‘Ridiculousness’ Somehow Dropped Nine Seasons in 2023 Alone

Thirty-five-year-old Chanel West Coast has been on MTV’s Ridiculousness for 30 seasons, meaning she’s been doing it since she was… five? Is the network’s signature show some kind of weird time-travel device? No matter — it’s time for West Coast to prove she’s an artist.

“A common comment I would see is, ‘You’re just the girl that laughs on a couch.’ They have no idea how hard I work outside of Ridiculousness,” she griped to Variety. So how does Chanel West Coast intend to prove she’s more than the girl who logged 30 seasons on a tired MTV reality show? By starring in a new MTV reality show. 

The West Coast Hustle, which debuts this month but probably is already in Season 11, gives us the inside skinny on her life as a mother, swimwear designer and independent recording artist. Take that, Rob Dyrdek, a man who has never designed a bathing suit in his life. 

As for Ridiculousness? It’s actually beginning its 42nd season, at least in the bonkers way MTV is using that term. On the show’s Wikipedia page, it appears that nine seasons dropped during 2023 alone, with that incredible Season 31 lasting for nine days. 

Is this a passive-aggressive ploy so Ridiculousness can claim some kind of longevity record? “We ran for 173 seasons!” At least you can’t call the show lazy — it’s currently sitting at 1,008 episodes and counting. 

In fact, Ridiculousness is airing as I write this, according to MTV.com. It’s also on in half an hour. In case I’m not quite done with this article by then, I can watch at 5 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 6 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 8 p.m., 8:30 p.m., 9 p.m., 9:30 p.m., 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m., 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. A four-hour block of Catfish: The TV Show, which began the same year at Ridiculousness but is only in Season Nine, is the only thing keeping the network from changing its name to RidicuTV. 

More than a thousand episodes of a show that’s basically The Soup meets Jackass, while somehow managing to be less funny than either one? That’s the state of basic cable these days, where 42 seasons of cheap-ass programming fill the minutes between commercials for Straight Talk Wireless and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. 

MediaPost says enough is enough. Endless repetition of shows like Ridiculousness “is certainly an abuse of the end-user that today’s low-rent cable TV channels presumably wish to reach — i.e., cable subscribers at home who pay steep fees every month for dozens of name-brand cable channels that seem to have abandoned the idea of developing and producing original, attractive content worth paying for.”

It’s almost like MTV is punking cable subscribers with its never-ending seasons — which might make a funny video on Ridiculousness.