Most people have enough sense to know that reality TV isn’t real. But does anyone ever take the time to think about why it’s fake? Seems simple enough that reality TV can just “go back” to being real but it’s not all that easy and I’ll tell you why.

I used to watch reality TV. I used to watch a lot of reality TV but I can’t anymore. The reason being is that the fakeness is so contrived and lazily slapped together that I can no longer overlook the holes, mistakes and cloned storylines to just take it as the entertainment it’s supposed to be. With that being said know this isn’t directed at just one show. It’s directed at many shows (Hence the reason why I chose not to put a picture at the top of this post).

A big thing I see around is how people claim that shows generally older than 3 seasons grow to be more unrealistic the older they are and people usually lament that the first season or two was the best because it had a real feeling to it. They claim the realness comes from the characters all having their own individual personalities, being a little rough around the edges and may not have been the most attractive ones around but they made it easy to see themselves or their friends within them (In actuality most of these people are broke, unemployed or will be after the show airs and just want to famous and liked).

Typically shows after their second season lose their “realness” because of the cast. Yes shows have terrible, sloppy editing but when you think about it the cast is just as much to blame as the producers and editing. During the first season of a show the cast tends to be themselves and producers urge the cast to be themselves because neither side truly has a clear idea of the direction in which they want to take the show until things are competed. Nobody knows who will be well received by the public, nobody knows the people who are willing to say things about others to the public to make themselves look good, nobody knows anything about each other (This is why people fight on Twitter only AFTER it’s been revealed that they are on a show and not in the time when nobody knows who they are).

Of course things change after the first season. People know who the villain is, people know who the breakout star is, all the cast accumulates fans on the internet and if the show is a hit then not only does the show get renewed but if it has a fixed cast then they may also be due to get raises as well. Take that into consideration and realize that before the show a lot of the people on the cast were living paycheck to paycheck at best. Now with the financial windfall (which isn’t as great as you think), the offers to make club appearances or magazine spreads and the influx fans cause a lot of people’s egos begin to grow pretty fast.

Now the show reaches the next season but the realness is gone because the actual lives of the cast revolve around the show now. Producers don’t really want to show people who party all night, do radio interviews and do photoshoots and avoid most of the other cast so what to do now? They force them together through pointless meetings and outings and then supply them with loads of alcohol so they can be drunk and annoyed. The end result is more often than not a fight and then the producers have succeeded at their jobs of creating something out of absolutely nothing (Sounds like a show you watch?)

Networks are also so concerned with getting the shows back on TV (To capitalize on ratings. Generally this is done when the one show is a hit and everything else they have just doesn’t do as well) that they end up extending the order of shows so that some shows are actually still filming while they’re airing. This way producers and the cast have an idea whether they need to tone things down for fear of negative backlash or try to push the cast into even more ridiculous scenarios if the show is perceived as being boring. This constant meddling also takes away from the realness of a show.

I could go on but I’ve already written an essay. The point is reality TV is not real because after a certain point all of the believable elements to it are gone. To networks it’s all about finding a formula that works in getting people to watch and sticking to it even if it’s the same thing over and over.