Cheaters

TV SHOW TITLE: Cheaters

CREATOR: Bobby Goldstein

YEARS ACTIVE: 2000-present

GENRE: Reality Television

RATING: TV-14 for language, sexual content, and mild violence

GRADE: Mixed

Deep in the heart of Texas, the Cheaters Private Investigators go undercover as they try to catch their clients’ significant others cheating on their relationship with other partners. Each “story” starts with the client giving a brief description of his or her relationship issues and then the PI’s go on a camera stakeout of the cheating partner’s whereabouts.

After seeing the footage of infidelity, the client then is given the choice to confront his or her cheating paramour, to which they always say “yes”. Every confrontation is nasty, violent, and laced with censored swear words.

Let’s face it, the confrontations are the only real reason anybody watches the show. We like action and WWE and UFC won’t always come through for us. Unlike those two organizations, the fights on Cheaters aren’t even close to being graceful or athletic. Sometimes it’s a slap fight. Sometimes drinks are thrown. Most of the time, people just roll around on top of each other and throw haymakers.

It’s not Jackie Chan cinema, but it’s entertaining to watch nonetheless. It’s even more entertaining when these fights end up in the favor of the clients and not the cheating bastards he or she is confronting.

But sometimes it doesn’t always work out for the client and he or she gets an undeserved verbal or physical beat down. The reason this show gets a mixed grade is because the injustices happen way too often. One example is with the Trevor Olson case, where Trevor was really skinny and his girlfriend’s lover Sean was this hulking behemoth. Guess who won the shoving matches while having an over-inflated ego about it? That’s right: Sean.

The most infamous example of romantic injustice was with the Lily Santiago case, where the cheating husband shouted curses at her and the female paramour beat the crap out of her on live TV. Despite the mountain of evidence Lily had against her husband in a potential divorce case, the husband still had a massive ego and was still verbally abusive, which led me to believe he might have won the case.

Another issue that needs to be touched on is the revolving door of hosts for the show. First it was an unexciting bore named Tommy Grand. And then we had Joey Greco, who was full of puns, delightfully condescending to the cheating party, and protective and valiant toward his clients. Joey was such an awesome host that he got to do the show for a little over a decade before his hosting duties were turned over to Clark Gable III.

No, you didn’t read that wrong. The grandson of famous actor Clark Gable is now doing an unsophisticated piece of television called Cheaters. During the first season he did, Clark raised his voice and was generally annoying to listen to. The following seasons, he was too laidback and had no passion for his duties whatsoever. Maybe instead of asking “Scooby-Doo, where are you?!”, we should pose that question to Joey Greco.

In spite of the mixed grade I give this show, I continued to watch it with religious zeal. It was my Saturday night ritual: watching Cheaters with my best friend Susan as the two of us make fun of the dumb characters. We also like to poke fun at the commercials for Belviq that come on during the show, where the actors seem overly confused about their eating habits and then all of the sudden have an overactive social life after taking the pills.

This WAS our Saturday night ritual and then for some reason, Joe TV, a local Seattle channel, decided to stop showing Cheaters. My Roku won’t come through for me either. To say I’m having Cheaters withdrawal is an understatement. Come back, guys! Come back! I’ll raise your grade to Extra Credit if you do! I promise! Scout’s honor, even though I’m not a Boy Scout.