For my money, the least moral concept for a show ever in the history of television was My Two Dads. Mom's a giant whore. Such a big whore she doesn't know who Dad is.

Heh, all my favorite shows have been mentioned on this thread.

'Fear Factor' is possibly the most amoral show on TV. Which is fine. The funny thing is, I read recently that it is one of the most popular prime-time TV shows for kids under the age of 12 (second only to 'American Idol'). I think that any parent who thinks Fear Factor is fine but Janet Jackson's boob will scar their kid for life is one who needs to have a morals check.

But my vote goes to 'Celebrity Mole'. Not because the point of it is deception - it is a game, after all - but because the freakin' celebrity winner gets to take home the money. Mark Curry, Angie Everhart & Dennis Rodman seriously do not need to take home the winnings. The good news is they're all very lousy at putting money in the pot .... Mark tries harder to be funny than to win, Angie's just trying to make sure the camera is on her good side and Dennis is in his own bizarre world most of the time (and of course one of them is the Mole). There's like $73.12 winnings at stake now. Even so, whatever happened to playing on behalf of your favorite charity?

When South Park came out, my mom didn't like it, but it was allowed. Simpsons was still forbidden viewing though.

Now, I shield her from all of the terrible things out there. "No, Mom, you really wouldn't like Queer as Folk. I promise!"

I don't have cable, but they just showed a few eps of Queer Eye on broadcast tv. I think Carson is funny, and I'm a sucker for Home Makeover's (my mom and I used to go look at model homes just to see the pretty furniture whenever there was a new housing development in town), but the ep was about a guy who was getting made over so he could propose to his girlfriend. I loved the apartment re-do, but I hated the way they portrayed it as "ok" that this guy's wardrobe wasn't good enough for the woman he wanted to marry. If the guy had said that he wanted a different style anyway and now's a good time to do it, I would have been fine, but he specifically said he was changing to fit more with his girlfriend. If she loves him, she loves him and they'll find a way to accept the style differences.

Interestingly enough, the show Half&Half did an ep that was inspired by Queer Eye, but the guy's girlfriend on the show told him to go back the way he was because that's who she fell in love with.

I hate Extreme Makeover for the same reason. If it were some cute clothes, makeup tips and a haircut, I would be okay with it. To make it "extreme", throw in some personal training sessions (although why they don't have a nutritionist as well is beyond me), but plastic surgery? Not the "I'm improving my eyesight" or "my lips are mal-formed" but the "I want a tummy tuck/chin implant/breast implants/brazilian butt lift" and "hair plugs will save my life".

It's probably nit-picking, but to me there is a line between self-improvement and downright shallow.

I don't like Queer Eye, not because it is amoral, but because it's incredibly stupid and vapid. Had to get that out of the way.

On topic, I would have to say that the show on television that has the least morals would be Friends. I like the show a lot, but I disagree with the utter remembrance that Ross has 2 kids and Rachel's a mother of one.

As far as parents monitoring what kids watch? I've had a TV in my room since I was 7 and have always been responsible in my viewing. I never really liked Ren & Stimpy, so I didn't watch it. Same goes for the Simpsons. My mom never cared what I watched but rather told me what she didn't like and why she didn't like it.

I used to not have a problem with Friends. When they encouraged the mother of Ross's kid (Rachel) to then sleep with one of his best friends (Joey), I lost it. I know in the end R&J didn't do it, but the network was promoting it like it was a romantic thing - and Rachel's reason for backing out had nothing to do with the fact that his friend was her child's dad. Ew.

This isn't a show yet, but they're airing ads for it, so I'm adding it. I don't remember the name, but I just saw a commercial for a new reality show that has a woman on an island with a bunch of guys lusting over her and she has to pick one. Typical, these days, right? But the twist is that some of the guys are gay. If she picks a straight one, they share a million dollars, but if she picks a gay one, he gets the whole million to himself. On the ad, she's sitting with one guy and says "I don't believe you'd kiss me if you were gay" and so, of course the guy kisses her (only one of the various tests she puts the guys through to tell if they're gay or not).

This is wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to start.

Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick - a whole reality show based on the premise that if a chick's gaydar is fully functioning she can win a million dollars? And in proving it gay men shall be humiliated? Gay men succumbing to humiliation in order to try and win a million dollars? That is so shitty.

I hope one of the gay men does win the money but he has to prove he's gay by making out with his boyfriend on camera, only it comes out afterward that he wasn't really gay, he only said he was in order to win a million dollars. ha!

