How reality TV is getting even more unreal

So many series are now just scripted sitcoms with bad acting. What happened?

The cast of Storage Wars.
(Image credit: Facebook.com/StorageWars)

This past weekend marked one of the world's most prestigious documentary film festivals, True/False. For four days, attendees in Columbia, Missouri, were pushed by experimental documentaries like Rat Film, Strong Island, Safari, and Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun? to think about the deeper meaning of "truth" and how a medium as frequently artificial as cinema can both represent and distort the facts.

Yet if those same folks wanted to be befuddled about reality and fakery in a different way, they could have just stayed home and watched Chrisley Knows Best.

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Noel Murray

Noel Murray is a freelance writer, living in Arkansas with his wife and two kids. He was one of the co-founders of the late, lamented movie/culture website The Dissolve, and his articles about film, TV, music, and comics currently appear regularly in The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.