Hindsight is 20/20, and sometimes we wish we didn't have such perfect vision! Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the reality TV scenes/situations that are incredibly eerie or uncomfortable in hindsight.
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00:00-"Well, Paula, I'm... speechless. Don't know what to say."
00:07Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the reality TV scenes and
00:12situations that are incredibly eerie or uncomfortable in hindsight.
00:15Game shows won't be included on this list.
00:18-"It may be the creepiest episode ever on the dating game,
00:21because this bachelor looking for love back in 1978 is actually a serial killer."
00:2710. A Kitchen Nightmare – Celebrity MasterChef
00:32In 2015, a British man named Stephen Port was arrested for the murder of four men and
00:37other atrocities. -"While Port continues to deny
00:40causing the deaths of the four young men, the courtroom comes to learn the sheer scale
00:45of Stephen Port's gruesome activities." His crimes shocked the nation.
00:49Soon after, it came out that the killer had actually graced television screens before.
00:54Port was a professional chef and had appeared in numerous background shots of the UK's Celebrity
00:59MasterChef spin-off. The episode is fairly standard if you know the show.
01:03Competing celebrities on the ninth season were tasked with feeding bus drivers.
01:06Port just happened to be working in the kitchen beside them.
01:09If we didn't know who he was or what he had done, he would just look like any other employee.
01:14-"As the prosecution case begins, the sinister background of Stephen Port's crimes
01:20are finally exposed to the world."
01:229. Ryan Benson's Win – The Biggest Loser
01:26Controversial from the start, this competition reality program featured
01:29contestants fighting to lose the most weight and win the grand prize.
01:35No moment typified the flaws in The Biggest Loser's premise than its first season finale.
01:40Ryan Benson walked away having lost the most weight, but what had he won exactly?
01:45$250,000 is nice, sure, yet Benson has since talked about how he regained nearly
01:5030 pounds of the weight mere days after he was off the show's punishing weight loss regimen.
01:59The program's unrealistic, dangerous approach to diet and exercise was bad enough,
02:04but Benson also described how it set up traps for contestants, wanting them to fail on camera.
02:10-"We have to do extra. It's not gonna be this quick fix, and we're gonna lose this weight,
02:15and it's just gonna go back the way when we were, you know, athletic and in high school."
02:198. DeMario & Corinne Get Cozy – Bachelor in Paradise
02:23When it premiered in 2017, viewers knew that something shady had happened on the
02:28set of the hit show's fourth season.
02:29-"This is the moment that viewers have been waiting for,
02:32because we will finally hear directly from DeMario."
02:35News had already broken that filming had to stop for several days over a potential
02:39incident of misconduct. Contestants DeMario Jackson and Corinne Olympias were excused
02:44from the season as a result. The scandal and rampant rumors left a cloud over the series.
02:53While the two were sent home after and filming resumed with the rest of the cast,
02:56select footage showed the moments leading up to the off-camera incident.
03:00Though details were still murky, knowing what was coming made Jackson and Olympias'
03:05heavy flirting uncomfortable to watch.
03:097. Down the Hudson – Kitchen Nightmares
03:14When chef Gordon Ramsay and his crew came to Joseph Cerniglia's struggling restaurant,
03:18the situation was dire. The Kitchen Nightmares host saw the writing on the wall.
03:23Cerniglia's lackadaisical approach to running his Italian dining establishment was going
03:27to leave him bankrupt. His debts were on their way to
03:38becoming insurmountable. But one specific comment Ramsay made to the owner about his
03:43restaurant swimming down the Hudson River took on tragic significance three years later.
03:53In 2010, Cerniglia took his own life. The circumstances of his death had an eerie
03:58but purely coincidental similarity to Ramsay's comment.
04:046. The Stockdale's at Home – Wife Swap
04:07Catherine Stockdale appeared on an episode of the ABC show,
04:10and espoused her rigorous parental philosophy. Children in her home were heavily monitored.
04:15For instance, they were not allowed to go on dates, watch TV, or play video games.
04:24Watching her explain her strict parenting might have been uncomfortable enough for some viewers
04:28already. In 2017, these scenes of Stockdale with her family took on a very dark tone.
04:37One of her sons, who appears throughout the episode,
04:44murdered her and one of his brothers in cold blood, regardless of his motives.
