The Joe Schmo Show: Living or Dead?

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By Radiator Perlman

Updated 18 March 2023

Image info

Artist	Gage Skidmore
Credit	Own work
License	cc-by-sa-3.0
Desc	Ralph Garman at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego
Usage	Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Image info/credit

The Joe Schmo Show

Genre	reality television
Country of origin	United States of America
Number of episodes	29
Number of seasons	3

About The Joe Schmo Show

The Joe Schmo Show is a reality television hoax show created by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. The series is broadcast in the U.S. on the cable network Spike. The show's premise is that a target person or persons are led to believe that they are contestants on a reality television show; in reality, all of the other participants in the purported show – including the host – are actors, and their actions and the outcome of the purported show are all scripted in an attempt to elicit comedic reactions from the targets. The show's first season, The Joe Schmo Show, aired in 2003, and its second season, Joe Schmo 2, aired in 2004. The first season's hoax was conducted as a typical reality competition show while the second hoax was a Bachelor-like dating series.

On December 10, 2012, Spike announced it was bringing The Joe Schmo Show back for a third season, which premiered on January 8, 2013.

The only constant presence in all three Joe Schmo seasons has been voice actor Ralph Garman, who has served as the "emcee" for all three editions (playing a smarmier caricature of himself in the first, a pompous British man in the second, and a bounty hunter in the third).