Room Raiders (2003–2009) User Reviews

Response to comments regarding Room Raiders participants

[BrenAllison · 3 March 2005]

I was somewhat involved in a Room Raiders shoot here in Atlanta. Up until then, I thought the same things about the participants; i.e., how could they not know they were going to be on Room Raiders? Here's how: MTV holds a major casting call for what they call a "New Reality Series called Living Single or Single in the City." People turn up from all over and they tell you if you're selected you will have a short filmed about you and it will be cut together with shorts about other singles in the city. So, the people being cast believe it is a totally new show and therefore have no reason to think they will be cast in Room Raiders.

One of the conditions of getting through the casting process is that you must be single to participate, i.e., not married and not seriously dating anyone. Once you meet that requirement, it's all about looks and a short interview which includes a small film crew coming to your house to see if it's interesting enough to be on Room Raiders. Once they select you (and your house), they tell you they will be by to do your shoot between the hours of blank and blank and to be home and dressed a certain way. So, the participants truly are surprised when they're grabbed and told they're on Room Raiders. In fact, many individuals decide not to do the show after getting all the way through the interview process because they never would have agreed to/interviewed for a show like Room Raiders. It's very invasive and rude to the participants not to let them know what will be going on in their own home while they're taken away in a van. Anything can be ruined, as you've seen on the show.

The participant I knew was taken in the van just to the side of the street, then dropped off and told to "disappear" for a couple of hours. They said they'd call his cell phone when they were done raiding his room but they never did. They just left and didn't call the poor guy to tell him it was safe to come back. It may have been hours after they left before he decided enough was enough and went back to his home anyway to see what was going on.

Side note: the participant I knew was told that his home was going to be on TV, esp. his room, so he did at least have an opportunity to clean up. :) The MTV director also PROMISED everyone a call before the show was to run in January, but of course, no call came and we never saw the show air. Either we missed it or it wasn't selected to air - either way, it was unprofessional for the participants to be left in the dark after two days of shooting. Oh yeah - all the filming in the van happens the day after - not the day the room gets raided - so two days of your life, after being totally deceived - and no word from MTV on the airing or a copy of the edited version. Real classy.

kind of addictive, but pretty tacky at times

[FieCrier · 29 January 2005]

I occasionally catch this show, and it can be kind of interesting to see how other people live. It's also a neat concept trying to pick a partner based on external evidence about what sort of person they might be, a sort of mystery. There are a number of things that surprise me about it though.

One thing, is that supposedly the participants (one guy and three girls or vice versa) supposedly don't know that they're going to be a part of the show. Huh? Presumably they answered a casting call for it on MTV's website. It's surprising when rooms are noticeably dirty, or have embarrassing stuff in them; wouldn't you have cleaned up if you were going to participate in such a show?

Related to this, supposedly they don't know that participating means that their room will be searched by their would-be suitors - um, that's the name of the show. Spposedly they don't know when they'll be grabbed out of their rooms by the show's staff, and taken to a van where they'll watch their room being searched. Well, the show must know when people are going to be at home and when they won't be required to leave for a job or class, etc. That would seem to indicate that the participants told the show when they're free, and thus they must have some idea when they might be seized.

I'm not so much surprised by this next things, but more disappointed in people. A great many of the participants are really judgmental. I can see not wanting someone who is not/ is a smoker or a need to share political or religious beliefs (based on whatever evidence is found in the room). However, more often than not the deal breakers are collections, or articles of clothing, or CDs, or certain sports, or schools, and who could really care so much about those? Must people necessarily share every taste?

Searchers also overly extrapolate from individual items. For example, a magazine on Progressive Farming, supposedly means the person is a farmer, and the searcher doesn't like farmers. But an item like that could belong to a friend, or have just one article of interest, or be related to a class or internship, or any number of other things. And if the person is a farmer, well, so what? Where would we be without them? They also overly extrapolate from the absence of things. Some of the room's owners have their underwear in the laundry, or their personal items are at home and not in their room at school or new apartment. The searchers consequently assume the owner doesn't wear underwear, or doesn't have any personality or interests.

Searchers can also be quite rude, making unnecessarily mean comments about things, trashing rooms by dumping things on the floor, being tacky by looking for stains, etc. (To some extent the show encourages this by having a blacklight in a searching kit; the show would be better without it.) One of the worst instances must have been when a group of guys went into the girl's parents' room (bad in itself), and pulled out her mother's underwear and hung it on a door. What's wrong with these people? I'm also surprised by the number of guys who will dress up in the girls' underwear or dresses! If they're transvestites, hey: whatever floats their boat, but the women can hardly appreciate having their stuff mistreated that way.

At the end of the show, the searcher says the things they like and dislike about each room. Supposedly, people are picked on the basis of their rooms, but I have a suspicion that when searchers praise things they liked in each room they're looking for reactions from the room's owners, so they can pick on looks. Probably would be better if the searcher didn't get to see the rooms' owners until after they eliminate each one.

