conscience

This show is great.

I watch every chance I get.

I love seeing the boyfriend and the cheater duke it out or act like they are big and bad.

Hilarious tv.

the aftermath

I used to watch it. Funny stuff. I preferred the old host.

ClarkKentKY

Yeah i prefered the old host too. Funny stuff. I feel bad for the people, but they invited the cameras, so i'll watch.

Giantrobo

I hate this show.

conscience

Why?

Applejack

I love this show, but the new host is kind of crappy. I liked how Tommy Grand would follow the cheater out to their car berating them, but the new host lets the person who gets cheated on look like an idiot.

conscience

Wow. tonights episode was a tense one.


The pregnant girlfriend and the host and his crew confronted the cheating boyfriend on his boat. Evidently he was really drunk or something because he suddenly grabbed the host (Joey) and pushed him onto a boat seat and suddenly stabbed him. Then someone falls off the boat and the next thing the suspect was in handcuffs.

An ambulance came, the suspect went to jail and it was over.

Dang. Intense stuff.

MrX

I watch it when I remember it's on.

Their was something that didn't seem right with the stabbing. The camera man had way to much access inside the ambulance and seemed to be able to move around for whatever shot he wanted.

Goldberg74

I was gonna switch the channel back to the SNL rerun until Joey got stabbed... man that was unexpected.

I haven't watched it regularly, but since when did they start following boyfriend/girlfriend combos, rather than married couples?

atari2600

I just dont like how they 'fake' being concerned about the couples and 'try' to breakup fights when in fact, thats what they want. they want fights and confrontation.

which is understandable but dont fake trying to be good or moral. the show is completely the opposite.

freedexter

I forgot to tune in today, so I missed the whole stabbing thing, but I saw him being taken to the hospital.

This is truly trash TV at its finest (worst?). It's disgusting and expliots the hell out of people, shamelessy. Don't we live in a wacky world?

Derrich

I'm a little skeptical about the stabbing. I'm not sure, but the past couple of shows have seemed like a scripted show. For example, last week they walk in on a girl cheating on her boyfriend with another woman. Nothing new there. But she's wearing a contruction workers outfit, the other girl is dressed up like a cat and there's police tape streched around the bed. If you're cheating, why would you take that risk of decorating the entire bedroom and dressing up, in our own house, knowing that your boyfriend can walk in at any time? The whole thing screamed 'setup' to me.

And with the stabbing this week. They roll up on the guy in a boat on the water with a pregnant woman? That makes no sense. Why not just wait for him to come back to shore? I don't think I ever actually saw a knife either. The guy that fell in the water looked like he was an extra on the A Team, excellent form. And a camera guy got on the ambulance with Joey? I know the show must go on, but that seemed super sleazy, even for Cheaters. The host just got a knife stuck in him, apparently going into shock, and the one person that decides to go to the hospital with him is the camera guy, filming all the way.

And about the new host, Jack E Jett... well, the less said, the better.

Bottom line, Tommy Grand would not have gotten stabbed.

D

G. Noel Gross

I correspond with Cheaters creator/producer Bobby Goldstein on occassion. (Quite an, um, unique fella). Anyway, was the Greco stabbing phony? I share previously noted suspicions, but if it was, it simply further seals Cheaters pedigree as the most entertaining "reality" sleaze on TV. Leave it to Bobby to part company with one host and see his mid-season replacement stabbed on Memorial Day weekend, on the heels of May sweeps.

ClarkKentKY

I've watched this show off an on since its first episode, whenever SNL is slow I flip over to get a good laugh... If unintelligent people want to exploit themselves on TV just so they can save 250$ in Private Investigator fees... That's fine with me.

The Stabbing seemed a little odd to me. One shot in particular, of him cupping the wound and pulling his hand away slowly... I mean come on. It seemed a little too perfectly focused!

Also, how did he even fall in the water? Why was the camera allowed in the ambulance? Where was the knife? etc. etc. etc.

Maybe that's why the last host left, cause they were going to start scripting the "encounters." Maybe he wasn't comfortable messing with the format of the show... Although I can't imagine anyone involved with a show like this has creative standards.


And how sad would this guy's tombstone be if he actually died from the fake stabbing... "Stabbed by a guy with a mullet, on a boat, while hosting a stupid TV show that comes on at 12:30AM on various Fox Affiliates" ...

RIP

conscience

I mean I just saw the guy pummel him onto the boat seat. Then someone falling in the water.

It does seem scripted, but it was pretty tense.

And Joey is a great 'actor'. He had the best "i've just been stabbed" face.

ClarkKentKY

And it was a classic Stuntman fall out of the boat too. It almost looked like he was doing one of those backwards scuba dives over the railing. The more i replay it in my head the more i know it was all for show.

I've been stabbed!

G. Noel Gross

Joey didn't fall in the water. That was someone else (probably the usual segment producer). I ran it back in slow mo on my TiVo and that's what everyone freaks out about at first. It's only after they pull the other guy back aboard that they realize Joey is bleeding. Also, it's when that's discovered that the security goon handcuffs "Mitchell."