That sounds very much like the reality show on Bravo last year about a gay man who had to pick between a variety of suitors, but half of the guys were actually straight pretending to be gay. They told the guy about the twist 2/3 of the way into the show and he looked like he'd been slapped. How could I possibly have forgotten about that when I posted in "Least Moral Shows On TV?" It was really mean-spirited.

Wow. I just finished reading this thread, and like somebody else mentioned, I'm quite pleased that my parents were fairly relaxed about letting me watch television. I think it's because at my house we watched television together, so they could explain things to my brother and me if we needed explanation.

I don't remember a time when I didn't watch The Simpsons, actually. I was born in 1985, and it was on in what, 1989? I remember that I didn't watch it during its original airings because at that point in time 8 PM was just too late for me to stay up. However, nightly re-airings on Fox and the WB have taken care of that nicely for me. My parents are fairly devout Catholics, but they never thought that The Simpsons was anti-religious in the least. So I guess I find it hard to believe that other people's parents wouldn't let them watch it, just because I've grown up with it and the only detrimental effects it's had on me is that now I have the habit of coming up with a quote for everything.

One of the things I really do wish I hadn't been allowed to watch, though, was when I was on vacation and the hotel room had cable (we didn't) so my mom put on Little House on the Prairie for us to watch before we went to the beach. It was the "Laura gets kidnapped by the crazy lady" episode and to this day I can't even look at the listings for that show.

Mangetical Anji, I also find it a little weird that people put down Simpsons when talkig about Least Moral shows, when in fact, several religious publications have noted it to at least have two great moral characters on the show (well, three until Maude met her end...)

My parents didn't censor what I watched on TV either. They taught me the difference between fantasy and reality when I was young and I didn't have any problems. Forbidding kids to watch a particular only makes them want to see it.

I grew up in the 60s and my parents never controlled what I watched, but at that time virtually all tv was family friendly. However, I remember knowing a girl (preacher's kid) whose parents didn't allow her to watch American Bandstand and Where The Action Is because the girls wore miniskirts. I watched scary movies, soap operas, etc. at an early age with no lifelong scarring. My mother thought Star Trek (the original) was stupid, but she never liked sci-fi, and by that time, my parents generally watched tv in their own tv/music room upstairs, and my brother, younger sister, and I decided for ourselves what we would watch downstairs in the den.

As a parent of a 10-year-old, I don't limit her choice of shows, but I do limit her choice of channels. She's free to select anything on Disney, Nick, PBSKids, HBOFamily, etc., and frankly shows virtually no interest in most network tv. If there's something on a channel that's not kid-oriented, I'll watch at least part of it with her and discuss any issues that might come up. Until she's a little older, I don't want her watching explicit sex, explicit violence, or televangelists. She knows that I watch The Sopranos and SFU, and that she's not allowed to watch them yet. Over the next few years, I'm sure her taste in shows will change, and I plan to just gradually allow her to watch more mature shows.

Shows that are immoral: I'm not religious at all, so for me there's a big difference between a show being religious and being moral. The reality shows that encourage participants to deceive each other, etc. in order to win a big prize seem very immoral. The Sopranos doesn't seem immoral IMO, because the characters live violently and often die violently, and we see just how despicable they are, despite the fact that they have some nice characteristics. Tony Soprano loves his family and loves animals, but every time we might start to sympathize with him, David Chase shows us the brutal reality of Tony killing someone or cheating on his wife again. For the least moral shows, I'd have to nominate some of the televangelist stuff like The 700 Club or whatever, which encourage little old ladies to send in their money to support these sanctimonious hypocrites. My grandmother would send in a check at least once a month to these jerks, and just could not believe (at least until the Jim and Tammy Fay scandal) that these people were living a life of luxury by scamming people like her.

Well, my parents were never very strict about what I was watching, but then again I grew up in Europe, so nakedness doesn't bother me much. They were however against us watching scary-movies until we were at least 12, since I watched a vampire-movie when I was 6 and had to sleep with the lights on until I was 11. And porn is NOT allowed in our house - even though I'm over 18 now (not that I actually want to watch it, yuck). They find it demeaning to women, and that it is an inaccurate portrayal of sex.

My parents were always open about things, and always made sure me and my brothers knew that violence on TV is fake and we shouldn't be doing those stuff for real. They pretty much made it clear at an early age that TV was just "make belief" and the world is not like that.

