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" Shain Gandee, breakout star of MTV&amp;#039;s hillbilly Jersey Shore, Buckwild, was found dead with two others in his Ford Bronco this morning after telling bar patrons that he was going off-roading at three in the morning with his uncle. It&amp;#039;s a huge blow for a network whose post-Real World spate of programming has been predicated on the youthful foibles of the entertaining and poor decision-making \u2014 the eponymous teen moms and aforementioned Snooki and Bam Margera among them. MTV had thus far balanced on the tightrope of enabler and protector, putting these dopes (whom I genuinely enjoy watching) on television and giving them means to support their vices (the Buckwild kids in particular seem to have help from the network in financing and procuring the elements for their stunts) while seemingly encouraging the truly out-of-control (i.e., the Situation and Steve-O) to seek help. The network has plausible deniability for the multiple arrests of Teen Mom cast members Amber Portwood and Jenelle Evans and the death of Ryan Dunn (Jackass was no longer on the air when Dunn died in an apparent drunk-driving incident). Of course, Evans still appears on Teen Mom and the Jackass crew puts out a movie every few years, but jail time and drunk-driving in a Porsche aren&amp;#039;t the images the network seems interested in selling. Gandee four-wheeling at three in the morning, however, is exactly the kind of plot that would appear on Buckwild. So while the recently announced season two of the show might not have been filming, it&amp;#039;s reasonable to question MTV&amp;#039;s culpability in the whole endeavor. I&amp;#039;m not in any way blaming them \u2014 Gandee was legally an adult and responsible for his own actions \u2014 but the network is obviously going to receive some blowback from their hyper-specific culture of personality that encourages people prone to risk-taking to, you know, take risks in exchange for fame. How much this will affect their reality lineup remains to be seen (there&amp;#039;s an alternate &amp;quot;slice-of-life&amp;quot; roster that includes World of Jenks and my beloved Catfish), but I would be surprised if changes weren&amp;#039;t made to prevent something like this from happening again. Because television really stops being fun when 21-year-olds are dying to get it made. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a21321/mtv-buckwild-shain-gandee/>