It appears two Cheaters crew members ride in the ambulance. One is the girl that's by Greco's side throughout (yet still holds a small camera -- the same one used to show "clients" unpleasant footage). The other is positioned near his head. That's how they're getting two angles inside the ambulance.

What's really creepy is that Greco's STILL ON MIC through the whole thing.

Derrich

After going through the scenes frame by frame, I'm 100% sure the entire thing was faked. There are at least a dozen glaring ways of proving it was staged, but the biggest one is the last shot.

A man is stabbed, supposedly with a collapsed lung, and the ambulance stops and unloads him 50 feet away from the 'Emergency' driveway of the hospital? Stab wounds don't rate the 'Emergency' entrance? Instead they have to park across the street and roll him toward the building. (With the tape convienently ending before the reach the door. )

I liked Cheaters when it was dirty, cheap and sleazy. But faking episodes is just too much.

D

FlashStash

This is old news...it's fake...

Article Your Cheatin' Art


What's the name of a reality TV show that's not always real? Cheaters.
BY SCOTT NOWELL


H. L. Mencken said that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. Bobby Goldstein is a wealthy man.


The shameless culture that begat The Dating Game, Cops and When Animals Attack! has perhaps reached yet a new low with the off-network cult hit Cheaters. Goldstein is the co-creator and producer of the Dallas-based reality show about folks who fool around and their insignificant others.


The man who helped him bring the show to life is Tommy Habeeb, who plays the Cheaters host, Tommy Grand. Goldstein is the moneyman. Private investigator Danny Gomez is their hired gumshoe. Together, they fight crime. At least they would if adultery were still illegal.


It would also help if the cheaters the show claims to catch red-handed were actually cheating. Or dating.


The show is supposed to work like this: A suspicious lover contacts the show and tells them the object of his or her affection might be straying. They are interviewed on camera, usually at Cheaters' Dallas offices located on, of course, Lovers Lane. Staffers then decide whether to take the case. The show foots the bill for surveillance, which Gomez says can cost more than $10,000, in exchange for broadcast rights.


Detectives stalk and film the suspects at hotels, strip malls and restaurants. Cheaters has even set up cameras in suspect's homes right in front of their beds.


After enough footage is gathered, the cheatee accompanies Grand and crew to a "surveillance situation," usually the cheater on a date with the new flame. The show is built around the ambush-style confrontations that follow: illicit lovers surrounded by lights, cameras and gawkers as Grand damns the busted and consoles the jilted. The ugly rawness of love gone strange bolsters the show's claim to be "the realest of real TV."


But five twentysomethings say investigator Danny Gomez paid them $400 to act out phony scenarios that were presented as real on the show. They say they've sent many other people to Gomez at $50 per referral. Fake footage has been aired hundreds of times. Host Tommy Grand even brought some with him on a recent Maury appearance.


Goldstein says he got the idea for Cheaters in 1995. His concept was to take a fictional private eye and weave him in and out of real-life stories.


Goldstein, who grew up in Houston, made a pile of money as a lawyer and lost much of it in a 1998 malpractice suit when he had to pay a wealthy Dallas divorcee for misrepresenting her. Goldstein's legal career was over.


"I had a lot of fun as a lawyer, but once you get to the top of the practice of law, all you've really done is climb to the top of a big pile of ****," Goldstein says. "Getting into the entertainment racket is something I'd always wanted to do."
-----


FS

conscience

Flash -

We are commenting on the actual episode that aired on 5/24/03.

Not that article.

But thanks for the article.

FlashStash

Get out...really?

I know that, but it was pretty well established in the media about a year or so ago that they were faking situations on the show. Lends a lot more credence to what you probably saw being faked also.

FS

mtucker

I got into Cheaters for a little bit (my wife loved it for some reason), but after a while it became obvious that it was faked. Little details like the "surveillance footage" always being able to get just the right angle to catch people in the act give it away.

G. Noel Gross

Just knowing Goldstein's history, I'm certain the shows are sweetened or cooked all together. However the story you've cited contains no named sources and no more "truth" than you'll get from any Dallas bar fly. However, the current issue of GQ has a similar story, yet manages to come up with ONE named source -- a Dallas stripper -- who claims she was paid to fake a lesbian love triangle segment. But a devil's advocate would suggest she'd have reason to say she was paid since her family didn't know she was a lesbian (if she actually were, of course).

I think Goldstein's a genius -- a modern, unabashed exploiteer from David F. Friedman/P.T. Barnum school. Cooking the shows has only added to their ever sublime entertainment value and pop-culture profile. It's all about selling the show in as many markets as possible, and more recently, licensing the "Cheaters" name to PIs around the country.

Giantrobo

Again...I hate this show.

Humanity at its WORST

The orignal host was a Dickweed SOB.

G. Noel Gross

Just thought I'd mention that my current column features a "Cheaters Watch" on the stabbing.

http://dvdtalk.com/cineschlock/news_archive.html