The Learning Channel's Extreme Couponing evokes surprise, and even disgust for the lengths to which people go to accumulate coupons, acquire products, and display their stockpiles. It fails, however, to thoroughly explore people’s motivations for their actions.
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It’s not like me to leave new episodes of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant languishing on my DVR, especially the first two episodes of a new season. What can I say? April is the cruelest month.
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What I find frustrating about the show is not simply that it ends up Othering the world, but that it could be so much better. It’s like a B student who writes occasionally brilliant sentences, yet who isn’t trying hard enough.
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WE's new series, produced by and starring Joan & Melissa Rivers draws attention to the artifice of reality TV, but in the fourth episode, the mask slips and reveals something that may be...possibly...perhaps..."real"...
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The oppression of women is a daily activity for the men of the Jersey Shore, but so is the production of male beauty and labor in the domestic sphere.
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What does the rumored union between Pauly D and Farrah Abraham “mean” to us, and what does it tell us about the state of contemporary reality television?
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Much as with the celebrated film Showgirls, a lot of reality TV is unintentionally funny, and the comic framings of both shows aim to make you laugh at even the most serious moments.
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While the basic format of Project Runway has made its way to other countries, its scheduling model has been lost in translation.
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This season is painful to watch, but not in a fun, carnivalesque way. Rather, the pain seems to be much more serious and reveals the emotional trauma that we can experience when we blindly submit ourselves to normative ideas of patriarchy and the nuclear family.
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Though not the most popular or influential entry in the genre, Kid Nation appropriately offers an elementary school primer both on the conventions of reality competitions and their negotiation of social structures taken for granted in the "real" world.
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