Audiences expect certain things out of MTV shows, and often MTV delivers. Jersey Shore satisfied the need to watch a group of idiots do idiot stuff until fights or pregnancies occurred. 16 and Pregnant taught us all how to sign language the words ?I'm lucky.? And MTV Friendzone gives us our weekly dose of a person learning that their best friend doesn't want to sleep with them.
Sometimes, though, MTV doesn't pull through and makes a grievous error, the error of hating their audience. These are seven MTV shows that satisfied no one?s expectations.
7. Is She Really Going Out With Him
Is She Really Going Out With Him should?ve been a show about every nerd?s wish, where the hot girl realizes that the guy she's dating is garbage and leaves him for the nerd. However, most of the show focused on the hot girl attempting to make the relationship work, with stupid choices along the way. Normal people would realize that nothing is perfect. However, romantic-minded nerds, the people most likely to watch this show, hate normal life. To a romantic nerd, normal life is just a chance to not have sex with their fake Christina Hendricks-look-alike girlfriend while she's dressed as Wonder Woman changing into Hayden Panettiere?s cheerleading outfit, and the chances of that happening at all are looking pretty bad constantly.
The show was supposed to be funny, with the narrator sometimes taking this snobbish professor voice when explaining the different species of douche bag. And it probably would?ve been hilarious had it not been that at all. Every single smile and sentence that the idiots showcased on Is She Really Going Out With Him immediately nullified the show?s likability. Imagine introducing your girlfriend to one half of your family as the girl who murdered the other half of the family. You're set up to hate these people, and no matter how many hacky techniques one uses to make it seem like the show is comedy-oriented, there's no litter box method to deal with guys with Ed Hardy shirts and the reading levels of cats.
6. Room Raiders
Room Raiders could?ve been great. The show was about a group of girls or guys that pick their matches by having a hidden camera installed in some person?s room. A person goes through that room, investigates all the shit in it and the choices are made based on the stuff that the person owns. I could have fallen in love with this show, had the finds been outrageous. ?What's this under the bed? Half a zebra? Looks like he's got a good appetite!? or ?There's a secret compartment in the closet. Some stairs?.whoa?.look at all this?.no, he's got a chainsaw?help, AAAAAUGH!?
Instead, all they could find were things that are ?crazy? but only when judged by idiots. ?Oh?.he's got pink socks!? ?Oooooh, she has a diary!!!!? ?That guy owns a lot of basketballs!? Anyone waiting for the vibrators to fall out of the guys? pillow or for a gagged, homeless gimp to emerge wailing from the girl?s closet left Room Raiders disappointed. It's not that the concept for the show was even that bad. But it could?ve been something great. ?
5. Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors
Imagine if MTV 2 gave you the options of A) develop a show about a ridiculous sport that no one takes seriously, and, oh yeah, do it like they do in Mexico, or B) get fired, I would probably have to think two seconds about it before printing off as many resumes and cover letters as I could. Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors was a lost cause from the very beginning.
I don't quite know who thought that this show would have drawing power or last. It was broadcast on MTV 2, at 10 AM, and the only people watching MTV 2 at that time are people who unsubscribed from every channel but MTV 2, and have lost their remote. I'm not saying that professional wrestling is becoming pass?, but starting a new television show about it is like trying to make a breakfast alternative to the waffle, entitled ?More Waffles, But Not Quite The Waffles You Have Already.? America has what it has, likes what it has, and there's not a lot of room for expansion in it. Plus, what it has includes The Rock, and if anything isn't starting with The Rock, it's already at a disadvantage.
There's also not a lot of recognition for the art of Lucha Libre in America, either. When most people think of Lucha Libre, they're either remembering a Jack Black movie or they're thinking of it as something else. Short, muscular men in spandex trunks, speaking a foreign language and doing a punch ballet isn't on a lot of people?s DVR?s. If they wanted to watch something that ludicrous, than Terra Nova would?ve gotten a five season deal and a spinoff movie.
