10 Best TV Shows That Were Never Made
8. Who's Your Daddy? Was The Reality Show That Would Have Usurped Maury Povich
Before reality TV took hold of our braindead couch zombie existence, we had Maury Povich, Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael to satiate our desire to view the worst of society like caged animals, the ringleaders of these white trash circuses providing a shameful finger-wagging at the end to remind us of our superiority.
Then came the dawn of Survivor, a reality game show. At least, at that point, the contestants resembled something average. It seemed as though audiences actually wanted to see exaggerated versions of themselves on TV. Alas, no, it turns out we still just want to watch the obscenely wealthy act like catty, immature hellspawn and throw drinks at one another. We've progressed; at the height of Spinger's popularity, it was chairs.
FOX clearly saw that Who's Your Daddy? was problematic, calling it a "special" rather than a series premiere when it aired so they could pull the plug without any questions asked. Pro-abortion groups were up in arms about a show that trivialized the process - using the reality show format to play Maury's old game and have the contestant guess who their birth parents are. But it seems to attempt to bridge that gap, and a culturally insensitive at the start of the reality craze is at least more honest than what the genre became.
The premise was simple: a foster child is tasked to identify their birth parents from a group of "impostors". It was a "special" disaster, prompting adoption rights groups to protest before airing.
Still, it's probably the first reality show that spoke to the blatant huckerism and dishonesty that embodies the "reality" of such shows. It was just too much too soon - we still had to give money to that jackass who won Survivor and pretend we were glad.