12 days of reality: regifting 11 years of reality blurred end-of-year recaps

We’re winding down this 12 Days of Reality TV feature, and that means I’m out of ideas, so it’s time to recycle some. For the past 10 years, I’ve looked back at the year in reality TV with a summary of trends and highlights and a separate list of the top reality whores of the year, people who literally or metaphorically sold themselves for fame. As you can imagine, there are a lot of candidates for both.

Because reflecting on highlights from the past decade of reality television has been more fun than thinking about who sold out, I think that, for now, I’m retiring that feature, replacing it with a 12 Days of Reality TV from the past year: clips and highlights of the gifts reality TV gave us. It’s more fun to celebrate than criticize, or at least how I feel right now.

Tomorrow, your suggestions for the 12 Days of Reality TV. And next week, I’ll run down the year’s most-popular stories, and examine the trends from this year in reality. But for today’s reality TV gift, it’s a regift: a list of the lists from 2000 to 2009. I reviewed them before thinking about what I wanted to highlight in this feature, and there’s a lot of stuff I’ve forgotten about, and a lot of stuff that’s permanently etched into my brain. Have fun exploring that history:

• The year in reality TV, 2009
• 2009’s top reality TV whores
• The year in reality TV, 2008
• 2008’s Top Reality TV Whores
• The year in reality TV, 2007
• 2007’s Top Reality TV Whores
• The year in reality TV, 2006
• The Top Reality Whores of 2006
• The year in reality TV, 2005
• The Top Reality Whores of 2005
• the year in reality TV, 2004.
• the top six reality TV whores of 2004
• the year in reality TV, 2003.
• the top reality TV whores of 2003.
• 2002: the year in reality TV.
• 2001: the year in reality TV.
• reality blurred looks back at 2000.