Even though our favorite streaming platforms are filled with shows and movies that are inspirational, meaningful, or perhaps socially-commentating pieces that make you think deeply, sometimes all you want to do is kick back with a bowl of your favorite crunchy snack and watch a trashy TV show to take your mind off the day.
Of all the streaming sites, Hulu is rife with content that is cringeworthy and awkward in the best and most entertaining way possible. Below, we’ve written up some of what we think are the best trash TV shows. Let’s face it – even the best of us love a guilty binge session on a reality television series. All you need is a high-speed internet provider like Charter, Verizon, AT&T, or Frontier Internet and you’ll have access to the following!
1) Married At First Sight
The title of this show pretty much gives away the entire idea – but we’ll fill you in anyway. Individuals on this reality television show are paired up with another person based on scientific matchmaking couples who they legally marry in the name of a social experiment. As the cameras follow the couples through their honeymoon, the stages of moving in together, and how their relationship evolves, they must make a decision weeks later on whether or not they should remain together or move on for good.
2) Love Island
Another show based on couples, Love Island is set in a tropical location near Mallorca. The contestants, referred to as Islanders, must couple up based on first impressions of each other in order to try and win the grand prize of 50,000 euro. However, as they get to know each other more, they often switch couples based on who they want to be with as either friend, lovers, or just partners in crime to capture the prize. To make the stakes even higher, each week either the public or the contestants themselves are allowed to vote people off the island in an elimination process that results in a final winner during the last week.
3) 90 Day Fiance
This reality show is perhaps one of the most-watched series on Hulu. The show features different couples each season who, after meeting each usually only once or twice before, fall in love and plan to get married. The problem is that one of the people is usually not a US citizen, which means they are allowed into the United States to tour for just 90 days before they must either decide to follow through with the marriage and become a US citizen or return home without a ring on their finger.
4) Dance Moms
Dance Moms became an absolute force when it appeared on television in 2011. Based in Pittsburgh, the show is about the mothers and daughters who dance with the Abby Lee Dance Company run by the one and only Abby Lee Miller. Dancers around the country instantly loved the drama that they have experienced first-hand, and outsiders to the art form became entranced with the talent of the girls and the intensity of the dance world. Over the years, the show has seen dancers come and go and even followed (from a distance) the lawsuit against Abby Lee Miller.
5) Keeping Up With The Kardashians
You either love them or you hate them – but you definitely know them. The Kardashians are a wild and unique family who live exciting lives in the industries of beauty and fashion. As the girls grow up into adults and have children themselves, their fans can follow them from afar as we watch how they deal with their own personal struggles and the difficult relationships they have in their lives.
6) The Masked Singer
Shows like this make us think that the creators of singing-based talent programs are running out of ideas – fast! Contestants on this talent competition show compete with their vocal abilities while they wear a costume that can conceal their entire bodies. The panelists, Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger, and Robin Thicke, wonder who the person is behind the mask and make their guesses throughout every passing week’s elimination until they finally discover who the best of the masked singers is.
7) Catfish
While the people on this show are often not the best representation of quality individuals, we’re going to make an argument that this show isn’t necessarily trash, but it’s definitely cringe-worthy. Nev Schulman, the host, helps people who write into him figure out the true identity of the person online they’ve been speaking to, and in most scenarios, have already fallen in love with. Sometimes, the person on the other end of the screen is exactly who they say they are, but more often, they’ve been lying about who they are.
8) The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
The premise of this show is pretty simple – housewives in Beverly Hills going about their daily business. The difference, however, is that these are no ordinary housewives. With a rotating cast, members who have appeared include child actresses, restaurateurs, business owners, and more affluent women who make a name for themselves in the prestigious world of Beverly Hills wealth.
9) Vanderpump Rules
Though Lisa Vanderpump first entered the famed world within Beverly Hills through her appearance on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, she is best known for being the co-owner and boss of a restaurant called SUR. The cringe really sets in here as the cameras follow her eccentric group of employees when they date, break up, makeup, and so on, all while Lisa attempts to balance her restaurant duties with her motherly duties.
10) The Only Way is Essex
For those of your who may be unfamiliar, Essex is an affluent neighborhood of Britain where the best and brightest often live, work, and party. In this reality series that sometimes borders on being a soap opera, the cast members are real men and women that call Essex their home. As friends and lovers fight and reunite, the cameras follow their drama through the places where they can most frequently be found, namely the bars, nightclubs, and nail salons.
Our list doesn’t just end with the garbage tv shows air on Hulu. There are so many shows that are just as bad in their own ways, yet people love to watch them with some popcorn on the side.
Here are a few honorable mentions of Trash Tv shows
Love is Blind
This Netflix show premiered in 2020. The show created by Chris Coelen has a unique sense of finding love as compared to other trash reality tv shows.
This show follows 15 men and 15 women. All of these thirty individuals from the States are here to find love in this show. They will live inside a pod where they can talk to each other, the fun bit is that they cannot see each other. Couples only get to meet each other if the marriage proposal is accepted after the rounds of speed dating contests.
The concept of this Trashy tv show however can be a bit intriguing to the audience, because this show is based on how people can fall in love without having to see each other or there is no physical attraction involved.
