Tuesday, April 12, 2016

True confessions-The Joe Schmo Show

An obscure show on Spike TV, The Joe Schmo Show satirizes reality TV in all it's cheesy absurdity. It's actually two things-a satire of reality tv, and a roast of the "Schmo". 

The premise is you take one guy (they had a girl once) as the mark and try to convince him he is on a reality show that he doesn't know is fake.  In the last season, the mark thought he was auditioning for a bounty hunter job. The other people "competing" against him are actors who play stereotypes of reality show contestants. The superficial model, the token minority, the asshole, the schemer, and the sweet little innocent virgin. As a special treat-last season had Lorenzo Llamas as...Lorenzo Llamas. Major kudos to him for being able to poke fun at himself. He played the high maintenance Hollywood star. 

The show works if the mark doesn't find out he's being played-and he also needs to be a likable guy. The last seasons star, Chase-was a super nice guy. He seemed to do everything right. 

I'm not sure how you can do this show again and again-since it's based in a deception, the more people find out about the show, the harder it is to deceive-but I hope they find out how. The really cool idea would be to have the mark "in" on the joke. Make it really meta this time. 

  

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