This disaster of a show was described as “the misadventures of four paranoid young men whose fear of urban conspiracy leads them to seek counseling in a therapy group run by therapist Claire Garletti.” The show fell especially hard as ABC had seriously really oversold it. It didn’t help that it had John Cryer in it- not exactly an audience fave.
It scored 25 out 100 on Rotten Tomatoes and critics slammed it for it’s over promotion, saying that the show had a”shockingly unfunny ensemble and rotten scripts will undo all that publicity in minutes. On a positive note, this will almost certainly end the TV career of Jon Cryer.”
2006: Get This Party Started
Like MTV's Sweet Sixteen but for adults, this show features a bunch of A-list event planners who get together to create memorable events for people's major milestones. Too bad the show basically celebrates a bunch of nobodies with milestones that aren't particularly exciting. Not to mention the event planners who lack star quality.
Get This Party Started lasted just two episodes. It's baffling how this reality show got 'green-lit' to begin with. PopMatter magazine said that "UPN's new series has a shot — in the sweepstakes for the worst reality show of all time."
2006: Happy Hour
Happy Hour is a 2006 Canadian sitcom that debuted on September 7, 2006. The show follows Henry Beckman, a young man, who after a losing everything- the girl, his apartment and even his job, is forced to start over. The show only lasted thirteen episodes but didn't even get to air all of them. In fact, the only nation that was (un)lucky to experience all 13 episodes, was Brazil.
The show was actually created by the couple behind that '70s Show, so it was rather odd when it failed miserably. Something clearly when wrong as their previous show was everyone knows was a total hit. Critics from the Washington Post it was "sheer, excruciating pain.... 'Happy Hour' stands a good chance of being named Worst New Show, or at least feeblest new sitcom."
Insatiable
This show follows teenager Patty Bladell, a victim of fat-shaming who gets into a freak accident and loses all her weight on a hospital liquid diet. Yes, it sounds like a great setup. But wait, there's more. After being on a liquid diet for three months over summer vacation she is ready to take revenge on her classmate bullies. How she does this? She finds a disgraced civil lawyer and beauty pageant coach and becomes a beauty queen. Together they form a formidable duo. Yikes.
The Netflix show got heavily criticized for it's approach to fatness. Washington Post said that "the show specializes in the easiest forms of scripted cruelty and snark. The fat-shaming, such that it even exists, is brief and nowhere nearly as harmful as the middling idiocy of the entire effort. That's my review and also a scolding: If you're watching this, you really need better things to do."
Unan1mous
Riding on the success of Big Brother," Unan1mous" keeps in with the strangers in-room theme by locking up nine people in a bunker and making them to choose a winner. A lesson in morality? Teamwork? Communication? Who knows, one thing is for sure, audiences did not really care. The contestants are completely isolated from the outside world. If one of them leaves the bunker, the prize money is cut in half.
This FOX show in the end only aired eight episodes. Critics described this show as an attempt to make one of the most "unpleasant reality shows of all time." We suppose it's good that there are some blunders along the way. At least networks learn what works and what doesn't.