The Surreal Life (2003–06) was a VH1 reality show that mixed Big Brother and The Real World. Instead of everyday strangers living in a house together, the housemates were all minor celebrities. And it had one other distinction: it produced more spinoffs than any other show in TV history.

• During the 2005 season of The Surreal Life, two housemates, America’s Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry and former Brady Bunch cast member Christopher Knight, fell in love. In one episode, the cast is asked to pitch their own reality show concepts. Curry’s idea: Beauty and the Brady, about her and Knight. Later that year, VH1 began airing a Curry/Knight reality show: My Fair Brady.

• The 2004 cast included rapper Flavor Flav (of Public Enemy) and Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen (Red Sonja). The two began a romance, and VH1 built a reality show around the odd couple, 2005’s Strange Love. At the end of the show, the couple split, and Flav was heartbroken.

• Don’t cry for Flav—he got another chance to find love (and to be on TV). In 2006 he was the focus of VH1’s Flavor of Love, a Bachelor-style dating show. It went on to become the network’s most-watched show ever, and prompted VH1 to move its programming away from music and pop culture and toward trashy reality shows.

• The female contestants on Flavor of Love were prone to drunken blackouts, drunken fistfights, drunken public displays of nudity, public defecation (seriously), and other unruly behavior, prompting VH1 to reunite them for 2007’s Flavor of Love: Charm School, in which experts taught them proper, ladylike behavior. It was hosted by actress Mo’Nique (who would later win an Oscar for her role in Precious).

• Winner of Flavor of Love: an ex-stripper named Hoopz. (Flav gave all of his dates nicknames, because he couldn’t remember their real ones—Hoopz wore big hoop earrings.) Runner-up: “New York” (Tiffany Pollard), who moved on to do the mate-picking on I Love New York in 2007. When she didn’t find a partner, VH1 produced a show for Pollard in which she tried to become an actress—New York Goes to Hollywood (2008), and then another on which she worked a different job each week, called New York Goes to Work (2009).

• Two guys not picked by New York on I Love New York, “Real” and his brother “Chance,” got to star in a 2008 VH1 dating show called Real Chance at Love.

• Also in 2008, VH1 invited the most colorful, obnoxious, and memorable contestants from all of its reality shows back to TV for the unsubtly titled game show I Love Money.

• Flavor of Love was a dating show built around an ’80s rap star. But what about an ’80s rock star? Bret Michaels, lead singer of the hair-metal band Poison, was recruited to star on Rock of Love.

• Also following the Flavor of Love model, rejected Rock of Love contestant Daisy de la Hoya went on to headline Daisy of Love in 2009.

• Other contestants from Rock of Love—heavily tattooed rock ’n’ roll groupies who were just as unruly as the contestants on Flavor of Love—returned to VH1 for Rock of Love: Charm School, hosted by Sharon Osbourne.

• Megan Hauserman, a losing competitor on both Rock of Love and I Love Money, got her own show in August 2009 called Megan Wants a Millionaire.

• Until Michaels returned in October 2010 for Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It, a series documenting his life after a brain hemorrhage and heart surgery (and winning a reality game show on another network, NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice).

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