it's like an eyes wide orgy on a budget.

Yeah. I'm not saying I have this kind of money, obviously, but it's like this is like someone who owns like a tow truck company like several their house, which again, nothing against that, but I'm just trying to. It's like an eyes wide shut party, but all of the food is like from Kirkland. You know, it's like Kirkland. It's like a Kirkland brand rich people orgy. Right.

It's not, it's not not wealthy. Like these people have money, but they don't have that much money. Can we play the next clip, please? Oh yeah. Yeah. Here's I picked this one because it's got a little bit of that sweet Lewinsky action that I know everybody's looking for. She really is just kind of barely in it, right?

That's Monica behind the two talking now. He had initially said that he took your breath away and that you could get lost in his green eyes. But you also said he seemed a little too smooth and a bit calculating. This is the mind control guy. He's a professional speaker and life coach for teenagers is 30 years old and the dark green mask meet Chris Berg. Wow, I love it.

I love it. Berg who's into mind control and motivation. Yeah, he's serious. There's no way he didn't die in a bar in Florida like 10 years ago. He died in a bar in Florida. That or he was part of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program in Iraq like one of the two is this guy's background. It's one or the other.

Either he is in fact good at what he does or yeah, he's been stabbed in the stomach in a bar in Florida. What an incredible show. Holy shit. It's so funny. It's like junk food because as soon as he's like I'm going to take off my mask, I'm like, here we fucking go. I can't wait to see this fucking.

Let's see this weirdo. And then he was just some honky. He's just some honky. Yeah. Yeah. He's just some fucking honky. It's so funny. It's such a ripoff.

I think it got like five episodes like which is why Monica Lewinsky is not a staple of reality TV to this day, which is tragic. You could see that she's just like throwing shit at a dartboard like, all right, let's put them in masks and let's get who's famous that people wouldn't expect to see in a show. Monica Lewinsky, cover her some money. Put her in the show. It didn't work. Whatever.

They probably had a list. Yeah. They probably like at one point William Shatner was going to host. You know, like it's probably just like we have a list of people who we know will do it. Yeah. We know we'll do it. They need work and like it'll people will be like, well, what I guess I'll try this.

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So yeah, it is kind of interesting to me that having just gone through this, the first reality show ever was pretty complex and intelligent entertainment for its day. And there's some real cultural value there, but it winds up as this, you know? Because reality TV and documentaries could be the same thing, right? If you're just documenting something that you find interesting, a slice of life in America, like that family, like that makes sense, it's just, they realized quickly, that's boring. And yeah, it's like, even you can see in shows that are still around, like The Real World, when it debuted in 1992, it dealt with a lot of shit like AIDS and drug addiction

and like LGBT issues in a way that was, a lot of folks will argue at least, I'm not a comprehensive, I don't know much about The Real World, but people who are critics of culture will argue was more intelligent than it is today. Cultural critic Latoya Peterson writes that while growth and development were early on parts of The Real World, in later days it became, quote, specifically cast for racists, assholes and agitators. It's like a formula. Every season has some huge racial altercation.

Every season has some kind of woman trying to sleep her way into self-esteem. Every season has a guy coping with a breakup angrily. Right. Again, they saw out people who were unstable. Yeah. Yeah. And then they gave them money and fame. Well, and also, as we saw with the very first, with like Darnell's first show, and Pozner

notes that like a big part of this change is that folks follow Darnell's lead in baiting advocacy groups like the National Organization of Women or the NAACP or GLAAD, with content that where people were like have controversies which will get these groups to weigh in, which will cause like journalists to write about this controversy, which generates press and views. And that's a big part of it too. It's hate clicks. Yeah.

It's hate clicks. It's all about hate clicks. It's triggering the libs and it's all built upon the same idea, which is that like any reaction is there, is a reaction therefore it succeeds. Even if the reaction is someone saying that's not funny, they're like, we did it. And it's like, did you though? Like, it's funny to me that kind of what's happening here is the way bullies work, right? Which is like if you react to them at all, you're giving them what they want, that we

have just applied to like all of culture now and reality is kind of how that happens where it's like, well, I guess the way everything should work is that if you get people to react by being shitty, then the person being shitty wins. Right. Exactly. Like if you run a show that's just someone going out in public and taking dumps in the ground at a mall. All right.

