Ep 2. Let's Talk About MTV

“Lauren will always be known as the girl who didn’t go to Paris.” Today’s episode is all about the heyday of MTV reality shows in the mid-2000s. Mostly it’s about The Challenge and how that became the ultimate representation of how MTV evolved away from exploring the human condition and more into exploiting people for every last drop of drama mode. (And I get to rant a lil’ bit about CT and how America remembers every few months that it gets real horned up for Boston townie accents and attitudes.) Do I have more to say? Uh yeah, I cut out a solid hour of content from this pod so let me know if you want a Laguna Beach/The Hills standalone ep! Justice for DanceLife! Getting this through the Substack and want to subscribe on the podcatcher of your choice? Links below! Apple Podcast Stitcher Spotify Also, I didn’t manage to touch on it during the episode but another key thing to keep in mind about Reality TV is that the boom really happened because of the Writers Guild Strike in 2008 and it’s probably…not great that a huge chunk of our media was made because they had to circumvent an entire group of people who were just trying to get paid adequately for their work! There are writers on reality television they’re just called story editors!! Smoking game for this episode, take a hit every time I say “wild”. Link It Up Baby, Link It Up Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes Don’t Forget Meg Ryan Episode 26 - MTV’s Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search For The Next Elle Woods Dirtcast Episode - Interview with the Rock Of Love producer (part 1) Jersey Shore Producer Reddit AMA Speidi Documentary on Vimeo PopCultureDiedIn2009 on Twitter You can follow me on twitter @hiiclaire Get full access to Smoke Show at smokeshow.substack.com/subscribe