There were also some really random cameos: Sarah Jessica Parker, Roseanne and Tom Arnold, Garry Shandling, Gary Coleman, Herve Villechez, Flea, Colin Quinn and Casey Kasem. Not every sketch is a home run, but it’s a riot just to see some of this stuff from a nostalgia angle and wonder what might have been. It’s not like this show getting cancelled has really hurt Ben Stiller in the long run, but maybe Andy Dick and Janeane Garofolo wouldn’t be as annoying as they are today if things had worked out differently.
The Joe Schmo Show (2003) Spike TV, which is best known for running Bond Marathons and Dukes of Hazard reruns, had a stroke of genius with this absolutely brilliant spoof of the reality genre. The central conceit is that the poor schlub of the title, Joe Schmo (aka Matt Kennedy Gould), thinks he’s been cast on a reality show called Lap of Luxury. In actuality, he’s the only one who thinks that, as the rest of the “competitors” are actors, playing characters designed to represent reality show “types”, such as “the gay guy”, “the grizzled veteran”, “the virgin”, “the schemer” and “the asshole” (who is clearly modeled on the King of all reality show a-holes, Puck from The Real World).
