Punk'd

Recently I had a very intelligent lunch conversation with peers about the MTV show Punk'd. For those of you who don't know, Punk'd is a show that Ashton Kutcher started that is kind of similar to Candid Camera, but with celebrities. Kutcher hires actors to put celebrities in really ridiculous situations and usually worries them or makes them very angry and then walks out and laughs at them.

Anyway, our conversation began because someone had recently seen an episode in which Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey on Grey's Anatomy) was punked and said some pretty weird things. The episode involved a waitress (actress) hitting on Pompeo's fiance while serving them lunch. Pompeo goes on to say some pretty malicious stuff about stabbing the woman and watching her bleed everywhere. Pretty weird. The link to that on YouTube is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQPZD4bMRk

Other people had interesting insights to the show, such as instances of celebrities who refuse to give Kutcher the right to air them being Punk'd and celebrities doing crazy things, such as attacking children because of some of the situations. I thought these would be rumors, but they are true! Ben McKenzie (The O.C. actor) actually chased a kid who was egging his car for the show and had to be restrained so that he wouldn't hurt him. There are all sorts of crazy stories like this about celebrities who are caught on tape doing inappropriate things. I don't think the show is actually all that great, but I do like the aspect of seeing celebrities as they really are. Not playing a role in a film, not presenting at an awards show, but how these people actually react in stressful situations. Some of the shows are inspiring and make me really like certain celebrities (I saw one show where Terrell Owens thought a staged car accident was real and attempted to save a bunch of elderly people from an overturned bus). Anyway, since a lot of people have been blogging about celebrities and how they represent themselves in the media and how the media shows them as the most important aspects of our society at times, I think this is an interesting twist on that. Kutcher tries to fool celebrities and stress them out to see who they really are. Anyway, there are a ton of really interesting Punk'd facts on wikipedia as well. More interesting than the show itself at times.