In the 90s I would have given AFV 10 stars. It was novel and personal camcorders were the rage; the few who could afford the price tag were happy to send in footage caught mostly by accident that tickled or surprised us. The whole family anticipated the new show. But here in 2020, despite Alfonso being my fav host (and despite the fact that there must be tons more content to choose from), the clips are often in very poor taste, last too long, or are just plain mean. This once-revered "family" show should reevaluate its family-friendly rating when it seems to now be more of a "how to" on tricking family and friends and setting up children as the innocent victims of inappropriate humor. When AFV started suggesting things to film, the audience then had to suffer through a barrage of set-up scenes performing the same tired stunt, many of which were only funny to the person filming. In addition to the finalists never being what I consider the best clips, I am completely disenchanted with this series. AFV needs to revamp its show and use the unusual videos caught by sheer luck or of adult stunts gone wrong that made them a household name. Clips should be clean, accidental, brief, and with no intentional victims. When you realize it is now the only show of its kind that solicits audience participation in creating videos, you have to ask yourself why other shows clearly discourage that: It's because people will do outrageous, dangerous, vicious, and immoral things to get on television. Instead, other similar shows scour the internet and other professional sources for footage that was caught on film. That was the original premise behind AFV -- mostly harmless, sometimes shocking, often funny footage taken without staging. That's the missing ingredient in today's AFV: innocence.
Review of America's Funniest Home Videos
