As a previous reviewer noted, "World's Dumbest" succeeds for me where most of "TruTV's" output fails because it has a nice "Mystery Science Theater 3000" feel to it. Where the serial reality shows are centered around about contrived situations and shock value and feature drama queens, narcissists, white trash, and dumb people who don't realize they're dumb, "WD" is all about poking mean fun at the kinds of people that the rest of TruTV's programming wants us to be fascinated by.
I tend to enjoy the later episodes of WD more - the producers figured out which members of their "celebrity cast" work well in this format as the series progressed and dropped the commentators who really had nothing funny to say or simply weren't inherently funny.(For instance, Gary Busey is an awesome actor, and Harlan Coben is a great writer, but in this format they weren't very good.)They also learned to play to their strengths as comedians and as commentators.
I also prefer the episodes featuring would be daredevils and drivers who are only really guilty of not understanding how gravity and momentum work, as opposed to the the ones about the jerks, drunks, and creeps populating the episodes about criminals and partiers. But that's just me.
The other appeal of the show is seeing people like Tonya Harding and Danny Bonaduce (who used to be the kind of people who would be featured in these clips) admit to their own failings and bad choices in their earlier years. (Bonaduce in particular is enoyably wry and droll.) In this format they come across as somehow "realer", more human and likable...sort of a implied moral that even stupid narcissists can survive the worst excesses of pop culture and come out as wiser and happier people.
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