I was sitting in my usual Thursday night spot when I first heard it.
“My grandmother’s sitting at home watching Jerry Springer right now.”
My head cocked to the side in confusion as I sat on the carpet directly in front of my family’s television that seems almost comically oversized in hindsight. It was like hearing a foreign language. My 7 year old mind couldn’t process what I just heard. I was sure that he said words, and I was sure those words had some meaning, but I had absolutely no idea what he meant. Was he saying that his grandmother hadn’t died and had somehow made a miraculous recovery? Had there been some sort of miscommunication and she was never actually sick? Had she returned as some sort of undead being doomed to suffer eternally watching daytime television, never knowing the sweet release of death?
My mother gasped as she snatched the remote from the coffee table and muted the television, something usually forbidden when not during a commercial break.
“That’s wrong.” She said, “That’s so so so wrong. You don’t EVER do that.”
If you’ve seen enough Survivor you know that they typically have a “loved ones” challenge each season. Before the season each contestant picks a loved one to come and compete with them in a challenge. The reward for the winning contestant and their loved one is almost always extra time to spend together while the other loved ones return home. With the contestant’s loved ones being chosen before the start of the show the decision of who to bring becomes part of the game. Where most contestants would just pick the loved one they would most want to see after 3 weeks apart some savvier players might look to wring out even the smallest competitive advantage from this opportunity.
Here’s where our hero Jonny Fairplay, a man who’s entire personality can be gleaned from the fact he gave himself the nickname “Fairplay”, comes in. Before leaving he told his friend Dan to lie when he came and say that Fairplay’s grandmother had died while he was competing on the show in an attempt to win sympathy from others. Dan finally showed up in the aptly titled “The Great Lie” and the two of them put their plan into motion. Tears were shed by all and the other contestants agreed to intentionally lose the reward challenge so Jonny could spend more time mourning the loss of his grandmother with his best friend. It wasn’t until after the show ended (and long after Jonny made a promise on his not-dead grandmother’s non-existent grave in a later episode) that the other contestants learned of the ruse.
Reality television and game shows were appointment viewing in our household. If it aired primetime on a major network odds are my family watched at least an episode or two. Reality TV was just starting to enter popular culture and a fair bit of it was absolute trash. When people say “trashy” in reference to reality TV you think of dating shows with fighting and screaming and crying. These are guilty pleasure, junk food shows. That’s not what I mean when I say “trash”. When I say we watched “trash” I mean we watched shows that tore at the very souls of everyone involved in their productions. Take The Moment of Truth, a Fox game show that could only have been made in the god-forsaken cultural wasteland of the mid-2000s. The premise was simple: hook contestants up to a lie detector and ask them deeply uncomfortable, personal questions in front of their friends, family, audience members, and everyone watching at home. If they answer truthfully they win money. If they lie, they get nothing. I remember watching the fifth episode, where a contestant named Lauren took her shot at the $500,000 grand prize. It opened with host Mark Walberg (no not THAT mark Wahlberg) addressing the audience at home directly, warning us that what we were about to see was so controversial that the production team actually debated airing it. For the next hour he would ask Lauren the most invasive, personal questions the producers could come up with as reality television hit a new low and then went even lower. Lauren sat in front of her siblings, her parents, her husband, and a giant empty space where everyone’s sense of shame should have been and admitted to almost everything. She said she thought her parents weren’t proud of her, that she said she believed she should be married to her ex boyfriend, and that she had been unfaithful to her husband. So how much money did she win? Well, on her way to the jackpot she was asked if she thought she was a good person. She lied. She said “yes”. She lost everything. As the episode ended she embraced her family in a rare moment of television where everyone lost, even those of us watching at home. My mom didn’t mute the TV and give us a stern lecture about how awful what we had just seen was. We sat in silence, waiting for the next show to start. If you watch the YouTube upload of the episode today you’ll notice slight visual distortions and frays. These are likely the result of imperfections in video transferring, but maybe--just maybe--they’re a sign that God really does exist and He is mercifully tearing at the fabric of reality to destroy this video.
By today’s standards Survivor is a pretty tame show. The show still has a bit of flair for the dramatic, but for the most part exists as a relic of early reality television. It focuses less on interpersonal drama and more on the gameplay and strategy, which is what makes Fairplay’s lie such a perfect moment of television. It’s dramatic but it also makes sense from a strategic point. It’s not just a tasteless lie done for no reason. It was done to win leverage and potential late game sympathies if Jonny were to make it to the final vote. In a media landscape saturated with disgusting, vapid displays of self-absorption shouldn’t we be allowed to have this one? Can’t we just enjoy this one moment of drama where no one gets hurt? As crazy as it sounds we could do a lot worse than a guy lying to everyone that his grandma died.
Matthew Daugherty is a young writer from Cleveland, Ohio with a love of pop culture, politics, and the intersection of the two. As a part-time writer and full-time crank, Matt can be found shouting into the void on Twitter at @mdaugherty1221.