Buckwild Producer Makes Strong Case For Canceling MTV

Buckwild Producer Makes Strong Case For Canceling MTV

It was announced early this morning that, following the accidental death of Buckwild’s Shain Gandee, MTV is canceling the dangerous nightmare of a reality series. This makes sense. Filming a reality show about kids approaching life (like, actual life) with reckless abandon — going muddin’, doing backflips off of a roof into a truck full of water, agreeing to be on an MTV reality show, etc. — is only “fun” (though in this case it was not fun!) until ONE OF THEM DIES DOING IT. We all agree on this, right? Right, Buckwild producer J.P. Williams? Considering that you actually know these people as human beings, you must understand? From The Hollywood Reporter:

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter late Tuesday, Williams, who manages most of the cast members and produces the show, took particular aim at MTV for pulling the plug midway through filming on the second season.

“This is the network that has shows about teen pregnancy. They’ll stick by a show that allows you to abandon a child, but a kid dies by accident doing what he does for a living [mudding] and they cancel the show?” he fumes. “There’s something that smells of s— here on every level.”

Wait, Shain Gandee mudded (mudded?) for a living? I THOUGHT HE WAS A GARBAGE MAN! (He was.) (And he was delighted with it in a way that made me envious.) If J.P. Williams is saying Gandee mudded “for a living” to mean that that is what MTV expected his character to do on his reality show, then, uh, again, OBVIOUSLY THE SHOW SHOULD BE CANCELED? “He was just doing what we were paying him to do! Of course he was going to die! It was very dangerous!” What a piece of shit, this guy. But he is right on one count: If you’re going to cancel Buckwild, you should also have to cancel all of the other exploitative series about nightmare people doing harm to both themselves and to others. Cancel the whole channel! You had your moment in the sun, MTV, and it was a good moment, but now you’re just on fire in a garbage dump somewhere and it’s painful to watch. Go away. R.I.P.

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