Last month, Ryan Jenkins — a hunky multi-millionaire who appeared as a contestant on a VH1 dating reality show about a woman seeking out wealthy bachelors — was found dead in a hotel room in Canada. His death came mere days after he was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, model Jasmine Fiore.
"’The Hills’ Made Me Bulimic," read a headline on the cover of US Weekly earlier this summer alongside a picture of Stephanie Pratt, one of the stars of the MTV show about impossibly beautiful and thin girls galavanting about Los Angeles.
Shortly after, "Bachelorette" Jillian Harris faced embarrassment after fiancé Ed Swiderski proposed on national television — and then, just weeks later, two girls claiming to be his girlfriends claimed he’d been swindling Harris throughout the competition.
But it’s that very voyeuristic experience that has come to serve as the modern-day version of the Roman Coliseum — a spectacle at which viewers can cheer on success and failure, believes Jonathan Reiner, the supervising story producer on VH1’s "Fantasia," about the former "American Idol" winner.