All Shows

There was a time when people could not stop talking about The Real World. These days, however, the reaction is usually closer to “That’s still on?!” Sure, Bunim/Murray created a pop-culture phenomenon when they stuck seven strangers together in a house, and made way for the reality-television craze we’re still being skated and duetted to death with. But things change, and with the death of Mary-Ellis Bunim, the franchise began focusing more on casting shallow drunkards to interact with products such as Ford cars or Pepsi than real representative young people with opinions, true individuality, or something to say. In the age of MySpace and bling, cute and bratty seemed like the way to go, rather than interesting and multi-faceted; TWoP readers disagreed, however, as the oldest dog on the site (perhaps?) is put out to pasture. Run free, old trope. Run free!

These people may haunt future generations — but not us any longer.

We don’t fear it, we just don’t like it.

Started out on fire, then cooled off into predictable provocation.

Who’d have thought the end of the world would be so slow-moving and tiresome? The battle between good and evil is over. Who won? The recapper, who won’t have to watch the second half of this miniseries.

The former slayer’s much-heralded return to The CW turned out to be a one-season bust. Even two Sarah Michelle Gellars don’t equal one Buffy (or even one Lying Game).

Ah, the agony of defeat. Most people experience it in fleeting moments, but some of us experienced it every Monday night at 10 PM. No more. Three seasons of also-rans riding around in an RV was more than enough. They continue without us, they even head into sydication in some markets, but really, if six destined-for-obscurity adolesents fall down in the forest and no one hears….

Oh, the programming and publicity geniuses at the UPN. They took a show that sounded really, really stupid, used the spare change in their pocket to promote it, and put it up against two insanely popular shows thinking, “Well this should get some of the Top Model runoff, right?” Wrong. And then the show proved to be awesome but no one knew, because no one was watching. UPN, you’s a mess.

Nothin’ but a good time.

After helping INXS to find a new lead singer in the un-recapped Season 1, Rock Star returned in Season 2 with an attempt to launch a brand-new supergroup called “Supernova.” The ultimate results ended up being more like a black hole in almost every imaginable way, so CBS quietly (and wisely) stopped trying to make music history for a while. Rock off.