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Meet The Marks aired from July 17-31, 2002 on FOX.

Meet The Marks was a sitcom with elements of Candid Camera. It centered on the Marks , a fictional family living in a real house in a real neighborhood. Joe ( Joe O'Connor) was the father; Cathy ( Cathy Shambley), the mother, and Patrick and Kaitlin ( Patrick Cavanaugh, Kaitlin Olson), their teenage children. Real people who were lured to their house became unsuspecting participants in scriped comedic situations . At the end of each segment the visitors were told they had been taped for a tv show.

Among the people who showed up were a hair-dresser who caught Kaitlin's fiance with another woman; a computer tutor hired to give Cathy lessons who caught Joe fooling around with his assistant Tara ( Tara Nulty), and was coerced into pretending to be her boyfriend, a clown hired to do a striptease at Kaitlin's bachelorette party, and a man hired to tutor Patrick, who had to pose as a family cousin to win 1,000 pies and appear in a commercial with Ed McMahon. Only 3 episodes aired before Meet The Marks was pulled from the FOX lineup.

A Review from entetainyourbrain.com

"Meet the Marks" Review

By Shawn McKenzie 07/28/2002

I find it very interesting that 2002 is becoming the year of reality TV crossbreeding. Producers of reality TV shows realized that they couldn't just copy the success of another reality show (because when you do that, you get crap like �Dog Eat Dog.�) They figured they had to try to incorporate other genres into the mix outside of reality TV to keep the audience interested. We had the reality sitcom with MTV�s �The Osbournes,� then the reality miniseries with ABC�s �The Hamptons,� and finally the reality lawyer drama with NBC�s �Law & Order: Crime & Punishment.� Now we have FOX�s �Meet the Marks.�

The show is a combination of a hidden camera show and a sitcom. A �mark� is a victim who comes to the Marks� house thinking they are there to serve some purpose (help with accounting, entertain at a kiddie birthday party, etc.), but are there instead to be the star of their own sitcom. The Marks are a generic family consisting of a dad, a mom, a son, a daughter, and �special guests.� The mark thinks they are there for their purpose, only to be caught up in some wacky sitcom-like situation. It is finally revealed at the end of the scene that he or she is the star of his own sitcom, and is shown the cameras at the end.

It is an original concept, and I can admire that, but it is not without its flaws. First off, there is no continuity in the storyline of the Marks. I think it would be funnier if there was one storyline and they brought in their marks to play a part in it. At one point the mom is cheating on the dad, then they are happy. During one scene, the daughter is a secret dominatrix, and then during the next, she is celebrating her bachelorette party. I understand they have to adjust storylines to bring in different people, but doing it this way makes it kind of like any other hidden camera show, only they just use the same people. Also, they really don�t need to point out all their failures in tricking a mark. Finally, I don�t know how many times I have to say this, reality shows are better without a narrator!

I am going to stick with �Meet the Marks� (at least until the new TV season starts), because I think it is funny and I�m hoping the show will gel into a single storyline. By the way, if you have watched the show already and you are wondering where you have seen the �dad� before, it is Joe O�Connor, who played Marshall Darling on Nickelodeon�s �Clarissa Explains It All.� The man certainly knows how to be a generic sitcom dad!

A Review of Meet the Marks

Meet the Marks

Poor suckers

During World War II, the Army assigned Allen Funt to tape messages for soldiers to send home to their families. He found that the men sounded at ease during rehearsals, but turned tongue-tied once recording started. He solved this problem by secretly taping their rehearsals and using those recordings as the final product. It was from this experience that Funt developed the idea of Candid Camera. The genre of voyeuristic television was born.

Candid Camera has remained in production for most of the past 54 years. During its long run, dozens of rip-offs have come along, currently including NBC’s Spy TV and Fox’s The Jamie Kennedy Experiment. All have imitated Funt’s formula of secretly taping people confronted by unusual circumstances. Now Fox gives us Meet the Marks, another hidden camera-innocent victim program that Fox is promoting as a sitcom with a difference—an average Joe is thrown into a lengthy, prewritten scene and asked to play along. After only one episode, it’s clear that the label “sitcom” is a misrepresentation. Meet the Marks lacks comedy.

