Monday, September 29, 2008

The Five Commandments of a Reality Show Narrator

All over TV you see shows like, "The World's Most Amazing Videos" or "Most Shocking", these reality shows concentrate on videos of criminal behavior and the like. One thing that gives this genre life is the almighty narrator, you never see his face... but he's always watching. One thing I've noticed is that they all follow a certain pattern, I have decoded these and I am presenting them to you now, one major follower is Sheriff John Bunnell.

Grrrrr, dun mess wid me, Ahm from Oregon

1. Thou shalt have an unfeeling accent, clearly void of any human emotion.

If you listen to all narrators, they seem to have graduated from the same college of speech. They always seem to have one known accent, and that is "Tough Dude Clearly Void of Any Human Emotion".

John Bunnell doing his thing

2. Thou shalt always have a full arsenal of cringe-worthy puns.

Actual example I remember from Most Shocking "This criminal who stole a truck full of bread is now... TOAST!" I... I don't even know what to say. The sheer retardation of that statement was overwhelming.

3. Thou shalt use big adjectives to make things sound a lot lot worse.

Whenever the mighty narrator starts a video he always starts with something like "A criminal robs a convenience store... AND GOES BERSERK/BALLISTIC!!!!!!!". Whenever he ends he says something like, "Fortunately, no one was hurt when they experienced... HELL ON EARTH!!!" which brings me directly to...

4. Thou shalt always sound contemptuous when nobody in the video gets hurt/dies.

They may not be vocal about it but you can sense it. Whenever they say "Nobody was injured" you can feel in their voice that their saying something like "No one died?! What kind of a pussy explosion was that?!" Or maybe it's the "void of human emotion thing".

5. Thou shalt always overreact.

Probably THE single most important thing a "serious" narrator has to pull off is hiding his False Enthusiasm, but everyone hears it anyway... because they lack emotion... because they're not human... because they're WATCHING YOU RIGHT NOW.

On that bombshell I have to end but not without a Special Parting Gift.

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