Remember when “reality TV” was new? When The Real World actually seemed like an entertaining and legitimate social experiment instead of a weeks-long fraternity-party-gone-bad? When, if you squinted your eyes just so and silently agreed to suspend a little bit of disbelief, you could convince yourself that what you were seeing was, in fact, some sort of–mediated, yes, but nonetheless somewhat authentic–version of reality? Those were good days, but I’m afraid they’re gone. Long gone. Even my grandmother now knows that reality starlets often do retakes in order for the “real” action to be suitable for cameras to capture it, cameramen get scrubbed out of the “film”, and something like New York Reality TV School exists to teach reality wannabes how to earn their 15 minutes of “fame”. Indeed, it’s impossible to write a paragraph about reality TV anymore without putting something in scare quotes–that’s how inauthentic the format has become. And so it was with both skepticism and delig...