Yet another reason NOT to watch Reality TV ... this should have been in the opening sequence of "Capitalism, a Love Story".

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/col/mill/2001/07/21/fear_factor/index.html

Excerpt:

It's easy to make fun of the "stars" of reality TV -- that's one of the genre's main draws. After all, these exhibitionists are asking for it. "Spy TV" (which NBC no longer calls a reality show, insisting that it's a "comedy") takes this mean-spiritedness a step further and invites us to laugh at people who don't know they're on TV. Sure, it's been done before, on "Candid Camera" and "David Letterman," for example. But in the hands of "Spy TV," the pranks are irredeemably cruel -- the show is simply too cruddy to laugh at.

Hosted with insufferable smirkiness by Michael Ian Black (who costars on NBC's "Ed" as the insufferably smirky manager of Stuckeybowl), "Spy TV" specializes in hidden camera fun designed to induce terror in the victims. Patrons of a hair salon are suddenly quarantined by a biohazard SWAT team and told they've been exposed to flesh-eating bacteria. A young man goes on what he thinks is a test drive and ends up begging and screaming for the wild joyride to end. A hapless slacker is vigorously interrogated by "police" for a crime he didn't commit.

At times, "Spy TV" is so crude and shameless, it plays like a put-on -- maybe it's actually a parody of reality TV in disguise. After all, in one notorious "Spy TV" prank, a group of people trying out to be contestants on a new reality show called "Cannibals" were asked to eat a sample of "human flesh" (actually, pork). Not surprisingly, hardly anyone refused. If that isn't a ruthless bit of self-satire, I don't know what is.

"Spy TV" co-executive producer Jeff Boggs stood by his show in TV Guide this week with a by-now familiar age-warfare throw-down: "We looked at the critics who hated us ... I don't think they were quite our demographic anyway." OK, I guess I'm too old to appreciate the genius of "Spy TV" -- that doesn't bother me. What does bother me, though, is the way all these industry types glibly label an entire generation of viewers as sadomasochistic couch boobs, for the benefit of ad revenue. I'm a loser, you're a loser, wouldn't you like to be a loser too!