Poor Joe Schmo

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of The Joe Schmo Show. It started in 2003 on Spike. Basically it's a "reality" show where only one person thinks it's real. Everyone else on the "show" is an actor. The first season's fake reality show within the show was called Lap Of Luxury. Each actor has an archetype such as "the gay guy," "the rich bitch," etc. One the actors is "the buddy" who makes friends and tries to softly guide The Joe towards certain decisions. They compete in challenges just like Survivor or whatever. They do little interviews during the course of the show. The Joe just always takes everything so seriously and is really trying to play while the actors just discuss how they've messed up or how they can't believe they're doing this. At the end of each show, one person is sent home but the actors just write ridiculous things on the papers to cast their vote since it's all staged. It was great. The Joe was a guy named Matt Kennedy Gould and it's just so funny to see how far they can push this guy without giving themselves up. They slip up a couple times and when they finally reveal what's been going on, he kinda freaks out but ends up being a good sport about it. Here's a clip:

Kristen Wiig was actually one of the actors in the first season as was David Hornsby from It's Always Sunny and Unsupervised.

The second season premiered the next year. It's show within the show was called Last Chance For Love and it was kind of a play on The Bachelor. This time they had two "Joes"; one male and one female. The female actually figured out what was going on separately from the male almost right away. The producers make her offer to stay and if she agrees not to reveal the secret then she will also receive the prize money at the end. To be honest, I didn't watch all of the second season so I can't comment on it too much.

The third season just started a couple weeks ago. This season, the fake reality show is The Full Bounty where "everyone" is competing to become a bounty hunter. If you haven't ever checked it out before, I highly suggest it. One of the actors is "deaf" (I guess it's funny but that would be so difficult to keep up constantly, I would think) and she has a ventriloquist dummy that she brings on the show as her "comfort from home." Lorenzo Lamas is also on this season. One of the cops from the local police dept from Super Troopers is also in it. It airs on Tuesdays on Spike at 9pm Central Time.