We all have our low-brow guilty pleasures and, for millions of Americans, one of those is reality TV. Only a few months ago, amidst a war raging in the Ukraine, a new regent being crowned in the U.K., and reproductive rights being stripped from women here in the U.S., the whole of the internet was talking about only one thing: “Scandoval.” 

“Scandoval” (a portmanteau cleverly combining the  name of its chief ne’er-do-well perpetrator, Tom Sandoval, and the “scandal” his infidelity initiated) mostly involved a garden-variety boyfriend/girlfriend breakup between two of the main characters on the Bravo series Vanderpump Rules, a reality television show about garden-variety Los Angeles bartenders and waitstaff and their garden-variety attempts to be more than just garden-variety bartenders and waitstaff. … which leads one to wonder: how in the world did this become the single most trending topic on social media for more than 3 months?

Today, we’re going to get our noses out of the clouds and take seriously what is probably one of the most influential pop culture products of the 21st century. Is “reality television” really “real”? Are the lives we see on the screen distillations of authentic human experience, or carefully crafted narratives that invite us to indulge in voyeuristic schadenfreude? Might there be something deeper and more meaningful to be found in these simulations of “reality”?

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/texts/ideas/etc.:

• Petrichor (“the smell of rain”)
• Scarlett Johansen’s response to OpenAI “copying” her voice
• Can you copyright your voice?
• The Real World (MTV series, 1992-2019)
• Survivor (CBS series, 2000-present)
• Project Runway (Lifetime series, 2004-present)
• Below Deck (Bravo series, 2013-present)
• Real Housewives (Bravo series, multiple iterations, still running, but the original series Real Housewives of Orange County began in 2006)
• Top Chef (Bravo series, 2006- present)
• The Great British Baking Show (BBC Two, 2010-present)
• The Apprentice (NBC series, 2004-2017)
• The Biggest Loser (NBC series 2004-2020)
• Cinema vérité
• Curb Your Enthusiasm’s improv format
• The Office (UK version, 2001-2003) and The Office (US version, 2005-2013)
• Sex and the City (HBO series, 1998-2004)
• Greek chorus
• Aristotle, Poetics (350 BCE)