• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 12, 2023

TV’s reliance on presenting the worst in human behavior gets a new showcase Thursday on E!.

This new show, “House of Villains,” represents somebody’s idea for taking TV’s preference for conflict over amity and negativity over positivity to a whole new level.

The show, which was unavailable to preview, curates 10 contestants who the E! publicity department describes with words such as “iconic” and “infamous.”

They are participants on past reality shows on which they got along with no one and schemed against all of them. They are the “villains” of this new show’s title.

But except for a relative handful of reality-TV addicts who are still drawn to these spectacles like moths to lightbulbs, none of these people are iconic or infamous to the vast majority of the rest of us who have never heard of them.

All except one, however: Omarosa, who sometimes includes her last name -- Manigault -- at various times, but for this new show, she seems to have chosen just “Omarosa.”

The TV Blog will concede that, yes, she is famous, and also infamous. But iconic? No.

She first gained fame as the resident villain on the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004. 

Although she did not win, she must have campaigned over the years to maintain a relationship with the star of the show, Donald Trump.

For no reason related to talent or experience, Trump hired her years later to work in the White House as some sort of communications “liaison.” 

She was eventually dismissed for reasons that are not 100% clear, although acute hubris might have played a part. 

Or, maybe she emerged as a reality-TV villain in the White House and President Trump pointed his finger at her and said, “You’re fired.”

Before that, her career was checkered, characterized mainly by irresistible opportunities to appear on reality shows.

One that I have mentioned here previously was in 2005, on a season of “The Surreal Life,” the old show where down-on-their-luck celebrities lived together in a large Hollywood house.

In one infamous episode of the show, Omarosa and fellow resident Janice Dickinson faced off in a bowling match against a team of men and women with Down syndrome.

Cut to the present day and this one-time member of the Trump Administration is once again in a house full of villains, this time on a reality show.

One of the other villains is familiar to the TV Blog from long ago, but perhaps not to many others: Tiffany Pollard, nicknamed “New York” by rapper Flava Flav in his unforgettable reality series “Flavor of Love,” on which she appeared in 2006. 

Fact is, I don’t remember her as particularly villainous, but at least I remember her, which is more than I can say for any of the others living in E!’s “House of Villains.”

In order to make up for the obscurity of this show’s participants, E! is doing all it can to put them across. 

For example, E! publicity insists that Anfisa Arkhipchenko from “90 Day Fiancé” “skyrocketed” to fame.

Bobby Lytes “made history,” E! says, “as the first openly gay main cast member on ‘Love & Hip Hop: Miami’.” He’s not exactly Rosa Parks, but more power to him.

Not to be outdone, E! says Brooklyn’s Tanisha Thomas from “The Bad Girls Club” on Oxygen uttered one-liners that were so “catchy” that they “led her to becoming a cultural icon in pop culture.” My goodness.

Goaded by host Joel McHale, the participants on “House of Villains” will be challenged to turn up the villainy in order to out-scheme and undermine their housemates in pursuit of a $200,000 prize.

NBCU seems to be so high on this show that the premiere episode will air simultaneously on E!, Syfy and USA Network.

In promos that have been running lately on various NBCU channels, the show comes across like just another unattractive slugfest featuring people you’ve never heard of behaving badly. It is sometimes hard to believe that TV is still making these kinds of shows.