Reality shows are an easy target. At their worst, they combine narcissistic competitors in a state of arrested development with manipulative editing and piss poor production values. They are base, coarse, often times racist and tedious beyond belief. They bring out the worst in us - our collective desire to see other people humiliated.

Fortunately, all reality shows are not the same. I mean, would Tim Gunn be involved in anything that wasn't a class act? Shows like Project Runway and, to some extent, The Amazing Race redeem an otherwise unfortunate genre littered with wife-swaps, cat fights, strangers picked to live in a house and competitive testicle eating. There is plenty of good among the bad, and in my neck of the woods, certain reality shows are as much "must see TV" as any scripted program. I'm looking for the same thing in both anyway - emotional truth.