If you've ever asked yourself "how do i get a reality show", perhaps you should be asking Ryan Seacrest.
It was Ryan Seacrest who was behind the wildly popular reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and while not behind the Jersey Shore, Ryan Seacrest's latest reality show on the Bravo Network has been dubbed a Persian version of Jersey Shore", and the comparison is spot on!
My girlfriend came out to the kitchen, Shahs of Sunset was on in the background, and when one of the characters of the show declared her sympathy with the poor in saying she "feels bad for people who don't fly private", conversation quickly turned to the TV, where she refused to believe it wasn't Jersey Shore, she kept laughing and pointing at the scantily clad characters doing the typical Jersey shore style fist pumping around the pool to house music. It took my pointing out the Shahs of Sunset and Bravo Network logo at the bottom left of the screen to get her to believe. I laughed to myself thinking that the cast of the Shahs of Sunset would recoil in disgust at the comparison, but what's really funny is that the cast of the Jersey Shore would be equally disgusted!
I like being like everyone else! |
How could characters so similar to each other in their own strange way take such offense at a comparison? Probably because each show features their own sad gaggle of hyper-prejudiced, wildly insecure, and xenophobic trolls. I'm guessing that's the Bravo Network and Ryan Seacrest formula: they scout out serious freaks who should themselves be highly sensitive to prejudice, but instead are about as ruthlessly prejudice as you could get. That certainly makes for an outrageous reality show, you want to yell out at the TV, after all, on the Shahs of Sunset you have a gay guy, a fat girl, a fat dude, and a haggard older lady. How in the world could a group so different and unique act so prejudice toward the rest of the world? Well, that's the attention getter: t he cast of the reality show Shahs of Sunset look down their noses at everyone around them with pity, or more likely with disgust, as though they're the only normal ones in the room, one of them pointing out "there are two things I hate, ants, and ugly people". LOL! It makes for an outrageous reality show, but is in fact a really sad commentary on what happens to people when they stick to their own, stay overprotected, revel in bigotry, and never themselves ask perhaps the toughest question of all: namely, "could it be possible that we are the biggest freaks in the room?".
So if Ryan Seacrest and The Bravo Network were to honestly answer your question how do I get a reality show, they'd say be like the weirdos on Shahs of Sunset. Be ignorant to the point of hilarity, ignore your own issues and inadequacies but be expert at locating what you find unattractive about others. Oh, and it'd be an extra bonus if you could make an entire class look like a bunch of reprehensible buffoons by exemplifying and exaggerating every stereotype ever leveled against it, whether Italian American, Persian, Rich, fit, gay, or a housewife, the uglier you could portray a class, the better.
So for those without access to Ryan Seacrest or an "in" at the Bravo Network, that still want to know "how do i get a reality show", now you know. The question is, do you really want what it takes to be on one?