Cruelest Game Show on TV

I turned on the TV last night right in the middle of a game show I'd never seen before, and I kept it on long enough to get the gist of it. I wish I hadn't.

A woman in her pajamas and a big, burly pro wrestler game show host were standing in a driveway. Behind them was a car about to be towed. He was asking her trivia questions. I laughed when she didn't know the name of the Shakespeare play that character "Lady Macbeth" was in. But then, because she'd missed that question and some preceding ones, he towed the car away.

"OK," I thought. "Maybe she was trying to win the car but failed." Then I learned the title of show, Repo Games, and I started to get a very bad feeling.

( Yes, they were repossessing people's cars and making a game out of it. )

I can understand that sometimes people fall behind in paying for things that they've purchased, and that the lender has a right to repossess items like cars when they haven't been paid. As much sympathy as I have for the borrower on hard times, I have equal sympathy for the person who made a loan in good faith but who hasn't been paid back. And it's got to be a difficult job to be the person sent to repossess the item.

But this... Making a game out of it? Making people's unhappiness into entertainment? Sick.

What's next TV? Running Man?