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The Joe Schmo Show
The Joe Schmo Show is an American reality television hoax show created by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. The series was originally broadcast in the United States on the cable network Spike for two seasons in 2003 and 2004, then revived for a third season in 2013. The series was again revived for a fourth season premiering on TBS in January 2025.
The show's premise is that a target person or people are led to believe that they are contestants on a reality television show; in reality, all of the other participants in the purported show – including the host – are actors, and their actions and the outcome of the purported show are all scripted in an attempt to elicit comedic reactions from the targets. The show's first season, The Joe Schmo Show, aired in 2003; its second season, Joe Schmo 2, aired in 2004; and a third season, The Joe Schmo Show: The Full Bounty, aired in 2013. The first season's hoax was conducted as a typical reality competition show while the second hoax was a Bachelor-like dating series. In the third season, the hoax featured aspiring bounty hunters tracking down "real" fugitives.
Over the course of its run, the show's cast of fake contestants has included several actors who would later become well known, including Kristen Wiig, Natasha Leggero, and Jon Huertas. The only performer consistently present across the first three Joe Schmo seasons was voice actor Ralph Garman, who served as the "emcee" for all three editions (playing a smarmier caricature of himself in the first, a pompous British man in the second, and a bounty hunter in the third).
The team behind the show also created reality television hoax show Invasion Iowa.
On May 17, 2023, TBS announced that it would revive The Joe Schmo Show for a new fourth season with Cat Deeley as host, with the premiere initially planned for 2024. After a delay, the relaunch premiered on January 21, 2025. In this latest incarnation, the real and fake contestants participate in an elaborate competition known as The GOAT, a supposed Americanized adaptation of a popular (and fictitious) South Korean series.
The target of season one was Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania native Matt Kennedy Gould. The other "contestants" are archetypes of common reality TV show participants.
Two actors made brief appearances in supporting roles: Ryan Raddatz played Molly's boyfriend, William (who feigned shock at seeing her in a bikini), and Steve Ireland played David Decker, a "network executive" who negotiated with Gould to finish the "Meal Not Quite Fit for a King" challenge.
For the hoax, the producers named the faux-reality show Lap of Luxury, with a $100,000 top prize "awarded" to the "winner." Perhaps in an attempt to keep things as close to actual reality shows as possible, at the end of every episode an eviction ceremony was conducted in which each contestant voted to evict someone, and the person with the most votes was eliminated. After the written finish was executed, the actor in question would take a plate with their face painted on it and give it to Garman, who would then state a rhyming couplet that went "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, (name), you're dead to us" then throw the plate into the fireplace, breaking it. In the final episode, the three remaining "players" (in this case Gould, "Brian", and "Hutch") faced a final vote from the evicted "houseguests" (similar to the final Tribal Council on Survivor), with the one getting the most votes "winning".
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The Joe Schmo Show
The Joe Schmo Show is an American reality television hoax show created by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. The series was originally broadcast in the United States on the cable network Spike for two seasons in 2003 and 2004, then revived for a third season in 2013. The series was again revived for a fourth season premiering on TBS in January 2025.
The show's premise is that a target person or people are led to believe that they are contestants on a reality television show; in reality, all of the other participants in the purported show – including the host – are actors, and their actions and the outcome of the purported show are all scripted in an attempt to elicit comedic reactions from the targets. The show's first season, The Joe Schmo Show, aired in 2003; its second season, Joe Schmo 2, aired in 2004; and a third season, The Joe Schmo Show: The Full Bounty, aired in 2013. The first season's hoax was conducted as a typical reality competition show while the second hoax was a Bachelor-like dating series. In the third season, the hoax featured aspiring bounty hunters tracking down "real" fugitives.
Over the course of its run, the show's cast of fake contestants has included several actors who would later become well known, including Kristen Wiig, Natasha Leggero, and Jon Huertas. The only performer consistently present across the first three Joe Schmo seasons was voice actor Ralph Garman, who served as the "emcee" for all three editions (playing a smarmier caricature of himself in the first, a pompous British man in the second, and a bounty hunter in the third).
The team behind the show also created reality television hoax show Invasion Iowa.
On May 17, 2023, TBS announced that it would revive The Joe Schmo Show for a new fourth season with Cat Deeley as host, with the premiere initially planned for 2024. After a delay, the relaunch premiered on January 21, 2025. In this latest incarnation, the real and fake contestants participate in an elaborate competition known as The GOAT, a supposed Americanized adaptation of a popular (and fictitious) South Korean series.
The target of season one was Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania native Matt Kennedy Gould. The other "contestants" are archetypes of common reality TV show participants.
Two actors made brief appearances in supporting roles: Ryan Raddatz played Molly's boyfriend, William (who feigned shock at seeing her in a bikini), and Steve Ireland played David Decker, a "network executive" who negotiated with Gould to finish the "Meal Not Quite Fit for a King" challenge.
For the hoax, the producers named the faux-reality show Lap of Luxury, with a $100,000 top prize "awarded" to the "winner." Perhaps in an attempt to keep things as close to actual reality shows as possible, at the end of every episode an eviction ceremony was conducted in which each contestant voted to evict someone, and the person with the most votes was eliminated. After the written finish was executed, the actor in question would take a plate with their face painted on it and give it to Garman, who would then state a rhyming couplet that went "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, (name), you're dead to us" then throw the plate into the fireplace, breaking it. In the final episode, the three remaining "players" (in this case Gould, "Brian", and "Hutch") faced a final vote from the evicted "houseguests" (similar to the final Tribal Council on Survivor), with the one getting the most votes "winning".