Now Dave, I told you that in confidence. We have our pitch meeting with VH1 in a week and look, baby, you can have multiple versions of that. It's like volcano and deep impact. You can never get too much of mall shitter. That's going to be gold. And it's spinoff who wants to watch a multi-millionaire shit in a fucking a Spencer's Gifts. Exactly.

Oh, that'd be great because people at first they'd be like, something smells like shit, but they'd look and there's all the novelty shit and they're like, well, which one is it? Like one of them is God, I want to go into a Spencer's gift and leave a real dump next to all the novelty ones. They wouldn't find it for months. Anyway, this is going to be stolen by Fox in like a week and make somebody $47 million. I mean, that could legitimately be like a such a jackass.

It could be. It could be. Yeah. In 2001, VH1 launched its celebrity block. The linchpin of this was the surreal life based off the real world in which people who were only celebrities in the loosest sense of the world, like at this point, Flavor Flav, would live together on camera. Flavor Flav became a lot more famous later, but he was, you know, this is kind of what

like blew him up into being a reality star. It was huge. The production company behind it, 51 Minds Entertainment started spinning off next from Entertainment Weekly quote, that's when they found Megan Houserman, a former Playboy model who appeared on season three of the WB turned CW reality competition, Beauty and the Geek. She and her partner, Alan Scooter Zakheim, took home the $250,000 prize. With her bombshell looks and sassy wit, Houserman became a fan favorite on Rock of Love with Brett Michaels.

Think The Bachelor, but with Poisons Michaels as its prize and its spinoffs. I Love Money and Rock of Love, Charm School. 51 Minds decided to give the model her own show, Megan Once a Millionaire. The funny thing about Megan was her stated ambition, which was to marry a millionaire, says Cronin. So we said, what if we filled a house with millionaires and they were competing for you as their trophy wife? Here we go.

This is, I sorta know what's to come here. Yeah, this does not sound like a TV show premise to me, Dave. It sounds like a spell to in the world, but a lot of studio executives were convinced it would be a hit. So VH1 green lights this motherfucker. In the casting notice, they asked for, quote, single men of the highest degree with a net worth of a million dollars or more. Now rather than rely entirely on traditional casting, they sent producers to nightclubs

to throw parties where rich guys would audition by just like being at a nightclub. These sound like the worst parties imagine. That sounds, yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. Imagine working a service job at one of those parties. What an absolute, that's, oh, that's the, that you could do. You could write a horror movie just about one of these nights. There aren't a lot of ethical reasons to make and deploy a chlorine gas bomb using the cleaning chemicals commonly found in any bar, but this would have been one, right?

Oh, yeah. I don't think they would have arrested you. Yeah. No, the guy just. It would have been self-defense. We all agreed this was self-defense. So yeah, they do this thing and one of the men they find through this process is Ryan Jenkins, a 32-year-old real estate developer from Las Vegas.

Hmm. Hmm. Good so far. Sounds like a perfectly rounded individual that I'm sure will have no problems around him. Now one, one casting producer later recalled of him, Ryan Jenkins had one of the best personalities on this planet. He was intriguing.

He knew it. He wasn't the best looking guy in the world. He just had this charisma. So all reality shows have a process for vetting candidates. This was clearly necessary after the first millionaire show blew up due to its lead male being an abusive monster with a restraining order against him. Every network and production company, though, did this in a different way. The most rigorous shows included the kind of like applications, included the kind of

information you need to get a mortgage. You'd have to file it every address you'd ever had, every job you'd had. There were psychiatric screeners, inkblot tests, et cetera. Entertainment Weekly continues. The other key component is the criminal background check, which involves in part searching court and arrest records in every county a candidate has ever lived. When it came time to run checks on all of Megan's potential millionaires, VH1 turned to Collective Intelligence, a Washington state-based company the network had been working with since

2003. But Collective only specialized in U.S.-based criminal searches. So for Jenkins, a Canadian citizen, the company subcontracted out the search to another firm, Straight Line International. Ryan Jenkins' record came back clear, and he was invited to join the cast. So this is going to go good. This is going to end well. It seems fine.

