This should come as no shock to anyone who reads the blog on a regular basis, but I’m a big fan of reality television. So, when I was in college in 2003 and I heard about Spike’s The Joe Schmo Show which was a fake reality show built around tricking one guy into thinking the whole thing is real, I thought it sounded rad. It really helped that Matt, the mark, turned out to be an incredibly nice guy who happened to remind me of my buddy Jacob who I watched the show with every week (along with Real World Vegas). It was cool because there was all this tension around whether Matt would figure out everything was a ruse or not, which was a possibility every week as the actors were doing all kinds of improv and trying to remember their stories.

Well, Spike is replaying the show today which is awesome and I was surprised to see that Kristen Wiig was one of the fake contestants! I’m not a huge fan of Wiig on SNL because I think her and her writers are getting a little lazy and only creating one trick pony characters for her (I hate Gilly with a firey passion), but dig her in movies like Knocked Up and she was great in Whip It. It’s always fun seeing a star in her early days, the funny thing is that she’s basically playing the kind of “whacky aunt” character she’s become famous for on SNL. This almost makes me want to not leave the house and just watch the whole season (it’s only 9 episodes).

UPDATE 1: Wiig would go on to get sent to the hospital in a sumo game where Matt knocked her on her ass. Her character left the show as part of a deal related to the prize Matt gave her for accidentally hurting her. Dr. Pat got some cash, voluntarily left and no one was sent home.

UPDATE 2: The dude playing the jerk character named Hutch was played by David Hornsby who would go on to play Rickety Cricket in Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Drew in Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem.

UPDATE 3: Series writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese would go on to write Zombieland as a TV show which eventually got turned into a movie. The pair is working on a Deadpool script. Reese apparently also did “additional screenplay material” on Monsters Inc. and wrote Cruel Intentions 3.