TV shows you enjoy. Club. Welcome back to AVQ& A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d like us and the readers to answer? Email us at avcqa@theonion.
This week’s question comes from reader Sam M.: “It’s nice when our favorite shows become validated as having some level of quality. There are shows, though, that are just horrible in terms of critical quality and yet they have something in them we enjoy and engage with. What critically scorned TV show have you enjoyed watching, either in the past or present?”William Hughes. I’m a secret sucker for reality shows in which angry men yell at failing businesses for doing their business badly.
For some reason, I only watch them when I’m staying in hotels, but sit me down on a maid- tucked bed, stick a Bar Rescue or a Hotel Impossible in front of me, and I’m as happy as a pig in extremely poorly laundered sheets. Regardless of what critics might say, the best of these will always be Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, because out of all these neck- veined hosts, Ramsay is the best at swearing, and the least embarrassing when the episode inevitably gets to the boring redemption part that I usually just skip through. Sue me. Gwen Ihnat. There’s so much great stuff on TV right now, I find it hard to fit in what I like to call “folding laundry” TV, which is the opposite: trashy and inconsequential. I know that nothing good can come from me watching any of Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, and honestly, a lot of the fun of RHOBH left with Brandi Glanville. But just like with any gateway drug, I learned that I could go ever lower: Vanderpump Rules. While some of the Housewives tried to keep it together or attempted to act like adults (not Brandi and Kim, obviously), Vanderpump, with its focus on the completely unfiltered young servers at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant Sur, makes no such supposition.
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop.
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The fact that they all seem to hate each other a lot just amps up the powder keg. It makes for a TV train wreck I find it impossible to turn away from. Will Stassi be a bitch? Will Jax be a dick? Will James be completely disgusting? Will I keep watching even after my laundry is folded?
Yeah, probably. Laura Adamczyk. The joke was that I became addicted to Intervention, the AMC show about people who are addicted—to alcohol, drugs, or deleterious behaviors like eating disorders. The show, which has been criticized for being exploitative, is beyond formulaic, beginning with showing how severe subjects’ problems are, then flashing back to their childhoods, with family members relating just how happy they were until some traumatic event—often unbearably sad—changed everything, seemingly causing their addiction, as though it’s ever that simple. Then comes the pre- intervention, the intervention, and the subject (hopefully) getting on a plane to a detox center in some sunny desert location.
Like so many self- improvement programs, Intervention unrealistically condenses the kind of big changes that can take years to accomplish. And yet, I was so often taken in by the subjects’ stories and the cathartic moments that occurred not just within individuals but also among family members. Sometimes all it took for a young woman to stop shooting speed was her dad apologizing for being a distant jerk, or so the show would have me believe. Nick Wanserski. Every criticism levelled against Hoarders is accurate. There is nothing good about spying on the lives of people whose mental illness compels them to live in unsafe living conditions—destructive to every relationship in their lives—for entertainment. But lord, my house gets clean after watching an episode.
Viewed often, it becomes uncomfortable clear that the seed of compulsive behavior resides in all of us, and it is only the capricious twins of brain chemistry and circumstance that prevent us from living in a small nest carved out of a suffocating mound of garbage. Some of the worst excesses of this kind of exploitative TV are ameliorated by Hoarders’ staff of legitimately caring professionals, but there’s no way a lifetime of psychological turmoil and struggle is going to be resolved by the time that last garbage truck stuffed with 4. It’s both depressing and motivating. Nathan Rabin. I enjoy a lot of things folks consider objectively terrible, and since I’m pretty sure I have shouted out the train- wreck fascination of Couples Therapy before, that exquisitely voyeuristic exercise in bottom- feeding where celebrity shrink Dr. Jenn tries to save the broken relationships of toxic, terrible people by having them flaunt their psychological scars and deep dysfunction for the amusement of the viewing public.
So I’m going to take this time to praise/condemn its spin- off show Family Therapy, which applies a similar approach to, you guessed it, family therapy. I was particularly fascinated by the family of eccentric, egocentric former Roc- A- Fella mogul Dame Dash, who all look and talk exactly like Jay Z’s old partner. It’s terrible, to be sure, but the kind of terrible that makes my tawdry little heart sing. Sean O’Neal. Allow me to step outside the reality- show stream and say something controversial, at least around these offices: I think Family Guy gets a bad rap. Since it began, the show has repeatedly been taken to task by critics—for tastelessness, for being emptily provocative, for an over- reliance on random “cutaway” gags or pop culture references, for lacking both the satirical focus of South Parkand the heart of The Simpsons (or even Seth Macfarlane’s other, more socially accepted series, American Dad). And while I would never argue that these critiques aren’t valid, over time, Family Guy has evolved into something weirder and, dare I say it, more clever than its reputation suggests.
