Written by Rick Ellis, Wednesday, May 28th, 2003

Viewers are going to be pummeled by a flurry of new reality shows this summer. Which is good news if you prefer new programming over reruns of Wanda At Large. Unfortunately, for every reality TV hit like Survivor, there are five disasters like Under One Roof.

Here's a list of the twelve worst reality TV shows of all time, in no particular order.

Are You Hot?
It's hard to know just why the folks at ABC thought this would be a good idea, but this show--dedicated to finding the best looking person in America--wasn't just bad Television. It was creepy beyond belief. Maybe it was the "celebrity judges," who used pointers to show supposed flaws in contestants. Or maybe it was Lorenzo Lamas, who oozed oily charm and more than a bit of sleaze. This is the guy who uttered perhaps the creepiest line on any reality television show, "I don't know if you're the hottest person in America, but you sure made my Falcon Crest." Ewwwwwwww.

Married By America
Sure, the entire premise of the show was horrific. But what separated this show from some of it brethren is that the finalists were actually expected to marry. The final show had the final two couples invite their friends and family, dress up in wedding outfits, stand in front of a minister and THEN publicly announce whether they were interested in marrying their potential mate. That led to one of the most heartbreaking scenes in any reality show, when Billie Jeanne was turned down at the alter by her potential husband. It was a painfully personal moment, and her reaction to the news shows that sometimes these programs are more real life than we viewers would like to admit. Watching her huddled in the back corner of her closet, sobbing "Why doesn't he love me" into her wedding dress was truly more than I could stand. These shows can be mean and cruel, and this was the textbook example of why.

Chains Of Love
This UPN series chained a contestant to four members of the opposite sex for four days in a Southern California playpen of an oceanside mansion. The player in the middle gets to throw off his or her suitors until only one is left. Those two are left to spend the night together and "have a relationship together." Why is this show on the list? Aside from the fact that is was just dumb and boring, it had all the production values of a convenience store security camera. As they say, you can't spell "sucks" without UPN.

Popstars
Those of you who think American Idol is the epitome of corporate music probably didn't catch this clunker (or the Popstars 2 sequel). The show was designed to weed through a bunch of contestants to find the newest group of girls ready to be molded into a hot girl group. The core problem of the show is that it was just lifeless. There was no host, just a voice-over with enough editing to keep Steven Spielberg busy for a year. The result was a program with almost no drama, energy or entertainment value. The finalists (named "Eden's Crush"), did release a CD, which didn't sell. In fact, the only interesting thing about it was that future American Idol finalist Nikki McKibben appeared here first.

Love Cruise
Combine Love Boat, Temptation Island and any Saturday night at Bennigan's, and you get this Fox series. To be honest, it wasn't that the show was any worse than some of its fellow reality shows. The problem is that the show was painfully slow to watch. The pacing of this show most resembled Buddy Ebsen running a marathon. Sure, it was a conversation piece for about five minutes. Then you just wanted to run from your TV and do anything else.

Manhunt
What do you get when you cross UPN with the WWF? In this case, a cheesy reality series where beefy wrestler-types chase contestants around an Hawaiian island with laser pistols. Even worse, it turns out that the show was staged, with one producer quitting the show after alleging the program was rigged so that certain contestants would win. It's bad when you have to resort to fixing the show to grab ratings. It's worse when after the tinkering, the show still sucks.

Under One Roof
There's nothing more cruel than forcing contestants and their families to fight over a house, which all of them need equally. Okay, maybe the only thing more distasteful would have been to have the respective kids fighting over food and medicine. If nothing else, the show sets some sort of a record for being canceled twice in one season, despite the fact that only three episodes aired before the show was gone for good. All in all, another stellar moment for UPN.

Cheaters
So you think your spouse or partner may be cheating on you. Do you a) confront the offender, or b) bring along a camera crew to document their cheating ways? If your choice is b, then this syndicated reality show may be for you. Filmed as if it were just one big traveling episode of Jerry Springer, the show manages to be both sleazy and depressing. Ignoring the fact that the world is apparently filled with trailer-park cheaters, what kills this show is the fact that 90% of all episodes are virtually identical. Of course, there was that one recent episode in which a cheating boyfriend stabbed the show's host on camera. But other than that episode.....

All-American Girl
Billed as being from "the producers of American Idol," this ABC show was both clunky and dull. The initial episodes included a lot of the typical scenes of interviews and auditions, before the contestants were weeded out to a manageable number. The show then inexplicably teamed the women up with the celebrity judges for some "training," before the eliminations began. John Salley manages to suck the entertainment value out of every scene he's in, and most of the contestants are grade D at best. In other words, maybe producers should have been more specific and asked for the "All-American Talented Girl."

Murder In Small Town X
While some of the shows on this list are here because of their lack of quality, this Fox series is included because of what might have been. The show had the potential to be great, and somehow only managed to be better than reruns. In the show, a sleepy New England town has been rocked by the savage murder of a local family. In the crime's wake, a disturbing message has been left by the killer: "You must play my game if you want to catch me." Contestants attempt to track down the killer, while battling to survive another week. Unfortunately, the format never quite jelled, and the weekly scene in which another contestant is "killed" by the criminal looked less scary than a bad outtake from "The Blair Witch Project." In the end, the show may be best known for its very sad postscript. The big winner of the show--35-year-old NY fireman Angel--won the big cash prize but opted to continue as a member of the Chelsea District fire department. He was one of the firemen from that station who died on September 11th, during the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Cannonball Run 2001
The original Cannonball Run race is a no holds-barred cross country race in which contestants break numerous speeding regulations on their way to victory. That race inspired the movie "Smoky And The Bandit," and other high-octane films, so it's natural that someone thought doing a reality show based on the race would be fun for viewers. Unfortunately, the contestants weren't able to speed, and instead were forced to participate in awkward challenges designed to weed out the weak. Frankly, any show which removes the Playboy women in the first round just doesn't understand the concept of "trash TV."

Lost
Apparently someone at NBC decided that the what the world really needed was a show similar to Amazing Race...except dumber. The result was this short-lived series, which put three teams of two people in the middle of nowhere with only $100 to their names. The team that manages to make it back to the Statue of Liberty first (without any help from friends and family) wins a million dollars. The show was plagues by a number of problems, including the obvious one. How many times can you watch scenes of contestants begging for money in some faraway destination? It's a test of endurance, all right. Unfortunately, it's the viewers that may have had problems continuing more than one or two episodes.