Reality Shows

Latest Articles

By | January 01, 0001

Reality show pitches

Big Fat Whale
Reality TV needs to shake things up.
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | April 05, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Hire us now, Ms. Gist!

Will tap dance for free!
Wow! Bow-wow! How do we get a job to write a speech for state education commissioner Deborah Gist for a cool $10,000?
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | May 26, 2010

Ex–porn star blogs her way sober

Jennie Does Harvard
This past week at the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), Jennie Ketcham taught her first class about something besides, er, “dick-sucking.”
By CHRIS FARAONE | April 05, 2010

The Big Hurt: Falling down the rabbit hole

Music news in brief
Lee, Hoppus, Wentz, Avril, and 3OH!3 fall down the rabbit hole
By DAVID THORPE | January 20, 2010

The resistible rise of Andrew Fenlon

Idol Threat Dept.
By the time I get Andrew Fenlon on the phone — two days after the airing of his now-notoriously contentious American Idol audition — the world around us has already split into three factions: those who loathe him, those who love him, and those who need a reminder: who is Andrew Fenlon?
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 20, 2010

Crossword: ''Mixed reviews''

From your anagraming film critic
From your anagraming film critic
By MATT JONES | October 21, 2009

What of the Beatles?

Jazz, pop, and circumstance
Spouting off during downtime in an interview with jazz drummer/composer Steve Grover, I once put forward my ill-researched idea that the third song is almost universally the best song on a great album.
By SAM PFEIFLE | September 02, 2009

West coasting

Is Project Runway walking in circles?
As I watched this season's 16 Project Runway hopefuls squinting into the setting sun during their champagne reception atop the Title Guarantee Building in Los Angeles, it was hard not to view the scene as a sad little metaphor for the state of the show. What's supposed to feel like the beginning of something new sure looks a lot more like the end of something old.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | August 26, 2009

The Search for America's Biggest A-Hole

Grossest casting couch in History Dept.
This week in Boston, Spike TV held auditions for its new sub-low-culture program, America's Biggest Asshole . You're right — all reality show tryouts are essentially auditions for America's Biggest Asshole, but this one is transparently egregious, as if the NHL re-named hockey "Kill the Man with the Puck."
By CHRIS FARAONE | July 15, 2009

Interview: Kathy Griffin

D Girl
"I think Ryan Seacrest and Oprah will finally be together, and it will be like one of those great '70s cover-up movies and I'm playing the body."
By JIM SULLIVAN | June 11, 2009

Photos: American Idol Season 9 Auditions in Boston

June 12-14 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough
Thousands of American Idol hopefuls lined up very early outside the Gillette Stadium to register and secure an audition for the show.
By MATT TEUTEN | June 16, 2009

Dale Bozzio sentenced to jail

Feline Trouble
Two months after being convicted of animal cruelty, new-wave pop icon Dale Bozzio feels trapped in her own personal witch trial.
By ASHLEY RIGAZIO | May 27, 2009

The Big Hurt: Jacko solvent! Boyle swelling! Lupus dissed!

MJ's ranch, Hoppus and Wentz on Twitter, and Susan Boyle
If you had your heart set on picking up a gently used chimp tuxedo or a suspicious child skeleton, you're outta luck
By DAVID THORPE | April 28, 2009

Review: Pedro

An inspiring life reduced to sound bites, clichés, and hugs
There's no other reason to see the film.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 28, 2009

Review: Every Little Step

Dancers willing to do anything for their dream
Dancing with the Stars may be all the rage, but what of those who dance their little hearts out in obscurity?
By TOM MEEK | April 28, 2009

Taking the B-boys to School

The Other MIT Crew
You may have noticed, hip-hop dance has gone legit — or at least slightly commercial.
By LISA SPINELLI | April 22, 2009

Video vérité

'Acting Out' at the ICA, plus Eileen Quinlan
Javier Téllez's 2007 black-and-white film "Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See" starts with a catchy premise: he gathered six blind New Yorkers at an empty public pool in Brooklyn to act out the fable of the blind men and the elephant.
By GREG COOK | April 01, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

21. JASON MESNICK

BACHELOR, NUMBER TWO
As creepy as it was to see a single dad trying to find his son a stepmom on a reality dating game, at least Mesnick had the sympathy vote going into this season’s The Bachelor , thanks to the screwing he took during the final rounds of the previous season’s The Bachelorette . But by the time his star-turn season ended in travesty — in quick succession he proposed, un-proposed, then turned around and propositioned another comparably useless bimbo — his name had become synonymous with “two-timing douchebag.” He also revealed himself as an incurable chin-grabbing kisser, which is arguably even worse.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

15. Andrew Dice Clay

SAD CLOWN
We thought it best to sum up our Dice entry in a nursery rhyme: Roses are red, violets are blue, your routine is more tired than a Lunesta rep’s, and your pathetic, shameless appearances on VH1 reality shows and on Celebrity Apprentice are, too. OHHHHH !
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

97. Toby Young

BRIT TWIT
It’s easy to make this list when you sit next to the sexiest being on this green Earth: Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi. Still, Tom Colicchio managed to keep himself off our radar, and so did the dramatically unsexy Ted Allen. But Young is a shoo-in. Besides his canned one-liners and nonsense observations (actual Times headline for a review of Young’s book: “Learning To Succeed as a Loser, on Two Continents”), this baldie looks like a British inbred cousin of James Carville.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

17. Steve Wozniak

APPLE FRITTERER
Overheard, repeatedly, by viewers during the first couple episodes of this season’s Dancing with the Stars : “Ewwww, what the hell happened to Stephen King?” Nope, Stephen King isn’t doing the mambo — that’s the Woz, who looks as if Francis Ford Coppola swallowed a Hobbit. If seeing this Apple co-founder on the dance floor didn’t make your stomach do back flips, here comes the four unsexiest words in Hollywood: he dated Kathy Griffin.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009