I don't think my parents ever cared what we watched. My mom, me and my little brother used to watch South Park together when we were like 8 and 12 and then one day she just decided she wasn't going to let my brother watch it anymore. My father really likes the Simpsons so we watched that since it came on, I remember kids whose parents wouldn't let them watch it and I didn't understand why. As for soaps my mom and I watched General Hospital together all the time and we still do. I think that's probably how soaps manage to stay on so long :-P. My mom didn't really want me watching Six Feet Under with her but I did and she doesn't mind.

For some reason when I started watching MTV (which was probably when I was 12) I felt like I was watching something I shouldn't be. I don't know why for some reason I just thought it was a dirty channel. Oh and as for lest moral shows: Oz... but it's so good.

Interesting story from my childhood: my mother hates toilet humor. Vehemently. This wore off on me as I hate it, too, and I cannot stand any 'comedy" that utilizes it.

When I was growing up, Ren and Stimpy was banned because it was gross. The Simpsons was banned because Bart was a smartass. Beavis and Butthead was banned because it was also gross. However, my mother let me watch the entirety of Dirty Dancing and that dreadful Goldie Hawn movie where has amnesia even though there's a lot of adult content in both movies. And two years after the cartoon bans my mother was sitting down to watch ER and Ally McBeal with my then 10-year-old sister.

My mother has told me that if she had a child in the house, Spongebob Squarepants would be banned, because there's a lot of "bathroom humor" involved.

With my parents, it was all about context and age-appropriateness. But pretty much anything I was allowed to watch once, and then we would discuss it like a family. I wasn't allowed to watch You Can't Do That On Television on Nickelodeon because my mom said that there wasn't one adult character on the show who wasn't stupid or disgusting. If there had been one, or if I had been old enough to understand parody (I was in single digits at the time) then it would be fine. It was the same way with the Simpsons. I wasn't allowed to watch the earlier seasons because I was too young. But when I got a little older, she was glad, because she could watch it now too. South Park wasn't a problem for me because by the time it came around I was about 16, and I got satire. But it would be totally inappropriate for people younger than around that age, and it's definitely not for kids.

But if we're talking about the least moral show on television, this thread should begin and end with General Hospital, and not even for the normal reasons why people want to claim that soaps are bad. The cops are the bad guys (corrupt and stupid), the mobsters and contract killers are the heroes and romantic ideals, women don't have jobs or lives outside of their men, the younger set lacks ambition, there are no happy families and there is almost no respect for parent/child relationships, and abusive and codependent behavior is not only portrayed as "normal", but ideal. It's gratuitously violent and misogynist, and there's some really screwed up psychology that goes into the writing of that show. They actually uttered a line to the effect of "Why would you call the police when you hear about a crime. I don't understand your ridiculous obsession with the law." And they were serious. My parents definitely wouldn't have let me watch that show, if only because they wouldn't want me absorbing some of the more unhealthy ideas about women.

I would have to add Nip/Tuck, sure you know that the behavior on the show is ammoral, but do they have to make it look so fun?
And, even though I watch it every day, That 70s Show is surprisingly bad. I noticed the first time I sat down to watch an episode with my dad - Talk about uncomfortable.

I just want to say -- Bookwoman, anyone who groups televangelists with explicit violence is officially in my cool book.

This is from way up thread but it kind of reminds me as to why my brother wasn't allowed to watch the Incredible Hulk. He would run around and try to tear off all of his clothes afterwards.

Also, my mom had MTV blocked beacuse one night (after I was already in bed) she caught a few minutes of Undressed and decided that everything on MTV was completely inappropriate for me to watch. I had never seen the show and didn't even know it existed until she told me why she was blocking MTV. Eventually we got it back when the cable company switched around channels and the blocked out channel changed to the History Channel and my dad made her promise not to block anything anymore. Of course I was in college by then but still.

I know. You can add Temptation Island to this list. I never understood why you would want to go on an island in order to test your love.

I think that General Hospital is one of the least moral show on tv: the cops and DA are corrupted, the mafia guys (Sonny and Jason) are supposed to be the heros of the show. They killed people and yet they are never punished for their crime. Even worse, everybody respect them. Sonny even shot his pregnant wife in the head while she was in labour. Yet she still loved him afterward. This show glorify violence and mafia (yes I do watch The Soprano and this show doesn't glorify violoence: Tony is an unhappy guy and he is not proud of what he's doing). I don't watch General Hospital anymore but I know nothing has changed.

