The 10 Best MTV Reality TV Shows Of The 2000s, Ranked

Despite being created as an outlet for music videos, MTV became better known for reality TV in the 2000s, a decade in which a torrent of reality shows debuted on the channel. They were dismissed as trash TV by many, yet they pulled in viewers and became valuable assets for the network. Many of MTV's shows from this era laid the foundation for the reality genre as we know it today, and while they've aged terribly in a lot of cases, there's a lot of nostalgia value attached to them. Some of them really aren't worth revisiting today, but a select few are still worthy of your time — in fact, some of the best reality TV shows of all time started out on MTV.

From shows that took us inside the lives of famous families to ones that made stars out of everyday people, we've ranked the top 10 MTV reality series from the 2000s based on entertainment value and cultural impact.

"My Super Sweet 16" is one of a number of MTV reality shows that had a notable impact on the popular culture and the zeitgeist of the 2000s. The show followed a different teen every episode, usually a young woman (and occasionally a pair of friends or siblings planning a joint celebration), and tracked the ups and downs of being a well-off teen planning an extravagant birthday party. The show provided viewers with a glimpse into the lives of spoiled teens, their often-misguided parents, and the many melodramatic pitfalls that come with attempting to bring a pampered teen's fantasies to life.

There was a formula that every episode of "My Super Sweet 16" followed without exception. Some of the main ingredients include the teen being belligerent toward their parents despite being spoiled, a party planner with wacky ideas that are bound to backfire, said party going over budget, and, of course, the gift reveal. More often than not, it was an expensive car. And, like a car crash, viewers simply couldn't look away. This was one of the earliest shows to perfect the art of making people hate-watch, and it's just as infuriatingly engrossing today. The show was briefly rebooted in 2017, but it failed to capture the magic and madness of the original.

Before the premiere of "The Osbournes" on MTV, it was practically unheard of for someone who was already rich and/or famous to appear as themselves on television. Reality competition shows like "Survivor" and shows that followed ordinary people like "The Real World" were already on TV by 2002, but fans were well out-of-luck if they wanted a peek into the everyday lives of their favorite celebrities. Despite the fact that their eldest daughter, Aimee, refused to participate, famed Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne and his wife/manager Sharon decided to pursue a new avenue for exposure and invite MTV into their home to film them alongside their other two kids, Kelly and Jack. The show depicted the family's successes, failures, tragedies, and sitcom-esque repartee, and audiences loved it.

To this day, it seems a bit odd that a family like the Osbournes would turn out to be pioneers in reality TV. Before the show, Ozzy Osbourne was best known for his outrageous behavior as a heavy metal frontman, noted in particular for biting a bat's head off onstage (he later explained that he thought it was a rubber bat and that he needed several rabies shots). On the show, Ozzy was laid-back and congenial — a loving but somewhat absent-minded father who did too many hard drugs in his prime. The show also launched Kelly, Jack, and Sharon Osbourne as personalities in their own right, allowing them to craft distinct aesthetics and public personas that they still profit from today. Many famous people realized that, if the Osbournes could make a TV show about their everyday lives and find success, they could too, and thus an entirely new format in the reality TV genre began.

It produced the moment that killed Jessica Simpson's career, but "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica" was also one of the most iconic reality shows to appear on MTV in the 2000s. Both Nick Lachey (the boy band you're trying to think of is 98 Degrees) and Jessica Simpson were popular with young people when they decided to get married. Jessica Simpson's father, Joe Simpson — partially known for the inconsistent management of his daughter's early career– saw an opportunity in his daughter's marriage to sell a celebrity reality show (a very new sub-genre at the time). The idea was to follow Nick and Jessica as they faced ups and downs in their new marriage and attempted to revamp their careers, both of which were waning at that point. 

"Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica" was popular with audiences and elevated both Lachey and Simpson to a new level of fame and recognition. People liked the show for many reasons, such as its willingness to keep the camera on during fights and difficult moments and its charming focus on Jessica's many "blonde" moments. The problem with a show like "Newlyweds," though, is that it is entirely dependent upon the health and longevity of a Hollywood marriage, and a young one at that. The show lasted for three seasons, with the couple splitting up in 2005 and finalizing a divorce the following year.

Even if you're not a fan of the humor, it's hard to deny that MTV's "Jackass" changed TV forever. Despite only running for a single season, it had a massive impact in the 2000s, shaping the comedy landscape. The premise is relatively simple: A gang of guys get together and imagine the most outlandish, outrageous, and out-of-pocket stunts they can, then they actually try to execute them. When the show was first conceived by Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze, and Johnny Knoxville, and pitched to various studios, it was such a hit that there was a bidding war. Comedy Central was very keen, but MTV ultimately won out. Viewers were shocked at what the "Jackass" guys were willing to endure, including a lot of gross and painful things.

"Jackass" debuted in October 2000 and ran until August 2001, though reruns carried on into the following year. The top brass decided to end it after outside pressures regarding safety and liability. Kids and young adults loved the show so much that some of them attempted to recreate its insane stunts. Rather than try to make their show with restrictive safety protocols and content rules from MTV, the team decided to end "Jackass" after one season. A number of less destructive spin-offs followed and, eventually, several "Jackass" movies, so the franchise lived on in different ways. However, nothing ever managed to match the wackiness of that one and only "Jackass" season on MTV.

"The Real World" is arguably the biggest trailblazer in the reality TV genre and one of MTV's greatest accomplishments. While the show changed and evolved over its near-three decade run, the premise remained largely the same. Every season featured a cast of about seven or eight young adults and a single, featured location, usually a city, that would come to be the identifier of specific seasons as time went on (for example, one might reference "The Real World: Seattle" instead of saying Season 7). People were brought from around the country to a shared apartment where they would live with each other as complete strangers as they worked (later seasons had the cast work together at one place, like a radio station) and led their lives.

While a lot of the things that are said and done in the earlier seasons would rightfully be considered inappropriate today, "The Real World" put issues like racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and substance abuse in the spotlight. It not only sowed the seeds for reality TV to grow into a media mainstay, it opened the door for many conversations that needed to be had in public discourse, albeit inadvertently for the most part. Some of the most memorable seasons of the show are from the 2000s, spearheading head MTV's growing reality line-up.

Anyone familiar with the names Lauren Conrad and Kristin Cavallari should also know that the two got their start as affluent, bright-eyed, SoCal high school students in MTV's "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County." Launched in 2004, "Laguna Beach" followed a group of high school juniors and seniors finishing up their teenage years at Laguna Beach High School. The show featured an ensemble of students, but focused primarily on Conrad and Cavallari, who narrated the first and second seasons of the show, respectively. The "Laguna Beach" format has fallen out of fashion nowadays, but it was compelling when it first came out. Each season had a primary narrator who provided voice-overs to roll when a scene needed to be set or commentary needed to be added. 

"Laguna Beach" was very popular with teens while being unpopular with parents and local authority figures (which probably just made it even more appealing to teens). While the show always censored explicit language and never showed any sexual or violent content that couldn't be aired on basic cable television, it was maligned for showing young people engaging in bad behavior. The truth is that "Laguna Beach" was really just an intensified mirror of the teenage experience at the time. The cast members' relationship problems and general inclinations (if not their exact behaviors) were highly relatable to teenage audiences. It was a show about teens for teens, and there hasn't been anything quite like it on TV since.

For a long time, famous people were able to keep their public lives separate from their professional ones. In an age before smartphones and social media, they had far more privacy in their everyday pursuits. When the 2000s came around along with the invention of tech that allowed gossip mongers more access to celebs, MTV was smart enough to capitalize on a trending interest among audiences in catching famous people in their weakest moments. Enter Ashton Kutcher, famous from the success of "That 70's Show" but staring down the barrel of a film career that sparked and then flamed out just as quickly. He was handsome, charismatic, and funny — and he needed a project. That project became the pop culture sensation "Punk'd."

