Any friend of Mary McCormack...

I loathe reality TV. I do. On the surface... Mary has inspired me to let my secret out into the light. The truth is, there are some reality shows that I am addicted to in unhealthy ways. I will attempt to see just how much of a hypocrite I am by comprehensively listing any reality shows that I have watched more than 2 episodes of along with my reason/defense for watching:

**The Real World**

- Everyone watched this when it premiered in '92. I totally had a crush on Julie with her Alabama drawl.

**Road Rules**

- Watching cocky meatheads and barely dressed women do incredibly convoluted stunts. What's not to love.

**Making the Band**

- Puff Sean Diddy Combs sends people to Brooklyn to get him a cookie. Had to watch it in order to get the references to it on Chappelle's Show.

**American Chopper**

- They make bikes. Big manly bad ass bikes. Not reality TV so much as Man-ality TV.

**Deadliest Catch**

- If you had told me 10 years ago that I would one day watch an exciting reality show about fishing I would have slapped you in the neck.

**Miami Ink**

- Kat Von D is very attractive. That is my excuse.

**Jon & Kate Plus 8**

- Back in the beginning of the series, they would take the kids to a farm with a live nativity, or go to see an elaborate Passion play about the life of Jesus. Then there were rumors of cheating, a divorce, Ed Hardy shirts, dancing reality shows... don't you wish you had seen the whole journey?

**Colonial House**

- Take people, remove electricity. Go.

**Kid Nation**

- A town run by kids. I really only watched 2 episodes of this one, as soon as I realized they weren't going push for the death penalty for one kid who knowingly transmitted cooties to 3 girls... I was over it.

**Mythbusters**

- I've seen every episode of this show for 3 reasons.
#1 The mustache makes me watch.
#2 There are occasionally really interesting experiments.
#3 Kari Byron is hot.

**The Crocodile Hunter**

- Ironically we all watched this for the same reason... we thought sooner or later a croc was going to have his way with Steve.

**Human Wrecking Balls**

- Have you heard of this show? Do you know what it is? It's a couple of really big guys who run THROUGH things to tear them down... like planes and buildings. I'm not kidding. Why wouldn't I watch that?

**Doing DaVinci**

- Building things from DaVinci's original sketches. I watch it so I have interesting things to say at parties.

**The 5th Wheel, Chains of Love, ElimiDATE**

- I list these as one because I can't specifically remember the rules to any of them but they share the same space in my mind. If nothing else was on, these types of shows were good background noise.

**Temptation Island**

- Finally network television comes one step closer to giving prostitutes as prizes on game shows.

**The Bachelor & The Bachelorette**

- I still have no idea why they find some really rich attractive guy and have 30 women throw themselves at him. When you are rich and attractive that happens anyway. The bachelorette is usually a runner up from the Bachelor who gets her own men vying for her attention. Why don't men get to try for a really attractive, rich woman? They just get a washed up reality star. Sexism.

**Joe Millionaire**

- In what I thought was an attempt to right what I saw as an injustice in the formula for The Bachelor, they tell the women that the very attractive guy is rich, but the secret is... he's actually just very, very attractive and will be rich after the show airs and he gets endorsement deals and cameos in movies. What a bait and switch!

**My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé**

- Cute girl convinces her friends and family that she is marrying a big fat lummox. I watched in hopes that I could be cast as the big fat lummox in season 2.

**The Littlest Groom**

- Exploitative? Nah. It opened the door for any person under 4'5" to qualify for their own reality show. Ground breaking.

**Flavor of Love**

- A grown woman pooped on the floor. 'nuff said.

**I Love New York**

- Take Flavor of Love and switch genders. Subtract pooping on the floor and add drunken fights and man-crying.

**Rock of Love with Bret Michaels**

- Bret Michael suffered a brain hemorrhage in April of 2010. This was only shocking because anyone who watched that show would have gladly put money on him being hospitalized for any number of sexually transmitted diseases before a brain hemorrhage.

**COPS**

- The first time a shirtless, shoeless, drunk man tried to run away from the police while carrying his infant child and a sixer of Natty Light... I was hooked.

**Rescue 911**

- This show claims over 300 viewers had written to the show with stories on how the knowledge they obtained watching Rescue 911 allowed them to save the life of someone else. Proof that host William Shatner is an angel among us.

**Locked Up Abroad**

- Thanks to Mary I decided to check this one out. Thanks to checking this one out I am now terrified to travel.

**Dog The Bounty Hunter**

- Take the scariest man you can imagine, if he doesn't have a mullet apply one now. That image in your head is Dog the Bounty Hunter.