Maybe it’s Macfarlane’s publicly expressed ambivalence about it running so long; maybe it’s the natural evolution of a show entering its 1. South Park. With that has also come far less of an emphasis on strict adherence to big plots, many of which can be scrapped at a moment’s notice in favor of following some pointless, conversational tangent for far longer than you’d expect.
Family Guy is by far the most hit- or- miss show in my repertoire, but nearly every episode has at least one or two jokes that make sticking around through the groaners worthwhile, and I just keep coming back. Katie Rife. I’m ashamed to admit the number of shows on this list that I’ve watched, and still not finished. Fargo season two. Yet here I am, freely admitting that I’ve seen every episode of Ink Master, even the gimmicky seasons. I’m not really a tattoo person—I got my one and only tattoo more than a decade ago, and am not in a hurry to get another—but reality TV is all about stakes, and the stakes for the “human canvases,” as host Dave Navarro (God, this is so embarrassing) calls them, couldn’t be higher. It’s all the drama of a competition reality series, plus the rubbernecking thrill of looking at pictures of bad tattoos, all wrapped up into one aggressively, self- consciously edgy package.
Compounding my shame at being a fan of this particular reality franchise is the fact that judges Oliver Peck and Chris Nunez were sued for sexual harassment by a former crew member on the show, charges which were mostly dismissed back in 2. But, to be fair, the show made steps to correct its more bro- ish tendencies on its most recent season, with two women making their way to the three- person finale. Plus, sometimes you get to see people getting cool tattoos.
Vanderpump Rules recap: Season 5, Episode 3. Are we past “The Go Down” on Vanderpump Rules? There was so little discussion of it this week and, frankly, I’m concerned we’ve reached peak “Go Down” status. What are we supposed to talk about for the rest of the season?! The holidays have no meaning now.
So anyway, Katie invites the gal pals to brunch in We. Ho. She’s devised this completely bizarre way of telling them all they’re going to be bridesmaids. Tom And Jerry Blast Off To Mars! Movie Watch Online more. She’s taken metal tins and put a balloon in each of them.
Each woman will then pop the balloons to reveal a little piece of paper asking her to be her bridesmaid. Maybe it’s a nod to her “industrial chic” bedroom? The conversation quickly moves to the fact Ariana is not present and did not get to open a tin and pop a balloon. Katie just doesn’t trust Ariana since she’s friends with Lala. But there’s this weird moment when Katie and Brittany acknowledge they’ve only known each other for a year, and Kristen and Stassi weren’t talking to Katie a year ago. BUT NOW THEY’RE ALL TIN- BALLOON BUDDIES! Then Brittany — co- star of “The Go Down” — comes up with a tagline for the group.
Ooooh haha!” I think that’s what she said, at least. The group needs to work on their enunciation. Back at Sur, Lisa arrives to investigate the headlock incident that happened with James and a man apparently known as “Scheana’s wedding photographer.” This fella is somehow immersed in the lives of the Sur employees. Lisa arrives in a white fur that looks like some kind of creature from the wintry land in The. Empire Strikes Back. It seems like Lisa will finally fire James after the, like, 1.
He will continue to have employment to pay for that apartment he shares with some strange old man. Katie has an extremely awkward convo with Ariana at work about not being a bridesmaid.
Most of it is almost incomprehensible and it ends with Katie just saying “Yeaaaahhhh” and walking away. Sandoval and Jax come over to Schwartz’s apartment. Sandoval is still rocking a top braid no one acknowledges. I would like us all to take a moment of silence and acknowledge Sandoval’s braid. He and Jax are also wearing bow ties for no discernible reason.
So Schwartz has prepared a meal for his best pals, including an appetizer of four shrimp for three people. Then he serves them steak as the main course, which they love. He reminds everyone these dudes have “hazed” him for years. Their “hazing” mostly involves putting their junk or naked butts on Schwartz’s face, so to get back at them, Schwartz marinated everyone’s steaks in. Yes, you read that correctly. In fact, Schwartz did a whole photo shoot with the meat in his crack. I would like to know, who exactly, took those photos?
He also went on a run before said marinating and did not shower afterwards, hoping his buttocks would be extra pungent. Jax did not mind the flavor at all: “Ass steaks or no ass steaks, I liked it.” That’s a wonderful quote. Sandoval found the revenge to be Shakespearean. Watch Life Online on this page. Offhand, I don’t recall Macbeth vanquishing his enemies with ass sweat, but I’m a little rusty on deets. NEXT: Katie has trouble communicating.