The Joe Schmo Show

In 2003, Spike TV introduced The Joe Schmo Show, a parody reality television series with a twist - only one guy one it was a real contestant, unaware that everyone else cast for the show was an actor. Sending up Big Brother and a number of other reality television shows, the program did a great job, I thought, lampooning a number of key reality television tropes, and at the same time gave us a truly likeable hero character in Matt Kennedy Gould, the Joe Schmo with a heart of gold who was a truly good sport throughout, though unfortunately he did go through something of a rough time once the series was over. This season also introduced Kristen Wiig, who went on to become famous on Saturday Night Live.

This season was followed by Joe Schmo 2, which introduced a Jane Schmo into the mix and parodied the sub-genre of reality-romance shows such as The Bachelor. This series was notable for having its first Jane Schmo figure out the ruse, as well as for including a lot of cruder material that was dialed back in the original series once they realized Matt Kennedy Gould's nature. While this series wasn't nearly as a well-regarded as the original, I thought it had a lot of great material, including Bryce the poetry-writing stalker and Gerald "the gotta-be-gay guy."

Now, The Joe Schmo Show is coming back after over eight years off the air with The Joe Schmo Show: The Full Bounty, which as the title suggests, will parody bounty-hunter programs like Dog The Bounty Hunter. The Full Bounty starts on January 13 next year

Edit - the premiere has been pushed up to January 8.

edited 3rd Dec '12 7:05:52 AM by JMQwilleran

For those that get Time Warner Cable On Demand (and maybe other cables's On Demand service), Spike is offering the full second season to watch. Premiere of the The Full Bounty next week - first ten minutes are now available to watch, online or on demand.

I enjoyed the entirety of the original but I didn't stick around for the second season. I like Matt, he was a likable guy and only made a fuss when they thought they were going to make him eat a bulls penis for a challenge.

The second season gets a lot of flak, but I thought there were a number of things to like about it, including the absolute craziness of the Bryce character, the situation with Eleanor and the coupon book, and the stuffed Montecore. All references nobody who hadn't seen it would get it.

So is anyone here other than me watching the new season? I was looking at some of the comments over at IM Db, and it seems the series has picked up a number of new fans who never saw either of the original ones and didn't even realize that it had been done before until they went online and looked it up.

The second season was just too over-the-top. I remember cringing for poor Amanda when she was forced to mimic fellatio in a hotdog-eating challenge. I also think making it a dating show with a bachelor and bachelorette led to an overstuffed cast.

This third show has been pretty good so far. Chase seems kind of like a blank slate, more like Tim in the 2nd season than MKG in the first. And the Asian woman whose name I'm blanking on was pretty poorly prepared, wound up panicking last episode and telling Chase that she'd graduated college at 14 and med school at 18. I do like the characters, and Ralph Garman is bringing it again.

Yeah, that was a pretty poor showing by the Asian woman, Allison by the way, or Nikki McKenzie if referring to the actress.

The show definitely has been pretty fun so far on the whole. I like how they've continued Ralph's stick of using a different way of referring to elimination each time, and having the spirit animals at the eviction ceremonies is quite entertaining. And the love triangle with Lavernius is hilarious.

Well, Karlee's actress won the "poorly prepared" award when she forgot that she's supposed to be deaf.

I've been wondering why they didn't just hire a deaf actress to play that part. Would having to get a real ASL interpreter been too much of a nuisance? Would a deaf actress have more difficulty with the improv that this show requires?

I actually can understand her flubbing some of that. What's more troublesome is the Over-achieving Asian who didn't have her story straight. As for "Karlee," if it keeps up, I think eventually they're just going to say that she's faking her disability. It's certainly happened often enough in fiction (I think it's a trope), and it may have even happened on at least one reality show before. It certainly happens in real life.