ULTIMATE TABOO GAMESHOW COHOST FULL
(Or if I do, I take it as a sign to step away from a screen for once.) So this editor-mandated quest to feed the hungry content maw-like Peak TV, content never sleeps, not even in July-by cataloging the full extent of summer variety programming proved something of a learning experience.
ULTIMATE TABOO GAMESHOW COHOST TV
One of the ironies of my job as a TV critic is that I watch so much prestige-adjacent fare that I usually don’t have time for the lighter stuff most people actually watch to unwind. It’s as perfect for a 10-week run in the warmer months as illegal fireworks. TKO combines a recognizable host (Kevin Hart) with a monetizable gap in his schedule (Hart called it “perfectly aligned with my global brand”), a behind-the-scenes heavyweight (power-producer Mark Burnett is at the helm), and an easily digestible format (an obstacle course). This week, CBS debuts TKO: Total Knock Out, both a rare non– Big Brother offering and an exemplar of the form. There are many subgenres within this sprawling landscape: self-contained empires, like Big Brother, which takes over virtually the entire CBS prime-time lineup, and The Bachelor, which other Ringer staffers can speak to better than I specific skill-based competitions, like MasterChef and what we’ll call Everything Else, a grab bag of variety, game, talent, and some combination thereof.
Cheap, efficient, and drawn from the infinitely renewable resource of celebrities and laypeople craving their 15 minutes, reality TV makes a natural stopgap for content providers looking to fill space. “Weird,” in this context, amounts to lots and lots of unscripted programming to kill time until the sitcoms and procedurals come home to pasture. Summer, though? Summer is the fallow period, and as any bored, underscheduled kid on vacation knows, that’s when things tend to get weird. Fall is when shows premiere, winter is when they go on hiatus, spring is when they return and wrap up for the year. In the era of Peak TV, the concept of breaks in the never-ending deluge of new material is hilariously out of date on the networks, however, the calendar is still law. Broadcast networks are the only place on American television where time still matters.
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