4. College Life
There's a difference between college life and ?college life.? College life is what actually happens, the all night studying sessions, the bad John Belushi poster, the breakdown of high school relationships and the slow discovery that no one has any idea of what they're doing. ?College life? is actual, awesome John Belushi, amazing LSD trips and finding the sexually-charged love of your life, even though her sorority hates you. This show centered on the first, and was the most boring college experience possible.
They gave cameras to the participants in the show, and it's painfully obvious that, even with all of MTV?s editing, none of them knew how to make their lives seem slightly interesting. Vague, sleepy confessions at night, embarrassing party montages and whatever emotional minutiae they could cram into an episode, all without parental groups looking at the show as some kind of propaganda for fascist dull people.
The audience for this show would be curious people who don't know what it's like to go to college yet and want a little hint at what's to come. What MTV gave them was this dreadful show about students who got a year of higher education and a complete erasure of appealing personality traits. Were enrollment numbers down for universities nationwide the year this show came out? If I was in high school and saw College Life, I'd immediately call my local army recruiter and beg for any open available spot. College Life makes college look as fun as explaining your Tumblr to an ex-girlfriend.
3. The Ashlee Simpson Show
Any show that features Ashlee Simpson and doesn't feature a medley of injuries and failures isn't living up to its hype. The Ashlee Simpson Show centered on Ashlee Simpson and her music career, and since Ashlee Simpson practices for every show by screaming at a picture of her sister and trying to manipulate her vocal chords into producing sounds, it was a labor to watch this thing.
Most episodes centered on the conflict of her attempting not to suck at her career, and since the episodes are all titled things like ?Ashlee Performs Live? and ?Ashlee Turns 20,? you have every reason not to watch it. The Ashlee Simpson Show would?ve been much more interesting to audiences if this was the episode listing in the first season.
Episode 1: Ashlee Goes To The Beach
Episode 2: How Many Stitches Does A Shark Bite Victim Require?
Episode 3: The Physical Therapist Is Late/Ashlee Attempts Stairs By Herself
Episode 4: (Cancelled Prematurely)
2. Engaged & Underage
Engaged &Underage is the kind of show that people end up screaming at, because not much good can come of its premise. The show concerns two kids, usually between sixteen and twenty-two, who want to get married, and will let nothing stand in their way. Yes, they made a whole show about it. In the opening to every episode, the guy and the girl will say something like ?And our parents think we're too young, but we know we?ll last forever,? and it will start the title sequence, which features animals kissing and a cartoon of people fucking in a car. I don't know what the message of this show is, as anything they intended to tell us about teenage couples falling in love with each other is kind of lost as soon as you seen a car frame shaking because of hard sex. It's like starting a cooking show, and before every commercial break, the chef vomits pure lard all over the counter.
People watched Engaged & Underage waiting for the couple to come to their senses and at least have the decency to loathe each other before the hour was over. Instead, most of them sucked it up and got married, which is the only logical option when you have no valuable skills and a partner who's just as into making poor decisions as you are. Right?
1. A Shot At Love 2 With Tila Tequila
It's easy to not like Tila Tequila. Her existence is what happens when a person gets herpes so badly that they become?a new breed of predator. Her body is so nasty that she fills out her gender as ?toilet seat.? The back of Tila Tequila?s throat has filed assault charges against Tila Tequila?s boyfriends. But doesn't she, like everyone, deserve love and companionship?
A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila was less of a dating show and more of a shouting match amongst an entire house. A Shot At Love 2 continued this trend, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd think you were watching a documentary about what happens when you provoke cavemen. A Shot At Love 2 hated its audience, because it proved that the first series was a failure. And if Tila Tequila can't find someone to cherish and infect her, what hope do the rest of us have?
Despite its shortcomings, the most interesting part of A Shot At Love 2 was that the contestants knew that Tila Tequila was bisexual, whereas the people in the first season had no clue. This makes it more of a detective show than reality, because now, the warts could come from anywhere.