I'm not bothered by the sleazy hosts, nor am I bothered by the cynical, self-righteous stance the makers of this crap take.
What I AM bothered about is that the vast majority of the episodes are fake. I wouldn't even be surprised if ALL of the episodes were staged. Hence this isn't a reality show but something far worse even than Oprah: garbage television with zero comma zero appeal. Like daily TV soap opera but with more action and fighting and less plot.
The premise would have turned out great - if only it had been executed without cheating the viewer. If only this idea were free of all the legal complications/trappings that would most certainly ensue due to what would happen with real people, and what is eventually aired. Hence the only way to create this """reality show""" was to get some rather desperate actors and make them improvise (and what pitiful and unconvincing improvisation it is most of the time!). Shouldn't this be obvious to anyone who finished grade school? Most reviews I read here don't even mention that any of this is fake, let alone that all of it might be. Wishful thinking or just boundless naivety?
The actors hired in this pathetic show are the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel unemployed actors who are miserably waiting on tables, waiting eagerly for a call from a talk show (or this crap), which is when they finally get a chance to make several hundred bucks. I even recognized one actress (in the role of "cheater") that I saw years earlier in "The Jerry Springer Show". And I only saw 6-7 episodes of "Cheaters". How many more of these loser actors are there that appeared in Springer and "Cheaters" that I don't even know about?
However, to compare "Cheaters" with Springer isn't fair to the latter. The Springer show is not all fake; a bulk of the episodes are unstaged - hence often highly entertaining. There is no value to be found in "Cheaters", unless you're a struggling actor and want to get tips on how NOT to act in front of the camera.
The producers use various (very cheap, transparent) tricks to create the illusion of realness, to give their footage that elusive documentary feel. But it's all in vein. In the end, the more intelligent train-wreck-seeking viewer is left with absolutely squat. "Professional wrestling" has more credibility than this.
