Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

So…

THE BRIEFCASE features hard-working American families experiencing financial setbacks who are presented with a briefcase containing a large sum of money and a potentially life-altering decision: they can keep all of the money for themselves, or give all or part of it to another family in need.

Apparently, a lot of people are losing their shit over this. It's really not hard to see why.

So what do you guys think? Is the whole idea of this just awful? Or does it have an actual, non-manipulative reason to exist?

No, it does not have a "non-manipulative reason to exist"; every aspect of it is manipulative. This is obvious right from the get-go, as the participants are tricked into taking part.

Furthermore, there's no way to win a game like this. If you give the money away, you're still poor. If you keep all of it for yourself, then you've just plastered your "selfishness", face, and place of residence all over national TV. Meanwhile, a media company has just made a few million dollars from exploiting your family.

The only way to make this kind of thing unprofitable is to take away the viewer base. Which, as we all know, is not going to happen; reality TV is successful for a reason. In a way, the audience is also being manipulated.

Reality TV executives doing horrible things for ratings? I'm shocked. /sarcasm/

Yeah, this is rich executives toying with poor people in times of need by giving them a way out then make them feel bad by taking it. It's like giving a biscuit to a starving child and telling them if they eat it, their neighbor doesn't get fed. The only one who wins is the executives, who are raking in more money than all the contestants put together, when they already had more money than the contestants put together.

Although, to be fair, I expect this to be highly scripted, like most reality TV shows

Yeah, I suspect that very soon (especially if the show goes into a second season), potential participants will begin catching on to the fact that they're being "recruited" now that the recuitment process is common knowledge. At that point, the people running the progam will have to begin faking it, and it'll become another scripted show of many.

I watched the preview vid and I'm so confused. So they each get 101k, then they're guilt-tripped about each others lives, then they decide how much to share or not share, then….? Are they giving away 202k per episode here? If one family said keep it all and one family gave it all away do they get 202k??

I'm more confused about how this show works than feeling the need to be angry for a bunch of people who signed contracts knowing they were walking into a hella payday regardless. News flash, everybody on reality TV is exploiting themselves, 99% of the time it's for massive monetary gain. They don't need you to be morally outraged for them.

For a second, I thought it was going to be the plot to that movie where you get a million dollars if a random person gets killed.

I wouldn't really call it despicable. It's reality TV. The idiots who do sign up are either going to know exactly what they're getting into or didn't read the contract. If you find it horrible--don't watch and get others to not watch. No ratings = no show.

Here's the trailer for anyone too lazy to search it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77lUAy8vwTo

I don't really get it. Just take the money and do whatever you want with it.
Its just going to be whiteknights trying to show off how great people they are by giving away money.
Its not selfish taking the money, if anything, taking all the money makes you a better person, that way you can't be pressured to do certain things with the money.

They really tried hard to get some bleeding hearts, from a couple other videos I watched after I posted. It does look like a good guilt trip, a literal guilt trip tour through the other family's house/life, but then it's also hard for me to imagine someone getting into 100k++ debt. Go big or go home I guess.

I'm not gonna watch it either way, one I still can't figure out how it actually works out in the end, and two I really only watch reality-competition reality TV.

It's shitty. All it is are idiotic families (how do you get into 100k debt anyway? choosing between bills and a escalade) being forced to make a choice that like particle mentioned earlier, is a lose-lose situation while people without burdens watch.

For a second I thought it we were talking about that movie too. If people are getting pissed at the show now just imagine how people would react if lives were at stake here.

It's true, our views matter more than our opinions on a random meme forum. We speak with our money, so if we don't want shows like this to exist we just don't watch them.
It's amazing how big that dislike bar on the video for the trailer is, though. I can't remember the last time I saw a dislike bar that big.

As was said already, people that participate in reality shows exploit themselves just as much as the network exploits them. That being said, I'm still really pissed that these multi-billion dollar networks feel it's ok to just parade around poor and struggling families and then get to give themselves a good pat on the back because they pretend their manipulation is actually charity. Really, the part of this whole thing that bugs me the most isn't the fact that they guilt poor families into giving money away, it's actually the fact that they hide that both families have briefcases of money. Something about that just feels very dirty and scummy to me. I'm going to guess when these families signed the contract to sell themselves to television they weren't told about that whole part of the ordeal. Definitely not going to be giving this show a viewing.

@Lisa:
I imagine it's easy for a family to get $100k+ in debt if a family member has a condition that really racks up the medical bills, or if multiple family members went to college, or maybe the family owns a failing business. God knows the families on this show have the craziest stories for why they're so in debt.

Looking at NBC's families bios section, I still feel like none of these people can possibly be 100k+ in debt.

The second episode at least looked more genuine, it was a legit struggling midget couple vs. a family that lost their business and sold their house and live in a really white trash looking trailer. That's the kind of destitute I'm talking about, if I was gonna watch this I am not gonna watch some middle class ass family that's already doing better than me. ¯\(ツ)/¯ The whole reason shows like this (altho not like this) but like Extreme Home Makeover is a great example, because by the end of the episode you're like oh shit these people actually deserve that customized mansion.

I would probably feel worse about it and might watch it if all it featured was horrible sob stories but they actually got the money, but I'd also want like a "3 months later" at the end. & I would probably only watch it when I'm PMSing but it would be exactly what I wanted to watch.