**Armed and Famous**

- Maybe you didn't know the cast of this show. That is the only reason I can imagine for someone not watching it. Erik Estrada, La Toya Jackson, Jack Osbourne, Trish Stratus, and Jason Acuña were all sworn in as officers in Muncie, IN. Let me break this down for you a little further... Ponch, a Jackson sibling, Ozzy's kid, a female wrestler and WeeMan from JackAss as legitimate officers of the law. Why WOULDN'T you want to watch that?

**Trading Spaces**

- My crush on Paige Davis aside, there is nothing better than watching someone walk into their newly designed bedroom and break down in tears because they absolutely hate it.

**What Not to Wear**

- In the interest of full disclosure I had to include this on my list. In the time this show has been on the air I have dated several different women. All of them watched this show. ALL of them. Sometimes I was in the room.

**Queer Eye for the Straight Guy**

- All those women that watched the show above? They also watched this and desperately wanted to submit me as a candidate.

**Extreme Makeover**

- The first time a makeover story included literally cutting off noses to spite faces.

**The Swan**

- Same as the above, with an added competition element. Who can be the prettiest after cutting off their nose to spite their face?

**Extreme Makeover: Home Edition**

- First they find the most sympathetic, down and out family they can find then they tear down their house and build and furnish a completely new house for them. If you happen to be a double amputee, married to a paraplegic whose children were born without bones and your house could use a little work... call them now. Fun emasculating fact: 80% of episodes make me cry.

**Pimp My Ride**

- Dear Xzibit, I need a car with a soda fountain, zen garden, and trapeze. My friends call my car, "whack," and "not fresh," and they think my ideas to make it better are totally, "dope." Please help. Signed, Guy with crappy car. Dear Guy with crappy car, Your ideas sound great. We'd also like to add a retractable dome roof and laser headlights. We'll be there tomorrow to pimp your ride. Signed, Xzibit.

**Celebrity Fit Club**

- There is no greater example of schadenfreude than watching a former 80's sex symbol cry and complain about being out of shape and forced to work out.

**Wife Swap**

- Can we first admit that the title is very misleading. This show amazingly finds two families who could not be more disparate who are both willing to appear on the show then they switch matriarchs for 2 weeks. It is also worth saying that the editors find the most amazingly quotable sound bytes from the 2 week excursion. One particular episode had an overweight goth punk 12 year old tell his new bright color loving mom, "life is all flowers and sausages." Seriously:

**The Biggest Loser**

- It's only a matter of time before someone drops dead of a massive heart attack. You can't take a 400lb man who eats bacon at every meal, deprive him of bacon and then make him run laps.

**Tool Academy**

- I really only watch the first episode of any season. Episode 1 is when they get a typical bunch of roided out D-Bags into a room who all think they are there because their significant others entered them into a competition for something like... coolest stud muffin in the world. After they all flex and trash talk each other it is revealed that they will actually be going to charm school because their ladyfriends think they are d-bags.

**The Anna Nicole Show**

- I don't want to speak ill of the dead... but seriously... it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

**The Osbournes**

- I remember when my mother forbid me to listen to Black Sabbath because they were offensive and disgusting with no redeeming qualities. I also remember when my mother said this Ozzy guy was cute in a commercial for a butter substitute:

Metal is dead.

**Rob & Big**

- Professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and his best friend and bodyguard Christopher "Big Black" Boykin hang out. That's it. That's all that happens. For some reason though it is entertaining to me.

**Scare Tactics**

- I removed a lot of hidden camera shows from this list. I watched plenty of them, but I don't really include bloopers and hidden camera shows in my personal definition of, "Reality TV." Scare Tactics is a different breed because there is nothing more, "real," than watching a grown man scream at the top of his lungs because he, "really," thinks he's about to die.

**The Weakest Link**

- The host Anne Robinson at one point was so terrifying I actually saw a wax statue of her included in the London Dungeon Wicked Women exhibition. Easily the most annoying catch phrase ever to come out of a game show.

**Survivor**

- Only the first season. Back when it was a fresh and interesting idea.

**The Amazing Race**

- It has won 8 Emmys (7 of which are EVERY SINGLE Emmy given for Oustanding Reality Competition Program).

**Fear Factor**

- In one hour I could watch a computer programmer and a swimsuit model jump from a moving car and eat yak anus. I still don't understand why it was canceled.

**Deal or No Deal**

- The simplest concept ever. You can win a million dollars and not have a single skill or piece of knowledge aside from being able to count to 26. Actually you don't even need to know the order. Just the names of the numbers up to 26.