True story about a televangelists. My uncle and aunt live in a very very wealthy neighborhood (wealthy enough that a well-known movie star also owns a home there). My uncle pointed out this small plot of land to me that was worth around $2.5 million. He said that a televangelist had bought that land, since it was adjacent to his home, to build a garage for his cars.

sigh.

I feel so bad for the people who send them money. To me, that is immoral.

As for TV ... my parents never really monitored what I watch, I seemed to have done that for myself.

As for the least moral show ... I guess for me it would be shows in which innocent people are deceived.

I'm going to sound like a jackass because I can't remember the title, but that upcoming show on the WB that's like a fake American Idol has got to be on this list. It's a show that exists exclusively to make fun of innocent people and trade on their (admitedly misguided) ambitions and dreams. I'm not a huge fan of how American Idol works (and admittedly have only seen about three episodes ever), but there is a big difference between a person voluntarily going on tv and being given an honest assessment and someone being manipulated and falsely praised in order to humiliate them. It's just wrong.

That would be Superstar USA, ultimategirl, and it seems like an unnecessarily mean concept to me too.

Are You Hot, anyone? Rachel Hunter as a judge, when it is painfully clear that there is something underneath those tresses other than a lot of hot air, is not exactly an inspiration.

I wasn't allowed to watch Doogie Howser, but I snuck the little black and white into my room and turned the volume down really low. Of course, I was 8 at the time, so I never understood all the jokes.

My gripe now is with those "It's Good to Be...." and "The Fabulous Life of...." shows that go on and on about how rich celebrities are, and brag about how they waste money on stupid things. As an (almost) starving college student, that just pisses me off that they glorify wasteful spending and basically make you feel like crap b/c you can't afford to rent a hotel room for $5000 a night. I can't help think that if just one of those people didn't get the $20,000 dress they wore once, that could pay the rest of my tuition.

Word. And the worst part about it all is that you find out that they don't even pay for most of the clothes and such that they get.

I don't see anything bad about The Simpsons. It's a sarcastic show, you're supposed to get that the Simpsons is not an "ideal" family and that htey don't want to give you lessons.

South Park is similar, but of course it's in bad taste and has a lot of "morally bad" content. However, it's trying to be shocking, so somehow I can't take it seriously. I don't think anyone should; the writers will just laugh at our expense if we do that.

That's My Bush was really funny, I think, and not morally bad in any way. If your president's a moron, you should be able to say it out loud. Isn't USA all about freedom? It's about freedom of speech, I think. Of course, if you mean the tasteless sex jokes, etc, that might be a different thing.

If Queer as Folk is so bad, how about Sex and the City? It's the same thing, only it features heterosexual women and not gay men. I think the real problem is with the whole gay aspect. Why should homosexuality be morally inferior to heterosexuality? It makes no sense to me.



Wow. It shocks me that someone would still think an out-of-wedlock baby is immoral. In Finland, 50 % of couples live together without getting married. It's not seen as immoral here, except by some extreme fundamentalists, I guess.

What was wrong with Doogie Howser?

Especially Nitwitney.

At least Jessica Simpson is apologetic about plunking down exorbitant amounts. Britney Spears doesn't even try.

There was this particular episode where he and his girlfriend Wanda were planning on having sex. Nothing too shocking, but I was 8. And there was other sex stuff. I don't know- maybe they just really hated the show.

What I see as wrong- or, at least, definitely off- about QaF is that its creators wax rhapsodic about how it's the best thing to happen to queers since sliced low-card bread, whereas the show widely incorporates rampant promiscuity and drugs. And it's not as if there's one character ("The Circuit Queen") who's doing it- multiple characters are doing it at once. I handled it during the first season, mainly because the writers were just trying to portray it as a group of friends who happen to be gay, and not representative of the gay community as a whole (they even ran a disclaimer to some effect at the end of each episode).

Then, the later seasons happened, and CowLip were talking about how the show was such a great thing for gay people, and dude, you just put a guy blowing off his boyfriend to visit a sex party in the last episode, so just build a ladder and get over yourself.

Yes, I know, I'm a big stinkin' prude, but there is something pretentious about assuming that a show that draws attention to the hedonism of the gay lifestyle (not gayness in general, but the club scene, etc.) is going to win favors with straight people. That, and the writing sucks.

JustinCognito makes a great point. That's the same problem I had with Good Times and Martin. If the "least moral" shows are the ones that ultimately do damage, then if a show built on stereotypes is considered representative, then there is something not moral about that. But then again, I was never one of those people who thought that a show that perpetuated stereotypes was better than not having the show at all.

Why on earth would people apologize for spending their own money?