04:49Seeing these glimpses of the family's life after knowing their story is enough to give anyone pause.
04:585. You Don't Look Happy – Christina's Court
05:01On an episode of her court show, Judge Christina Perez pointed out that her bailiff,
05:05Renard Spivey, had been happily married for over 27 years. The litigant in the
05:10case insisted that Spivey didn't look too happy about it.
05:19Everyone in the courtroom fell apart with laughter before Perez moved on with the case.
05:24In 2019, the moment was given a chilling counterpoint when Spivey was arrested
05:28on suspicion of murdering his wife.
05:35He and his lawyers claimed that the deadly shooting was accidental,
05:45and he was eventually acquitted in 2023. Still, the circumstances surrounding her
05:50death made the clip anything but funny.
05:574. Paula Goodspeed's Audition – American Idol
06:01Sandwiched between the sometimes painfully honest Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson,
06:06Paula Abdul was the ray of sunshine on the original American Idol judges panel.
06:10But when Paula Goodspeed walked in, it was a different story.
06:22Not only was Goodspeed a major Abdul fan,
06:24but it appears she even made an effort to look like her.
06:27Cowell got in some digs at the hopeful contestant before she was sent back home,
06:31and that appeared to be all there was to it.
06:41However, in an interview with Barbara Walters, Abdul said that producers knew
06:45the contestant had been stalking her and let her audition anyway.
06:58Goodspeed's story ended tragically when she seemingly took her own life near Abdul's home.
07:083. Taylor Armstrong's Meltdown – The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
07:13At first glance, it doesn't look like anything
07:15more than a typical Real Housewives shouting match.
07:23Of course, it also spawned the hilarious woman yelling at a cat meme.
07:27But the story behind the moment is heartbreaking.
07:36Taylor Armstrong's oppressive marriage to her husband, Russell,
07:39had been outed on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
07:42Russell Armstrong took his own life between the filming and airing of the second season,
07:46but the true details of their marriage were still being revealed.
07:58The entire season was re-edited after his death,
08:01and Taylor's tell-all book went into more detail than the show ever could.
08:052. Josh Duggar's Wedding – 19 Kids and Counting
08:09Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's expanding family of children
08:12led to one of TLC's most successful programs.
08:15The long-running series followed the family through major life milestones.
08:19In its second season, the eldest Duggar son, Josh, got married.
08:22I, Joshua, take thee, Anna, to be my wedded wife.
08:26His wedding to Anna Keller was a major event in the show,
08:29featuring Duggar singing a song about being loyal to his wife.
08:32But the whole scene becomes deeply disturbing when you know
08:35what emerged about Duggar afterward.
08:37We were shocked. I mean, we were just devastated.
08:40I don't think any parent is prepared for trauma like that.
08:43Not only was he repeatedly unfaithful to his wife,
08:46but he was revealed to have committed horrendous crimes.
08:50Then, in 2021, he was convicted for additional deeply disturbing ones,
08:55though we cannot go into detail about them here.
08:57On Wednesday, Josh was sentenced to 151 months in prison,
09:02and that's nearly 13 years behind bars.
09:21Number 1. Ryan Jenkins' appearance.
09:23Megan Wants a Millionaire.
09:25This VH1 dating show saw Megan Hauserman entertaining the affections of several men.
09:30One of her hopeful suitors, Ryan Jenkins,
09:32initially appeared to be a fairly normal guy with a somewhat raunchy sense of humor.
09:36Ryan whispers in my ear, you're gonna love Canadian bacon.
09:41We never got to see how close he got to winning her heart, though.
09:45In fact, the first season never finished airing.
09:48After three episodes, the network pulled the plug when news broke
09:51that Jenkins was the prime suspect in his wife's murder.
09:54Police this morning are looking into whether her ex-husband,
09:57TV star Ryan Jenkins, acted alone.
09:59The story only got more distressing from there,
10:02as he was charged but took his own life.
10:04Megan Wants a Millionaire was axed as a result,
10:07as was a scheduled season of another VH1 show Jenkins competed on.
10:11I'm a little bit of a prince charming, a little bit of a bad boy.
10:15Which of these reality moments did you watch live as they aired?
10:18Let us know in the comments.