**I Survived a Japanese Game Show**

- The Japanese are decades ahead of the rest of the world in terms of game show technology. I fancy myself a trivia buff and I enjoy playing along at home on quiz shows. Sometimes you don't want to think, sometimes you want to watch a guy dressed as a frog try to catch a big plastic fly with a rope attached to his head while other people throw whipped cream covered foam balls at his crotch.

**Wipeout**

- America finally starts to catch up to Japan.

**The Gong Show**

- The original arena for average people to embarrass themselves in front of a national audience. The precursor to...

**America's Got Talent**

- Unlike the Gong Show, you will occasionally have a contestant who possesses actual talent. The format is exactly the same, contestants begin performing and when the B-list celebs are done watching them make asses of themselves they buzz you of the stage. I get the feeling the producers were trying to be more like...

**Star Search**

- Comedians who were contestants on Star Search: Adam Sandler, Bill Engvall, Brad Garrett, Dave Chappelle, Dennis Miller, Ray Romano, Rosie O'Donnell. Singers who were contestants on Star Search: Aaliyah, Alanis Morissette, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake, LeAnn Rimes, Usher. It wasn't all about talented people, even Sharon Stone competed on the show in the Spokesmodel category.

**American Idol**

- I get less and less interested each year. There was a time when I was in a fantasy idol league. Yes. It went that far. This past year I had stopped watching by the time they got to the top 5.

**America's Next Top Model**

- Attractive women do photo shoots and fight with each other and then Tyra Banks screams at them.

**Last Comic Standing**

- I watch the show because I am a stand-up comedy fan. I have even known a few of the contestants over the years. I have one problem with the show... I feel it should only be open to comics who have not yet had a Comedy Central special. Every year there are a few comics who I've seen multiple times on comedy central or HBO. They don't need the leg up... There are genuinely funny undiscovered comics out there I swear. Go to a club one night.

**Celebrity Apprentice**

- Donald Trump is the most amazing character on television. If you ask Donald Trump. There is something about his swagger and inferred solipsism that makes it really exciting to watch.

**Hell's Kitchen**

- Gordon Ramsay is like an angrier, yellier version of Donald Trump who can cook. He berates stupid people for their stupidity and like Simon Cowell I don't think he's a jerk for doing it because I usually agree with him.

**Dancing with the Stars**

- I watched for Kelly Monaco and Jerry Rice, since then I try to avoid it.

**Project Runway**

- I guess if I had a type, it would be women who watch What Not To Wear and Project Runway. It started off just being in the room while this was being watched by someone else. Then I started to pay a little attention. As the disease progressed I would find myself making comments like, "she should've used different material," or, "those pleats are awful." I've now reached stage 4, if there is nothing else on TV, and I notice this is on, I may put it on even if there aren't any women in the room.

**Top Chef**

- There was a marathon on one day. I got sucked in.

**Who Wants to be a Superhero?**

- People dress up in costumes and make up super powers to try and convince Stan Lee that they could be real super heroes. Stan puts 'em through their paces in challenges like "watch dog," and, "quick change," to assess the best and most worthy hero. The winner of Season 1? Feedback. A mild mannered software engineer is caught in an explosion that bombards his body with hi-tech cellular shrapnel. His body then generates a feedback field that shuts down nearby electronic equipment. It is also discovered that by playing video games, he can absorb some attributes of the game. If watching a person with the kind of dementia to believe that is an accurate description of who there doesn't appeal to you, then color me confused.

**Grease: You're the One that I Want!**

- I knew some people that were involved with it. They're not proud of it either.

**Iron Chef America**

- Morimoto opens each show with a terrifying announcement of the secret ingredient. If it's something delicious, let's say a yam, I watch. If it is octopus I may change the channel. Only because I know one of the chefs will attempt to make a dessert using the secret ingredient and quite frankly I can't watch that kind of travesty.

**America's Best Dance Crew**

- I almost didn't recognize the name of this show as I exclusively refer to it by its, "street," name, ABDC. It's easy to watch because they replay the same 3 episodes approximately sixty times in any given week.

**So You Think You Can Dance**

- Saved the best for last. I am almost unashamed to admit that I love this show. I can tell you who my favorites are. I can tell you which choreographers I don't care for. I can tell you which routines made me cry. I'm a little jealous that fuzz2217 beat me to creating the SYTYCD obsession group.

So there it is. Every reality television show I've ever watched. It feels good to get all of that off my chest. It was a dark cloud looming over my head every day of my life but now I've put it out there for you all to see. I guess it turns out I don't loathe reality tv, but admittedly, I don't think too highly of myself for having watched this much of it. At least now Mary and I can be friends.