Yeah. He's a Canadian. They're nice people. Sure. No problems there. Megan wants to marry a millionaire launched on August 2, 2009, and it is one of the cringiest shows I've ever experienced. Let's watch the introduction.

Okay. To live the life of milk and honey, with a man who takes her there, a gentleman extraordinaire, Megan wants a millionaire. And when Megan wants, Megan gets. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What Megan wants, Megan gets. That's the good stuff, Dave.

Wait, you already explained who Megan is, right? Yeah. She's a Playboy model whose primary ambition is to marry a millionaire. I still feel like saying who does she think she is. It's just like, my God. All right. Yeah. I mean, good for her, I guess.

I mean, no. I don't know why I'm saying that. Definitely not good for her. I mean, good for her for wanting a millionaire and knowing what she wants and I guess I assume this will end really happy with her getting a millionaire. Yeah. I think she gets rich eventually, so there you go. So Ryan Jenkins in this episode, like the first, it's interminably long.

She's just like meeting all of these guys. It's unbelievably awkward. Some of them are like creepy old dudes who are like really weird and it's whatever. Like it's the kind, they're all creepy in some way. They're all the kind of people who would show up on a show with this premise. So it's horrible. And in his introduction, Ryan Jenkins describes himself as, quote, a little bit of Prince Charming, a little bit of a bad boy and here's, here's, here's him showing up on screen for

the first time. Okay. Hello, Megan. Look, we're matching already. We are matching. Have you met any Canadians before? Never. Well, it's about time, don't you think?

Absolutely. Can I let you in on a little secret? Please do. Ryan whispers in my ear, you're going to love Canadian bacon. Oh, fuck, fuck. That was a dick thing, right? I think, yeah, I think, I just lost a year of my life. Yeah, that, that takes a lot out of you.

My God. Just the facial hair alone should be illegal. I mean, this was, you know, the early 2000s, everything was worse, but yeah, no, I can't defend it. It was a different time back then, but still that facial hair, you're going to love Canadian bacon. Was he trying to say his dicks flat because? Yeah, flat and not quite cooked, right?

Yeah. Here's the thing. If he was actually just talking about Canadian bacon, they'd be, that'd be delightful, right? If he just wants to like cook her some Canadian, but Dave, he was not, no, no, he was not, but that would have made him a winner. He probably could have gotten all the way to the top that way. But no, it's probably, yeah, about his like tapeworm dick, like his flat, floppy. His flat floppy tapeworm dick.

Is it Canadian bacon like round too? Like it's like a. It's wrong. It's not right. Yeah. It's like poutine. You're not supposed to put it in your body. It just exists because we, you know, because America, the one time we pull our punches,

it's with Canada. And look at this nonsense that exists now. Look what we let happen. I'm going to, I'm going to need Garrison to fact check everything you just said. So Ryan advanced to the final round of the show. Hozerman liked him, although she saw some quote unquote red flags, like the fact that his Rolex was fake and that he only brought a single pair of pants for five weeks of filming. Amazing.

All right. I wish I could. What a millionaire. I wish I could act better than him, but I do only own a single pair of pants. Dave, I know this about you having lived with you, but also you're not a millionaire. That's true. I'm not. You're right.

Definitely not. Yeah. I can't, I can't afford multiple pairs of pants. You're right. That's why that's why I only have one pair. I'm the victim here. You're right. So yeah, it's weird.

Yeah. It is weird for him. It's weird for him. So she thought he was sweet and she almost picked him as the winner. She looked him up on Facebook one night during shooting and got his phone number and called him privately to tell him she planned to pick him, but then she told the show's producers what she planned to do and they were like, oh no, absolutely not. They justified this as saying he wasn't likable and was just putting on a show for her and

she eventually agreed to send him home quote, he was really upset and I was upset also. That's a shame. She planned to call him once filming was over and explained that she'd just been doing what her producers wanted. The show flopped, but Hausermann remained in contact with Ryan. He told her that after she sent him home, he was so upset that quote, I went to Vegas and I met a girl. As is normally the case on reality shows, producers hired several of the failed contestants

of this show for other projects and so four years later in 2009, Ryan Jenkins has cast for a show called I Love Money 3 vying for a $250,000 prize because he's not actually a millionaire and he could really use the cash. Entertainment Weekly continues, he kept calling her on the phone, his wife saying, I'm going to win this and you and I are going to have the life I've always promised, recalls Mark Cronin, co-founder of 51 Minds Entertainment, the production company behind Money, Megan the Surreal Life and the majority of VH1's wildly successful celebrity shows of that era.