Possibly in the spirit of the Old Bloom County Cartoon, where Ivana Trump teases The Donald (in Bill the Cat's body if I recall correctly) that she's going to sell an earring and feed Africa for a year. Yes, it's their money and if they want 99 cars and 111 motorcycles that's their perogative. But they can only drive or ride one at a time.

My parents (evangelical Christians) were pretty lenient about TV when my siblings and I were growing up, although my mom got upset when my brother watched "Fresh Prince."
I wasn't allowed to watch "In Living Color" when I was in fifth grade, but I did sneak a peek at the first few minutes once.
I think network TV today is just a whole lot worse than it was when I was a kid, especially shows that are on at 8 and 8:30 p.m. (one reason I'm thrilled "Friends" is finally gone!)
But on the flip side, there's more quality stuff for kids on cable.
I love "The Simpsons," and after reading "The Gospel According to the Simpsons," I realize that show has a lot more moral content than most people realize.
And yes, I get annoyed when people think homosexual activity is worse than extramarital heterosexual activity on TV, too.

The Swan is definitely the most morally offensive show I've ever seen, personally. It just disgusts me, as a feminist, thoroughly.

Second would be 7th Heaven - a show built on judgmental natures, intolerance, self-righteousness, sexism, etc., etc. ... wait, maybe 7H is even worse than The Swan.

I wasn't really forbidden to watch stuff growing up, but if my parents didn't approve of a show, they would leave the room while I watched it (this happened a couple of times when I was a teenager, with Beavis & ButtHead).

I have a friend whose mother wouldn't let her watch MTV when she was growing up - not because of the sexual content/song lyrics/etc., but because she didn't want her daughter to think she had to "prostitute" herself like those music stars in order to make it in the world. I thought that was a pretty cool way to look at things.

"The Cosby Show"

I have rarely seen a group of children so consistently discouraged from pursuing their dreams outside of "American Idol".

I'll not go into their reaction when they found out that Theo had dyslexia, as I've already posted that in another thread ("Characters We Hate"). Suffice to say that there was no apology for these two trained professionals not realizing that their child might have a real problem.

When Vanessa got engaged, they refused to warm up to her groundskeeper fiancee until they found out that he owned a house. Shallow much?

When Denise decided to pursue dreams besides going to college, they kept up the pressure to make her go back to a point where I was halfway expecting her to end up on a commune somewhere.

Same with Sondra: When she and her husband decided to put their graduate work on hold to concentrate on raising the children (Good for them! Wanted to be there during the formative years!), they were consistently harrassed by Cliff and Claire.

These are family values?

ETA: File me with the Swan haters, though I have nothing in particular to add over what's already been said. Haven't watched the show, never will.

Count me among those who are disgusted by The Swan. Just the trailers make me want to hurl something through my television. I find it very hard to believe even FOX would put anyone through something so demeaning and possibly damaging to self-esteem: "We picked you because you're "average" enough and screwed up enough to think plastic surgery and a workout will cure all your problems, BUT we're going to add a twist: after all of this, you STILL might not be good enough, 'cause we're going to boot you if you didn't get pretty enough."

I'm telling you, if this keeps up, we really are headed in the direction of The Running Man...

Add me to the list of The Swan haters. I have never in my life seen something that I think is more degrading to women. Sure, you're ugly - come on our show and we'll make you pretty! It sickens me that the media gets to determine who is beautiful and who is ugly - these poor women have been defined as unattractive and all of a sudden the media/producers/whoever get to change them into their definition of beautiful. It's almost as if the women's identities are being taken away and replaced with an identity that they don't even know or relate to. *sigh* I think they all looked better before when they didn't sell out.

My mom does not really give a damn about what I watch on TV, or my brothers. So, like last week, my mom told me about this story about when South Park first debuted. I was in 4th grade, and she remembered all the moms calling eachother saying "Did you hear about that new show South Park? Blah blah blah, my children will not watch that." South Park is pretty offensive, but it is offensive to everyone.

Married...With Children part of its popularity was due to how rude it was. It was always funny in my mind, but didn't it get the show canceled?

My parents never let me watch The Simpsons because they thought Homer was a "bad influence" for a child. They also hate hate hate Buffy and Angel. My dad tells me all the time "Those shows are gross, they're all about dead people!" Ooh, and Teletubbies for the messages of obesity, communism and transvestite-ism (the purple one has a purse! *gasp*) heehee, but that's more for my baby brother than me.

