Reality TV Show Idea: Humiliation

Let’s be honest about reality television. It’s not reality. These shows are designed to embarrass or cause pain and suffering to the contestants for the amusement of the viewing audience. That being the case, this show aims to give the people exactly what they want: the complete humiliation of the contestants every week. The American Idol episode that shows the tapes of the really terrible contestants is always the one that’s the most fun. The humiliation of other people is always good theater.

Humiliation is set up like the typical reality show. Twelve people are collected and placed in a house. Every episode, they face a pair of challenges. The first gives the winner a particular power in the second part of the show. In the second half of the show, one contestant is eliminated, and there is some type of payoff for the viewers.

Each episode of Humiliation begins with what is called the Ego Buster. The contestants are given a particularly heinous task to perform, such as cleaning particularly nasty public restrooms with only rubber gloves and sponges (no toilet brushes-get those toilets sparkling clean!). Another option is to give them an extremely embarrassing or distasteful task, such as performing a striptease in front of their parents. Awful? You bet! But that’s the name of the game, after all.

One person is judged the winner of the Ego Buster, and that person gains a special ability that can be used in the next round. It will be explained momentarily.

When the Ego Buster round is complete, the contestants are then told the Humiliation challenge for the episode. Again, these aren’t necessarily disgusting or scary, but are designed to be as humiliating to the contestants as possible. Disgusting and scary may work their way into some of these stunts, but not all of them will involve fear or nausea.

Now comes the fun. Each contestant starts with a $1 million betting pool. Knowing what the challenge is, each player then stakes a certain amount of their money that they would be willing to take to perform the embarrassing task in question. That $1 million never gets bigger. If someone bets $100,000 the first week, they have only $900,000 for the rest of the series.

And here’s where the bets come in. The person who bets the largest amount of money is eliminated from the show. That person is the one who wanted to perform the stunt the least, so he or she is gone. The person who bets the smallest amount of money has to perform the stunt. The wagered money is then set aside. The overall winner takes home whatever money he or she earned for successfully performing the embarrassing stunts through the course of the show. Potentially, the winner could walk away with $1 million. Essentially, the idea is to ask the players what the minimum price would be for them to undertake something truly awful. How much would someone have to pay you to, for instance, walk down Broadway during rush hour in nothing but a bra and panties (for you too, guys)? Place that as your bid. If you’re the lowest, you do it, and if you win the whole show, that money is yours.

But now it gets a little more complicated. The winner of the Ego Buster round can make a single adjustment to his or her bet. He or she can change that bet by 10% in either direction, so a bet of $100,000 can become $90,000 or $110,000. This allows the person a chance of staying in the show if he or she was the highest bidder, or avoiding the embarrassing stunt if he or she was the lowest.

Here’s a sample of what the bets might look like in the first episode:

Contestant 1: $50,000 bet
Contestant 2: $60,000 bet
Contestant 3: $45,000 bet
Contestant 4: $150,000 bet
Contestant 5: $30,000 bet
Contestant 6: $60,000 bet
Contestant 7: $80,000 bet
Contestant 8: $100,000 bet
Contestant 9: $35,000 bet
Contestant 10: $50,000 bet
Contestant 11: $75,000 bet
Contestant 12: $140,000 bet

So, with the highest bid, Contestant 4 is eliminated from the show. Contestant 5 has the lowest bid, so he or she performs the stunt in question, and is now eligible to win at least $30,000 if he or she comes out on top. If, however, Contestant 4 won the Ego Buster at the start of the show, he or she could reduce that bid by $15,000. This would make Contestant 12 the highest bidder, and that person would be eliminated. The other contestants are still in it, but haven’t earned any money if they win. Their bets are removed from their pool of money, and they get ready for the next week.

Humiliation quickly becomes a game of strategy. If you bid too high, you risk elimination, and you reduce the amount of money you can bid in subsequent rounds. Bid too low and you end of doing something horrible for peanuts. Contestants obviously want to win the money, which means they have to balance how much they want to win with the likelihood of being eliminated. And because the winner of the show only wins the money from the stunts he or she performed, anyone who really wants to win some money will have to humiliate him- or herself at some point.

After all, the real reason we watch reality television is to see people do something embarrassing, the kind of thing that will haunt them for the rest of their days. All I want to do is put a price tag on it.