Unan1mous
Riding on the success of Big Brother,” Unan1mous” keeps in with the strangers in-room theme by locking up nine people in a bunker and making them to choose a winner. A lesson in morality? Teamwork? Communication? Who knows, one thing is for sure, audiences did not really care. The contestants are completely isolated from the outside world. If one of them leaves the bunker, the prize money is cut in half.
This FOX show in the end only aired eight episodes. Critics described this show as an attempt to make one of the most “unpleasant reality shows of all time.” We suppose it’s good that there are some blunders along the way. At least networks learn what works and what doesn’t.
2000: The Trouble With Normal
This disaster of a show was described as "the misadventures of four paranoid young men whose fear of urban conspiracy leads them to seek counseling in a therapy group run by therapist Claire Garletti." The show fell especially hard as ABC had seriously really oversold it. It didn't help that it had John Cryer in it- not exactly an audience fave.
It scored 25 out 100 on Rotten Tomatoes and critics slammed it for it's over promotion, saying that the show had a"shockingly unfunny ensemble and rotten scripts will undo all that publicity in minutes. On a positive note, this will almost certainly end the TV career of Jon Cryer."
Insatiable
This show follows teenager Patty Bladell, a victim of fat-shaming who gets into a freak accident and loses all her weight on a hospital liquid diet. Yes, it sounds like a great setup. But wait, there's more. After being on a liquid diet for three months over summer vacation she is ready to take revenge on her classmate bullies. How she does this? She finds a disgraced civil lawyer and beauty pageant coach and becomes a beauty queen. Together they form a formidable duo. Yikes.
The Netflix show got heavily criticized for it's approach to fatness. Washington Post said that "the show specializes in the easiest forms of scripted cruelty and snark. The fat-shaming, such that it even exists, is brief and nowhere nearly as harmful as the middling idiocy of the entire effort. That's my review and also a scolding: If you're watching this, you really need better things to do."
2006: 10.5 Apocalypse
10.5: Apocalypse is miniseries made in 2006 that was written and directed by John Lafia. The show is a sequel to the 2004 series of the same name. It follows a string of natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis, sinkholes and earthquakes that were triggered by an apocalyptic earthquake. The Canadian made series was met with a bunch of terrible reviews and it was about as much of a seismic disaster as the ones depicted in the series.
Both audiences and critics ended up hating this show. So much so that the Washington Post said it that "the calamities and catastrophes occur with such frequency and ferocity that, yes, indeed, 'Apocalypse 10.5' suffers the curse of being unintentionally funny — even hilarious."
2007: October Road
One of those 'back in my hometown' series, October Road is another ABC American soap opera that failed miserably. The show that debuted on ABC on March 15, 2007, follows Nick Garrett (played by former One Tree Hill star Bryan Greenberg) who is a successful screenwriter suffering from writer's block. The second season of October Road premiered on in November 2007 but was not renewed for a third season. The sudden (yet unsurprising) news of cancellation prompted the writers to write a super abrupt ending. It did not go down well.
Chicago Tribune called it a wretched show "that not only features a lead character who is an unredeemable nitwit but dialogue that manages to be leaden, preposterous and pretentious all at once." We sure did all expect more from Laura Prepon. Just as well she redeemed herself with Orange is the New Black.