The point of "Punk'd" was to prank famous people with the help of other famous people. Many of the stars targeted by the show had personal connections to Kutcher himself, but it was also common for celebrities to approach the show with an idea to prank their famous friends. "Punk'd," much like a lot of the shows on this list, was hypnotically engaging. It was equal parts funny and tense, a winning combination for MTV. It was utterly surreal to see famous people in such a vulnerable state — stressed, often scared, and showing their true colors on more than one occasion, for better or for worse.

"Jersey Shore" was perfectly constructed for the time in which it premiered. All about embracing hedonism, a materialistic mindset, and pure trashiness, the show provided viewers with a fascinating window into the lives of eight or so adult friends living together in a vacation home on the Shore in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. It was a viral phenomenon, with cast member Snooki inspiring a recurring (and unflattering) impression of herself on "Saturday Night Live" and the whole cast coining and/or popularizing many different words and phrases that have become cultural colloquialisms.

While a lot of reality shows try to attract audiences with aspirational elements (i.e. wealth and glamor), "Jersey Shore" gave audiences the satisfying opportunity to pass wicked judgment on people who behaved as wildly as they dressed.Today, the cast of "Jersey Shore" looks very different — they're a lot less like caricatures compared to the original series, which probably has something to do with the fact that they're all pretty rich now that they've had years to profit from their initial success as reality TV personalities. What was great about "Jersey Shore" is that it actually offered a lot of heart alongside its outrageousness, and it was the off-beat relationships between the roommates that allowed for the show to last as long as it did.

There are a lot of people who would hesitate to put "Next" on a list of MTV's greatest '00s reality TV shows, let alone at number two. But, much like "Jersey Shore," if you watch it for long enough you begin to see past the fake tan and recognize the brilliance in the idea. "Next" had a simple premise: A young single person would be chosen to go on anywhere from one to five dates with different potential partners throughout the course of a day. The potential partners were all kept on a big red RV (the infamous "Next" bus) where they could watch the ongoing dates. As soon as the featured single decided they weren't interested in whoever they were with at any given moment, they could shout "next" and a new potential partner would come a-running. 

It sounds pretty awful because it was pretty awful, but it really was an addictive watch. Contestants on the show often dressed in tacky get-ups with overdone hair and accessories. They all had memorized pick-up lines and most delivered them like sixth-graders. There are a lot of moments where the featured figure shouts "Next!" embarrassingly early on in a date, leading to walk-away lines from rejected singles so cringey that you'll be watching through your fingers — but watching, nonetheless. Crucially, "Next" never tried to be anything other than the fascinating train-wreck that it was. Beneath the highlights and spiky, over-gelled hair, most of the daters on "Next" were just like any other awkward young person trying to make an impression in the world.

The 2002 episode of "MTV Cribs" that featured Mariah Carey and her lavish 11,000-square-foot Tribeca penthouse is iconic enough to carry the show's legacy all the way to number one (she had six outfit changes in one thirty-minute episode and even managed to squeeze in a bath). But, luckily for fans, there's a decade of installments of one of MTV's most fun and controversial reality shows. The show was simple, opting not to feature a host but rather allow the audience to feel like the person knocking on celebrity doors, adopting a POV style. Every episode started with a front door opening up to reveal a famous face, who would then take the viewer on a tour of their home, pointing out every swanky detail throughout.

In the same way that "Punk'd" capitalized on a rising cultural obsession with celebrities and their candid moments, "MTV Cribs" indulged viewers who were fascinated by the combination of wealth and status. Audiences got to see Carmelo Anthony's excessive sneaker collection (which took up a room big enough to serve as back-room storage for a hardware store) and were all equally floored by Shaquille O'Neal's super-sized bed. The truth about "MTV Cribs" is that not all of the celebrities who appeared on the show were honest about their assets, but that doesn't take away from the experience — it's just as interesting to discover what famous figures will lie about versus the truths they'll happily share.