A Word of Warning* If you haven't watched Joe Schmo 2, and you plan on seeing it in the near future, I advise you that there are SPOILERS here!

“Jackpot!”

It was a single word, but the moment it was spoken, a whole series became worth the production costs. It was also just the sort of reaction the producers of Joe Schmo 2 had wanted from Tim, one of their unwitting contestants. With a half-smile on his face, he managed to nullify the fears of the whole staff of the show, fears that he would be livid at having discovered in dramatic fashion that he had been fooled for 2 weeks by a cast of actors who were playing exaggerated dating show types: a weeper, a stalker, a playa, an heir, a drunk, a bimbo, a bitch, and a fey-gay guy. 

As you can plainly tell, I really enjoyed watching Joe Schmo 2. This is despite the admonishment of my sister who just thinks the whole concept is asinine. She heard about some of the silly double entendres that were part of the show, and she simply dismissed it outright, without giving it a chance. While I am willing to admit, some of these moments were funny, what made it such compelling television for me were the real people who were the loving targets of the show. Tim Walsh, Amanda Naughton and Ingrid Wiese were the people who made the show worth watching, and one of the most interesting seriesI have ever seen.  

On most reality shows, you are presented with a group of individuals that, generally speaking, wouldn’t make the best co-workers or friends. For the most part, I wouldn’t trust them to walk my dog, let alone hang out with most of them.  They sell each other out, twist things out of proportion and show themselves to be people who are genuinely unlikable. Admittedly, a lot of the drama is probably done through creative editing, but the impression is clear… these are people you wouldn’t really want to know. I think perhaps the most glaring example of this was the short-lived Forever Eden, which cast every single person on the show in a bad light. Of course, there are nice people on most reality shows, but most of the time, they are usually they are eliminated quickly, though there are exceptions too.

But with Joe Schmo, you can tell that the producers actually like the people they bring into the madness they create and they want you to do the same. These aren’t the normal sort of people you would usually see on a reality show, as they seem to be a lot more representative of the average person than reality show casting generally allows. True, some of the situations seem malicious and all, but in the end, you as an audience member can tell that everyone’s heart is in the right place.. Unlike something like Superstar USA, the people who Stone-Stanley/RW cast are not being ridiculed and having their dream spit upon, but rather, they are the objects of a good-natured joke and are portrayed in a very sympathetic light. Their marks are put into some pretty extreme situations, which are a bit more over-the-top than their more serious brethren, but in parodying the genre, this is a necessary evil, and they often react in the same way you probably think you would react in those given situations. One contestant, Ingrid, was able to piece together that the show was fake through both careful observation and some goofs on the production team's part... but instead of kicking her off the show, they instead asked her to join in on the ruse and brought in a backup contestant, Amanda, so the fun could continue..

Even the actors they choose for the series seemed to be genuinely nice people, and they give the impression that they too like the people they are fooling. Again, this might come from selectively editing their interviews, but I think this aspect can probably be dismissed. They honestly didn’t want to see anyone to get hurt, and they seemed to enjoy their time with these three real people, even if they had to hide themselves beneath the masks of characters. I was particularly partial to the character of Eleanor, “the Weeper,” played by Jessica Makinson, and she had quite a bit of work on the show, as she was burdened with having to share a room with the rather inquisitive Ingrid, so she couldn’t break character, a surely Herculean task for any actor. Another actor who had quite a time with his role was Kevin Kirkpatrick, who played Bryce, “the Stalker,” whose task was convincing Tim and Amanda that he was truly deranged, a premise they were more than willing to buy given his increasingly erratic behavior. 

It was this belief in his utter insanity that was the key to the show’s revelation to Tim and Amanda, which was some of the finest television I’ve seen this year. To me, I think the closest comparison I can make is it is like David Fincher’s The Game played for laughs, with participants who slowly discover that the game they are playing goes beyond what they ever believed it was.

And with the initial success of the original Joe Schmo, other networks around the world are also starting their own series’ based on the kind of same premise. The most recent one I’ve heard about is a series that just started in New Zealand called Living the Dream, which, if it is even remotely as entertaining as Joe Schmo 2 was, I would highly recommend you watch it. For the time being, I have to content myself with the thought that in a few months’ time, JS2 will perhaps be available on DVD.