"A painting? You must be an artist and stuff."

[fedor8 · 27 March 2009]

"The year is 2035. Obama's Socialist economic policies had given the Western World a final blow only a few decades earlier. Religious fundamentalists and neo-Marxists now rule whatever's left of civilization. The mood on our little planet is somber, and there is generally little cause for laughter - and yet on a small spacecraft that is orbiting the Earth there is incessant giggling to be heard: two robots and a man are watching early 21st-century baloney and having a ball.

Yes: 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' has been revived, thanks in large part to Lars von Trier, Emir Kusturica, George Clooney, and - last but not least - 'Room Raiders'..."

RR is your standard, mindless, MTV pseudo-reality nonsense, about young people making asinine dating decisions based on what they see or sniff out in other people's rooms/houses. The laughable deductive skills displayed here should be enough to give a huge confidence boost to any cop who ever failed his first 28 detective exams.

The typical episode starts off with a 20 year-old airhead of either sex introducing themselves to the viewer. "Hi, my name is Makeesha, and I study Nose-Picking and Journalism at the Cheap Texas University That Enrolls Anyone. I am a cheerleader and I strip in my spare time. My dream is to become a nuclear scientist." After that, we're introduced to three candidates of the (usually) opposite sex... "Hi, I am Ted, and I pump iron, like, every day of the week and stuff". "Hi, my name is Brad, and I love surfing with my dudes." "Hi, I am Skip. I love hip-hop, and what I look for most in a girl is tolerance of my amazingly low IQ." What follows is the three candidates being quasi-kidnapped, thrown into a van (the most annoying part), and then - probably seven hours later - watch the room-raider on a monitor, as he/she snoops around their rooms, trying very hard to crack wise.

The mostly lame jokes - some of which are possibly even written on-the-site by some of MTV's lesser staff - usually involve puerile word-play and sexual innuendo that makes Bacall and Bogart seem like a pair of classy Einsteins by comparison. She-room-raider: "Your room is quite small". He-shirtless-van-bunny: "But I'm not small where it REALLY matters, baby."

I say seven hours later because I assume that's how long it takes the average room-raider to say all of his/her lines right without blowing them. Cut! Take 89!

Sure, RR is fairly moronic, semi-staged, and what-not. However, most of the episodes are fun due to the participants' often endless stupidity and cheerful primitivism. (Small wonder: my guess is that many aspiring actors/models apply for RR.) We're talking real sheep here: guys who try desperately to appear macho at any cost and at all times, and bimbos so dazed that they truly believe they can deduce from a single book that they find under a bed what the guy in question is all about.

There are several running gags. For example, nearly all of the girls who find a condom say something in the order of "condoms? hm... I don't really like seeing that sort of thing in your room". Another hilarious reaction, exhibited by 95% of all room-raiding females, is this: "A letter and a photo from an ex-girlfriend?... I don't like the fact that you had women before me." Ditto whenever they find porn and video-games. What it all boils down to is...: "Hi, my name is Nancy and I don't like guys who had girlfriends, who talk to other girls or even look at them, guys who practice safe sex - or any kind of sex (except when it's with me - IF I let them) - and guys who play computer games or watch porn. That is NASTY." Well, that certainly narrows it down - to about 0.01% of the young male population.

On the other side of the coin, we've often got metrosexual geeks who are offended by the slightest speck of dust landing on their finely-coiffed hair sitting all gel-glued on their soft empty heads. A woman can even be forgiven for judging a man by his clothes collection, but when a guy gets overly upset about what a woman has in her cupboard... One guy actually went through the garbage in a girl's bathroom, and then proceeded to lecture her for her ear-wax sticks being filthy - and without a hint of irony! "Hi, my name is Max, and I really like a girl whose ears are clean even before she cleans them."

There is only one thing a guy should be concerned with when room-raiding: the size of the bras and the underwear (so that he avoids picking out a flat-chested pig).

Which brings me to the matter of casting. Usually, the better-looking the room-raider, the better-looking the three candidates are. Nevertheless, sometimes the makers of RR forget to put on their glasses when casting these knuckleheads, so they end up with a male nerd or a homely librarian-type girl doing the picking and the choosing. (Beggars cant be choosers - and that should go for RR, too.) I wish they'd made more errors in this regard, because nothing beats the amusement of watching the show's 3 van bunnies make disappointed faces after realizing what a dog/dweeb the producers had chosen for them.

Naturally, these being the mindless politically-correct times, eventually someone in the MTV offices had the "brilliantly unique" idea of making homosexual RR episodes. The trouble with that (apart from being nausea-inducing) is that the three gay guys sitting in the van can for fall one another just as easily as fall for the guy who is searching their crap-laden rooms. Hence the outcome of which gay guy is chosen becomes even more moot. But that just shows how bright MTV staff is...