The Worst Show on Television

The savvy executives at AMC must have looked at their lineup and had this discussion:

SUIT 1:
We've got the new season of BREAKING BAD coming up.

SUIT 2:
A lot of critics agree it's the best show on television.

SUIT 1:
What should we schedule after it...?

SUIT 2:
Stay with me here... what if we follow it up with THE WORST SHOW EVER MADE? And we'll stick an extra preview for the next episode of BREAKING BAD in the middle of it, so those die-hard BREAKING BAD fans will be forced to check it out?

SUIT 1:
Done. Now send in the hookers.

It's difficult to say that AMC's SMALL TOWN SECURITY is the worst ever, but I'd hazard to say it's one of the worst shows ever. Certainly the worst show I force myself to watch.

It's half an hour long, they stick an extra teaser for the next episode of BREAKING BAD in the middle of it, but so far I've watched each episode through. It is a depressingly bleak reality show that seems to think it's funny and quirky... when it's simply depressingly bleak.

It's filled with characters that are somehow worse than backwater rube stereotypes. They're revolting grotesques. Fat and slow-moving, rejoicing in scatological humor. In one scene, the bloated matriarch "Chief" asks her underling to fix her a snack consisting of peanut butter mixed with Cool Whip which she proceeds to eat out of a mug. In the latest episode, the entire crew nearly (literally) wet themselves laughing at a prank they've devised to fool an old man into thinking he'd just urinated his pants. (They look so unhealthy, they honestly look like they're dying as they laugh.) In the same episode, some time is devoted to the the Chief's husband describing how he keeps a "shit stick" in the bathroom to help him break up his large shits.

It's like watching a fucking Skeksis dinner.



The characters are uniquely unpleasant to look at. Half of them look like they're about to drop dead. For what they lack in looks, they lack even more in charm.

Pete Vonder Haar from the HOUSTON PRESS put it succinctly:

With Small Town Security, AMC seems to think it has something "quirky" and "off the wall." In reality (no pun intended), it feels like something the North Korean government broadcasts to sap its citizens' will to live.