And I agree with whoever said That '70s Show is bad. I watched an ep. with my mom, and the kids were all having sex and getting high, and she was kinda disgusted. And she thinks Kelso wears too much make-up.

See, I think that a show can be offensive without being immoral, and vice-versa. I can't think of a good TV example, but I thought that American Pie was immoral because they never once raised the idea of birth control or disease, but I didn't really find the premise to be offensive (though a lot of people might.) South Park and the Simpsons (after the first couple seasons, because I really think there was an ideological shift) may push the envelope of comedy and venture into offensive, but I don't think that either one is immoral.



In fairness, wasn't Vanessa only 18, and the guy (whose name escapes me) was around 30, and he was a janitor at her school, and it was his second marriage, and she was batting around the idea of dropping out of college to marry him? Maybe it's a middle-class black thing, but I can't think of very many parents who would have been keen on that idea. At least the house indicates some kind of stability. And they did eventually give their blessing.

[QUOTE]For my money, the least moral concept for a show ever in the history of television was My Two Dads. Mom's a giant whore. Such a big whore she doesn't know who Dad is.[QUOTE]
Hee! Mo Rocco said that on "I love the 80's". My vote for least moral show, like you all, is 7th Heaven. Sure, they don't have sex until marriage, but their manipulative, sneaky and downright immoral, kinda like Jessica Simpson!

Okay, point taken, and it's a good one. However.

He had still had a marriage before.

He had already made it clear that he wanted her to stay in college.

He was still a groundskeeper (not janitor, but that would have been cool too) at her college.

It was only after they found out that he had a house that they gave their blessing. "Well, we'll forgive all the other stuff so long as you have property".

Like a deer in headlights, I found myself mesmerized by "The Swan" this evening, unable to break away for several minutes. All three of the women I saw in their natural form looked perfectly normal to me, and one struck me as above-average cute. The coach-woman, on the other hand, had had so much "improvement" done that she looked like an alien.

Once I broke away and turned off the TV, I couldn't decide if I felt "morally" outraged or politically pissed off, or what. Is a show "immoral" that insidiously gets me calculating how long it would take me to save for some of that surgery myself? I'm not sure. I don't like the way I feel after ten minutes of it. It strikes me as evil.

But then, so does Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, so what do I know?

No, the show ran for years and years. In the first or second season, someone tried to get people to boycott products that advertised on the show, but with limited success, and the show stayed on. It finally went off the air because it had run its course.

That person was Terry Rinolka, who was pissed off at an episode where Al goes shopping for a bra for Peggy. Wasn't it the resounding shitstorm that made M... WC really popular?

OK, I saw something that has to be on this list. I'm really embarrassed to have watched this, so indulge me if I'm heavy on explaining myself.

I absolutely don't allow competitive reality TV in my home, never have. Well, my resolution came to an end the other day. I sat down to nurse my baby - she was being very cranky and fussy so once she started nursing I just wanted to stay still with her until she fell asleep. But then I heard an announcer on TV state that a new show was starting (I didn't catch the name) - but the jyst of it is some poor schmucks think they're in an American Idol style competition but the judges are really looking for America's worst performer.

Horror of horrors, I realize that the remote control is out of my reach. Given my baby's temperment, I know that if I interrupt her nursing to grab the remote I'm in for another hour of crying. So I try to just ignore the TV, but I see too much.

Not only are the poor schmucks duped into thinking they have been shortlisted based on talent, it appears that they are given songs that are difficult to sing, no background music to help with cadence and no coaching. I think they are even manipulated into wearing things that come off as silly while going for stylish. All the time that these poor people sing, the judges sit there with shmirks on their faces, trying not to laugh and then tell them how wonderful they are.

I was having severe flashbacks to the Alpha-girls in highschool, and had to remind my formerly geeky self that my teen-age nemesis Donna was last seen living in a trailer and had six children by different fathers and so was likely not a judge on this show. But she could have invented this show. The bitch.

Anyway, 10 minutes in I decided an hour of baby crying was a much nicer alternative. And it was.

That's the WB's Superstar, USA. I think the poor schmucks who get the false compliments look so pathetic, like no one has ever been nice to them before, and now they're being lavished with praise by important people. I would hate to see how crushed they will be when they find out it's all a joke at their expense. I've only seen the promos, but those poor contestants make me sad.

And if that's not bad enough, apparently the WB told the people in the audience to be really nice and cheer for the contestants because they were there due to the "Wish foundation" and you know the audience would have been thinking it was the "make a wish foundation" for terminally ill people. That's just beyond disgusting.