Solitary

This show is a very good one, but it barely gets any recognition. Go figure. It's on the Fox Reality Channel (not exactly known for quality programming).

The basic premise is that nine people are put in tiny rooms in solitary confinement. They are put through endurance tests (such as extreme cold, extreme dizziness, loud noises, etc.) The contestants can press a big red button any time they wish to quit. But the first person to quit in each challenge is eliminated. The interesting thing is that they don't know if anyone else has quit yet, so it's all about them reaching their own personal limits.

Fox Reality Channel is going off the air at the end of March 2010. Season 4 of Solitary will air sometime before that in 2010. Please support it (I would, but I don't have that channel. I've watched the first three seasons on Hulu). Maybe it will get picked up by Fox!

A friend of mine turned me on to this show when it debuted on the defunct Fox Reality Channel, and I can not thank him enough. The premise is fantastic and leads to some of the most interesting psychology I've ever seen on a reality show.

Basically by the end of these seasons the contestants are for the most part, nuts. They've been without sleep for days, they've been put under extreme mental and physical duress, and still implicitly asked to perform for the cameras. You can watch as they invent entire worlds and personas for their unseen competitors, develop elaborate ideas of betrayal and jealously completely whole-cloth, and just simply straight up lose it like a Season 4 contestant who decided the whole thing was in his head.

The combination of mental tests, "prisoners dilemma" style social experiments, and physical endurance rounds makes this show absolutely fascinating.

Also, EVERYONE should watch this show for Season 4 alone. The absolutely phenomenal transformation of one of the more timid pod-dwellars into an absolute fearsome contender was a wonder to behold, and primarily one of the most genuine human growth moments I've ever witnessed.

... oh and I almost forgot the "evil AI" Val who runs the show is freaking FUNNY.

Seriously, gang, give Solitary a try.

Yet another reality show pretending to be authentic when the show is blatantly scripted and acted out. I'm amazed at just how bad a large percentage of people are at detecting bs in these fake reality shows. As there are plenty of things that I'm less than stellar at as well, analyzing human beings and being able to detect authenticity is second nature to me (lie detection as well) and this is a blatantly fake show I would bet my life on it. It only took less than a minute to easily conclude that this is 100% without a doubt a fake reality show. I still endured the entire first episode, but that's as far as I go.... fake shows are painful to watch when you know they're fake.

This type of thing is a gargantuan peeve of mine. Genuine reality shows are almost impossible to find. There's a spectrum as to how manipulated a reality show is. This is a 100% phony/manipulated reality show, which is unwatchable for me. To those who aren't able to see through the bs, more power to you. Perhaps you could watch this show and get some entertainment value out of it.

One of the most authentic reality shows, ironically is the Joe Schmo Show 1 & 2, which is a scripted show with actors except for the schmo who isn't in on the script. The first 2 seasons of this show are diamonds in the rough. I'm always curious to see if there's anything else out there that's genuine in this realm when I came across this show and decided to check it out and low and behold it's one of the many phony ones. I checked out The Mole as well which turned out to be a phony show as well... to be fair I only checked out one of the later seasons, so it's possible that the show didn't start off this way and transitioned into a fake reality show, but odds are it probably was from the start, but you never know. My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance is another one of the few authentic ones... entertainment wise it turned out decent, but at least it's authentic.

I must say that Solitary was one of the best reality shows that I have seen. It was original and extremely well put together. No one to really compete with one another, can't see nor speak to each other unless it is through a computerized voice named VAL.

I liked the fact that they had to live their time in Solitary attempting to find themselves as well as conquer their fears. I wish more reality shows were like this one. Most that you see now days is practically the same thing. People eventually fighting and stabbing another in the back to achieve the goal of that particular show they are on. You don't see that in Solitary. Just nine people in little pods hoping to achieve the ultimate goal.

I love the fact that they had to go through tests and treatments to attempt to find out how much they can take. Val didn't take any whining either. I look forward to the next season of the show in August.

Super original. Super engaging. No complaints. Many game shows can overstay their welcome and I'm sure this one could as well, theoretically. But it would definitely take a lot longer for this show to get boring compared to many others out there.