2008 Summer TV Preview: Reality Bites Back

Reality Bites Back - Season 1

Premieres: Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 10:30 p.m. EST

Network: Comedy Central

Creator(s): JD Roth, Todd Nelson and Adam Greener (Executive Producers)

Starring: Michael Ian Black (host), Kyle Cease, Chris Fairbanks, Jeff Garcia, Red Grant, Tiffany Haddish, Bert Kreischer, Mo Mandel, Donnell Raawlings, Amy Schumer, Theo Von (contestants)

Website: ComedyCentral.com

Reality Bites Back is Comedy Central’s first ever unscripted competition series. While the show will parody various popular reality competition series (Big Brother, The Biggest Loser, So You Think You Can Dance, etc), the competition is real. Ten comedians will go battle it out in various ridiculous challenges. Each week, one comedian will be eliminated and the last man (or woman) standing will win $50,000 and the title of Lord of All Reality.

As this is Comedy Central we’re dealing with, it seems likely that some of the challenges are going to be fairly politically un-correct. From the promo (below) it looks like one of the challenges is titled “Almost-American Gladiators” and the contestants will be performing tasks poking fun at border-jumpers and the immigration process.

There are a number of reasons why this show looks hilarious to me. For one, I love Michael Ian Black. Then there’s the fact that I consider myself one of the people who hates to love trashy reality TV. Finally, instead of bringing in “regular” people to perform these idiotic challenges, they’ve brought on comedians. So we know these people aren’t going to be afraid to make fools of themselves. Sure, that could be said about a lot of actual reality show contestants but in this case, I’m thinking these comedians are going to go out of their way to really make this series as funny as it can be.

For the full 2008 Summer TV Premiere Schedule: CLICK HERE