Then he would ask her, where were you last night? Because he's in Mexico shooting the show and she lives in Las Vegas. He was very jealous and very suspicious of her. We were actually making a story of it on the show. We were like, look at this guy, he's obsessed with this model he married, Cronin continues. It was funny until it wasn't funny at all. You want to guess why it stops being funny? I have an idea.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty, it's not funny. On August 15th, 2009, soon after I Love Money 3 wrapped, Fior, his wife's strangled and mutilated body was found stuffed in a suitcase, tossed into a dumpster in Buena Park, California. I wonder what happened. Yeah, so Jenkins goes on the run and as this all gets public, TMZ finds out that he has an extensive criminal record, including an arrest in 2005 for assaulting a girlfriend in Calgary, which VH1 and 51 Minds said was not on his background check.

Jenkins eventually kills himself in a hotel room in British Columbia on August 23rd. And yeah, it's this whole big story, big, big, ugly story for the reality TV industry. Collective intelligence gets most of the blame for this and they wind up laying off their workforce. The whole nightmare reportedly leads to an increased willingness for production companies and networks to pay for thorough background checks. So that's good. It feels like everybody in America should go to jail for a day.

It feels like we all got to go to jail for that one. It's just like our culture, everything. Everybody should feel bad. You just clock in for your shift and then you're the guard next because like we got to get through everybody. Right. We should all feel fucking ashamed. Yeah, some new refugee comes into the country and it's like, hey, sorry, it's been so tough

over in Ethiopia or Ukraine. Glad you're here. You got to go to jail for a day now for a day. There was this show like 15 years ago. Yeah. No one stopped it from happening. Nobody stopped it. Obvious that this person was.

Yeah. Look, we know you're new here, but every American has some collective responsibility for the show. Right. I mean, listen, in our defense, he did say he was kind of a bad boy. So this is this would fall under the kind of a bad boy ages. Yeah. He's like, that's what he actually whispered.

He's like in her ear. He's like, I'm a murderer. I am. I am going to be a murderer. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my fucking God. Now the good news, Dave, is that sketchy, violent dudes getting through vetting is no

longer the main threat faced by reality shows. We're going to talk about what is in part two of this series. Dave, how you feeling? Yeah. How you liking reality? Is that is the same? How am I liking reality? You know, I'm mixed feelings always on reality.

Yeah. So, you know, can't complain, but really, I don't have many compliments for it either. Yeah. I feel the same about reality as I do about reality TV, which is, I feel like we could do better. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we could do better, you know?

But you know who's doing great, Dave, is your podcast network, Gamefully Unemployed, where people can listen to hype casts and hear about what's coming out in Hollywood. They can listen to Fox Mulder as a maniac and learn how the FBI definitely really functions. Yeah. Yeah. It's our own behind the bastards for Fox Mulder and Fox Mulder only. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so detailed, in fact, that if you listen to every episode of Fox Mulder as a maniac, you are legally an FBI agent and can carry out raids and stings on whoever you want. It's true. Yeah. I mean, you know, the government might say otherwise, but it's like a little wink-wink for them. Yeah. What do they know?

What do they know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They're just fucking with you. Yeah. So, yeah, everybody check that out. Mm-hmm. Gamefully Unemployed.

Mm-hmm. Gamefully... Patreon.com. Wait. I can do it. Patreon.com. Gamefully Unemployed. Yeah.

We're on Twitter as well. Gamefully Unemployed. God. Yeah. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. It's a pretty cool manner.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Your name plus nudes. Wow. Sophie, just let that happen. Okay. Cool. Yeah, Google your name plus nudes.

See what happens. Yeah. You'll get something. Yeah. It won't be...you won't be happy you got it, but you'll get something. Mm-hmm. Anyway, this has been the podcast. Yeah.

I've been Robert Evans. You've been David Bell. That's true. And Sophie has been disappointed in me. That's true. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse.

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podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole? My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts.