Bad Behavior on Reality Shows

2009 was not a good year for reality television. In October former Wife Swap contestant and storm chaser Richard Heene made a desperate phone call to a Denver television station telling them that his son had climbed into an experimental balloon which in turn was accidentally released and now the kid was soaring hundreds of feet up in the sky. The incident quickly made it onto CNN who aired live coverage of the U.F.O. shaped balloon flying through the sky. For two hours all of America held it's breath worried that the small boy inside would either fall out to his death or that the balloon would rise so high that he would either freeze or suffocate. When the balloon finally landed in a field rescue workers rushed up to it to discover the boy was not inside. When authorities investigated Heene's house they found the boy hiding in a box in the attic. Eventually it turned out that the entire incident was a hoax supposedly created as part of a reality show that Heene had hoped to shop to the cable networks. But the Heene's were not the only ones to pull an outrageous and illegal stunt as part of a pitch to become reality stars. A month later in November Washington socialite Michaele Salahi, who was in the running to be one of the stars of Bravo's Real Housewives of Washington D.C., decided to crash a state dinner at the White house with her husband. When the incident became public Bravo quickly distanced themselves from the couple and decided not to use the footage they shot of the Salahis crashing the high security event.

It seemed as if there was no end of people so desperate to be reality show stars that they were willing to break the law in order to pull an outrageous stunt that would grab the reality show's producer's attention. But it was not just the reality show wannabes behaving badly. 2009 was also the year that Jon Gosselin left his wife and 8 children. When he found out that The Learning Channel had fired him from the show Jon & Kate Plus 8 renaming it Kate Plus 8, Jon Gosselin filed a cease and desist order barring the network from filming his kids and effectively canceling the series. But the worst incident happened in August when VH1 reality show contestant Ryan Alexander Jenkins murdered his model wife Jasmine Fiore. VH1 quickly released a statement that the two reality shows Jenkins appeared in were not their production but of an outside production company called 51 Minds who were responsible for the casting of the shows. VH1 then quickly pulled both the dating show Megan Wants a Millionaire which Jenkins was a finalist on and I Love Money from their schedule announcing both series would never air again.

It should probably not have been a shock that these incidents would happen. Typically those auditioning to be in reality shows tend to be a tad bit mentally unstable. After all, these are people willing to humiliate themselves in front of millions of viewers just so they can be on television. But is reality television encouraging people to act their worst just so they will be noticed? There is nothing new about this argument. More than thirty years ago when on the reality show An American Family the mother Patricia Loud asked her husband for a divorce. Critics blamed the documentarians claiming that the presence of the film cameras and the family's newfound fame were causing them to act differently than they would have had they never been put on television. With the rise of the celebreality shows of MTV, VH1 and the E Network it was believed that the ex-celebs who starred on each show felt compelled to act outrageous in order to pull in the ratings needed to keep the show on the air. Danny Bonaduce claimed that he had been deliberately acting out during his series Breaking Bonaduce because of the pressure to act outrageous on screen. As for the wannabees, back in 2001 thousands of teenagers copied the show Jackass by pulling their own dangerous stunts while being videotaped. They all had hoped to create their own Jackass style show, but in some cases ended up seriously injuring themselves.

But more often producers seek out subjects who are already train wrecks. This began with The Osbournes who were an unusual family to begin with. As producers sought out other celebrities to base reality shows around they looked for those who were more outrageous than he last. While some clearly played bad for the camera, others were unstable to begin with. Anna Nicole Smith was a former model who had put on several pounds and had become a drug addict. Even while sober Anna was spoiled and was encouraged to act out by her lawyer and enabler Howard K Stern. In retrospect Anna's reality show chronicled her slowly killing herself, but at the time it was considered entertainment. Some of the worst unstable celebrities could be found on VH1, originally in their series The Surreal Life but escalating to shows like Celebrity Rehab. As 2009 came to a close yet another reality show was criticized for the actions of it's participants. The Jersey Shore drew complaints from Italian-American organizations who did not like the antics of it's cast members. The Jersey Shore is just one of several MTV television shows featuring bad mannered youth, a trend that began with My Sweet 16 which featured spoiled rich girls and their sweet 16 birthday parties. It was MTV's answer to WE's Bridezilla which featured brides who were just as spoiled.