This is a preview of the pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, authored by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter every week in your inbox, Sign up here.
It’s ridiculously early to make such a declaration, but I can confidently say: Special Forces The best entertainment we will receive in 2023, if not the rest of the decade and beyond.
Special Forces: The World’s Toughest Test It’s a reality series that debuted on Fox this week. (You can catch the premiere on Hulu, with future episodes airing Wednesdays.) Forget the Emmys. This TV show gem transcends such traditional honors. Get the Nobel Committee by Horn. Can someone give me Joe Biden’s phone? Presidential Medal of Freedom available. Give the casting of a reality series a Pulitzer Prize? You have to pay attention.
Some are inevitable and some are exciting Special ForcesThe pitch is so obvious, yet so silly. “We need another big reality show. Any ideas?”
Trying to kill former child stars and Olympians on reality TV has always been the end of the genre. Just shocked that we actually ended up there.
the premise of Special Forces: The World’s Toughest Test It seems like something that should already exist on reality TV, but somehow it’s a new show. They were subjected to a series of grueling and terrifying stunts meant to mimic the training exercises used for.
If you spend about 53 hours a week watching reality shows, you eventually come to realize the fact that much of what you’re watching has been tweaked by producers and remade for the cameras. But what you are seeing is Special Forces is genuine. These celebrities thought they were dying.
This show is so goofy, but so serious at the same time. I laughed at how stupid it was. I cried too. It essentially sums up my precarious emotional and mental state as we hit this new year, but it’s also a fair summation of the quality of this terrifying, beautiful, repulsive, transcendent show. I have.
Solid 40% Special Forces It happens in slow motion. That is wonderful. In the premiere, a cast of celebrities are asked to dangle from the sides of a helicopter, lean back, and fall head-first from the sky into the ocean without controlling their bodies or how they enter the water.
In slow motion, Mel B of the Spice Girls breathes into a serene state, literally Fall backwards from a helicopter and hit the waterThe girl who played Lucy Camden Seventh Heaven (Beverly Mitchell) real wind Lean out of the flying chopper. Jamie-Lynn Spears listens intently to his commander’s instructions, breathes a deep sigh of faith, over-rotates and utterly pisses off as he dives into the sea. A commander called by name is no joke. “You clown!”
Everything in the paragraph before that is a bunch of words that shouldn’t exist. But this is the reality that I have seen with my own eyes.
I wish I had the eloquence or means to articulate the magnificence of the series’ casting. Reality shows starring celebrities are their own subset of the genre.from celebrity apprentice To Brother, it’s not particularly new or revolutionary. Attention-hungry actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians believe, perhaps because they’ve experienced it in the past, that appearing on reality shows will give them a newfound fame. Whether they are or not, they are subjected to some kind of humiliation. We, as viewers, enjoy seeing the rich and famous being insulted and treated like shit, a sort of karmic balance on the scale.
Listen, it’s not noble or proud. But I’m not going to act like Donald Trump is yelling at Marilu Henner. (Hell, when you put Joan Rivers in the mix, Excellent tv set. )
Casting for these shows is an art form. This is a delicate Trump home built on people who may have been wildly successful at one point, but never thought a decade or he a decade. Athletes with aggressive publicists who want to be seen as “fun.” People who won gold medals at the Olympics and are now doing nothing. A tabloid fixture that wants to be seen as “more than just controversy.” And a real housewife. dance with the stars This is always talented. Special Forces I just raised the bar.
The show will include former New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza and Olympian Gus Kenworthy. Gymnast Nastya Liukin competes on the same show as her former athlete. John & Kate Plus 8 Reality star/villain Kate Gosselin. Real Housewives of AtlantaKenya Moore and celebrity psychologist Dr. Drew Pinsky with Food Network chef Tyler Florence, R&B singer Montell Jordan and former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. jogging in the desert. At one point, Mel B and his NBA star Dwight Howard were filmed taking shit next to each other. What the hell is this fresh, really? (Heaven.)
The heavily scripted dialogue that military coaches use is laughably trite. (“If you should die, that’s the natural way of saying you’ve failed” is repeated many times throughout the episode.) But it serves to make you realize just how intense this is.
In the premiere, the celebrities actually perform a swan jumping backwards from a moving helicopter. They are so difficult to get through the obstacle course that some even fall after completing it. One returned home with a neck injury. Another suffers from heat stroke. The third flat-out left very concerned for his safety when he was told that he would have to cross the ravine using only two thin ropes to keep his balance. rice field.
If Kate Gosselin had a full-blown panic attack before her helicopter stunt, it could be an opportunity for other shows to laugh at her. Special Forces I’m actually scared. You feel so sorry for her.
After being angrily called a buffoon by Jamie Lynn Spears, she throws up and starts crying when she returns to land. You mentioned an incident where a little girl nearly drowned in a pond. Kenya Moore starts crying in the background.Beverly Mitchell is comforting her. You start to get teary-eyed. “What am I looking at?” you may be thinking.The answer is Special Forcesthe largest series of our time.
I can’t remember the last time I was hooked on a reality show. It has all the trappings of what’s awful and unwatchable about the genre. Yet there’s something intangibly riveting about it. It’s all very random, but the stakes really feel justified. There’s a viral clip from a future episode of Gus Kenworthy firing off. Unthinkable for now. Can’t wait to see.
Stay obsessed!sign up for Daily Beast’s Obsessed Newsletter and follow us Facebook, twitter, Instagram When tick tock.