Joe Schmo

I'm not disappointed, exactly, with the finale to Joe Schmo. But there was very little special that went on, as far as an attempt swerve to the viewer. The whole situation was apparently on the up and up, and they went with theory 1a, where they gave Matt Kennedy Gould all the prizes and whatnot, in trade, I guess, for playing this big giant joke on him.

I thought the producers and some of the cast (Ralph Garman, especially) went out of their way to blow smoke up Matt's ass after revealing the gag to Matt. They told him everything was done for his sake. That all the great stuff that happened was to help him out, and that he actually wasn't the butt of a big giant joke.

I was glad to hear him say in the post-mortem that Matt realizes that if the show was truly done for his sake (as had been said, over and over right after the big giant joke was revealed), he'd have been picked first, and then the show would have been set up, and not vice-versa.

His castmates said a lot of nice things about and to him, though. And I believed them...big stupid TV viewer that I am. I do think a couple of them legitimately felt bad (a little) about what they'd put Matt through.

I thought it was a real class act for Earl (or the guy who played him) to say that he wished Matt saw the things in himself that they'd all seen over the course of the show. I thought that was probably the nicest and classiest thing anybody could have said to him.

In the end, I enjoyed the Joe Schmo Show. Probably more than I should have, but there haven't been many shows to get my curiousity up and actually make me wonder what's going to happen.

Ultimately, it's probably a good thing that I didn't bet my life savings on Matt's mind cracking and his killing everybody in the house.