Each of the series’ pranks features the same five “sitcom” players, a fictional family consisting of a middle-aged couple, Joe and Cathy (Joe O’Connor and Cathy Shambley), their two grown children, Kaitlin and Patrick (Kaitlin Olson and Patrick Cavanaugh), and Joe’s assistant at his unnamed vocation, Tara (Tara Nulty). Their mission is to guide the “mark,” the poor sucker being duped, not knowing he or she has walked into a “sitcom.” They move him or her from situation to situation and from room to room within the house.

The first episode featured two situations that clearly made the marks uncomfortable and forced them to make moral decisions regarding appropriate behavior under extraordinary pressure. In the first prank, Darrell, a hairdresser, is called to the house to do Kaitlin’s hair before her wedding. While she is in the restroom, he stumbles across the groom making out with Tara in the kitchen. This puts him in a difficult situation as he works on Kaitlin’s hair, and he gently questions the bride-to-be to determine the solidity of her relationship with her fianci. Eventually, Darrell decides to say nothing. As if that’s not enough torture for the man, he is invited to stay for the wedding, where Kaitlin announces in mid-ceremony that she has fallen for Darrell and wants to call off the wedding. She then turns to the stunned man and proposes. After he squirms a little more, the cast lets him in on the joke.

Darrell had it easy compared to the next mark, a computer technician, Kevin, called to the house to fix Cathy’s PC. She has arranged for a neighbor to let the technician into the house, as she has been detained elsewhere. Once inside, he is confronted by a cavorting Joe and Tara, half-dressed and covered with whipped cream. As Cathy pulls into the driveway, Joe dashes upstairs and Tara literally jumps on the confused man, pleading with him to pretend to be her boyfriend. Tara then introduces the man to Cathy as “Steve,” her podiatrist boyfriend. He sheepishly plays along. Again, this isn’t enough. Another neighbor drops in and asks the “podiatrist” for medical advice and then a new man shows up claiming to be the real Steve. All eyes focus on the mark as Cathy demands an explanation from him, and then the joke is revealed.

Obviously, the show owes more to Allen Funt’s legacy than any sitcom. But it diverges from Candid Camera in a crucial way: its pranks go on and on, while Funt’s lasted a few minutes at most and required no deep thought on the part of the victim. A mechanic goes to check the oil under the hood of a car only to find there is no engine. Three people enter an elevator with an unsuspecting foil and all stand facing the wall. Another person puts an envelope in a corner mailbox and is thanked by a voice from within.

Meet the Marks involves more detailed set-ups and demands more from the cast. Fox calls the five regulars “masters of improv,” and it is indeed clear that they are making up the dialogue as they go along. Too bad it’s not very entertaining. In the first prank, cast members occupied the mark’s time by confessing their inner feelings about one another ("I know [the groom] doesn’t love Kaitlin; he wants to be with me"). The second prank had the cast grilling the mark ("So, Steve, what were you and Tara doing in my living room?"). With the cast full of “straight men,” that leaves it up to the mark to provide the punch-line, his or her supposedly hilarious reaction to the set-up.

Here the lengths of the pranks become problematic, since it is apparent within the first few minutes how the “mark” will react. The flamboyant Darrell was all bulging eyes, gaping mouth, and flailing arms, while Kevin reacted more demurely, blushing, lowering his head, and mumbling when unsure what to say. Two minutes of Darrell’s “Oh my God!” and Kevin’s “Oh gee!” expressions were more than sufficient; ten minutes were boring.

Funt’s format allowed numerous responses to the same set-up. A teenaged boy, middle-aged businessman, and elderly grandmother will react differently to a talking mailbox: if one doesn’t make you laugh, the next one might. The makers of Meet the Marks also tape several marks for each scheme, but only one is featured in the show. This approach effectively paints the show into a corner—if the highlighted mark isn’t amusing (the case in the premiere episode), then watching the show is only uncomfortable.

The first episode included brief clips of some of the other marks, a few intended victims who quickly figured out they were on some sort of gag tv show. I found myself wondering about the marks who didn’t make the final cut while watching the protracted pain of the full “skits.” Simply put: a successful tv show doesn’t inspire viewers to contemplate what could have been shown, but wasn’t.

— 22 July 2002

For an episode guide of Meet The Marks go to http://www.tv.com/meet-the-marks/show/12087/summary.html