I’ve put my time in. Before I swore off reality TV, I was as deeply entrenched as one can get.

I did 15 tours of MTV’s “The Real World” (jumping off between Philadelphia and Austin), all the “Road Rules,” the first eight “Survivors,” “The Mole” (before Anderson Cooper was “Anderson Cooper”), “Iron Chef” (Japanese and American), and many more.

Then I quit cold turkey. No more Tribal Councils. No more Judges’ Tables. No more Winnebagos. I was happy. I truly was. I sat in judgment of my friends who still obsessed over Jeff Probst’s island lunacy. I pitied my wife’s fascination with the orange meatheads on “Jersey Shore.” My coworkers’ weekly conversation about “The Bachelor”? Consider them scoffed at. 

But now? I’ve dipped my toes back in... and the radioactive West Virginia water never felt so good.

When MTV launched the first season of “The Real World” in May 1992, the decade didn’t yet know it belonged to Bill Clinton and Kurt Cobain. Though it wasn’t obvious to the executives at MTV and the early-Internet adopters of Generation X, the debut of “The Real World” was the beginning of the slow death of music videos on MTV. Soon, “The Real World” and its various spin-offs, copycats and bug-eating cousins would dominate the channel and most of television by the end of the century.

Yet, “Real World” creators Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray shouldn’t be blamed for the dreck that is “16 & Pregnant”—no, they should be celebrated for having a vision that may not make ripples in 2013, but shattered middle American expectations in 1992. Black, white, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, grunge, hip-hop—they were all there in that first 13-episode season set in New York City.

But just as grunge turned to boy band as the decade wore on, reality TV got slicker. Why have one Eric Nies, the aspiring male model from that first season, when you can have an entire cast full of beautiful people? Soon, the country musicians, computer experts, and police officers were replaced with aspiring actors, surfers, and misunderstood bad boys. The normal people with their normal jobs no longer had an outlet on reality TV—until the summer of 2000, when an overweight gay man named Richard Hatch became the ultimate victor of the most popular show on television.

You can say that you had no interest in that first season of “Survivor,” premiering Memorial Day Weekend 2000, but I imagine you’d be lying. Everyone watched “Survivor.” My college roommates and I held a Finale Luau to see if Richard or Kelly would win the million dollar prize (a theme I would continue for “Lost” finales).

Then, as we entered the new century, reality TV soon narrowed down the focus and shaved off all the edge off their shows to make them more palatable to potential advertisers and audiences. Overweight? “The Biggest Loser.” African-American? “Flavor of Love.” Gay? “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” Vapid? “The Real Housewives” franchise.

The intellectual and physical diversity that Bunim/Murray championed in the early and mid 1990s was now only found on competition reality shows like “Survivor” (now in its 26th season!) and  the excellent “The Amazing Race.” After watching a few seasons of any reality show it was easy to see any character’s arc from miles away due to the similar heavy editing and fictionalized drama that so many of the shows shared.

Hint: If you are watching a show in which someone can be voted off or lose a contest in that episode, and a cast member is featured prominently in said episode, be prepared to say goodbye to them at the conclusion of said episode.

Between the cast compartmentalization and the storyline predictabilities, reality TV and I finally broke up.

So here we are in 2013.The beautiful people—if not requiring occasional subtitles—are now coming to us from the unglamorous locale of Sissonville, West Virginia. MTV’s new reality show “BUCKWILD” (Thursdays, 10 p.m.) was originally pitched as a “redneck ‘Jersey Shore’.” I wanted to hate “BUCKWILD” and these whippersnappers, some of whom live in a “holler,” like to go “muddin’,” and attend “hyperglow parties.” Worst of all, they spell the name of their show in all caps.

But I do not hate “BUCKWILD.” This is not a good show. But it surprised me.

Shain, the male lead, is a garbage man who also happens to be the Prom King. Shain is vulgar and his guttural mutterings can be incomprehensible, but he also surprises his female friends with handpicked flowers. This is not the same archetype for the 100th time. Is the show heavily edited to force certain storylines? Of course it is. This is MTV we’re talking about. But watching these kids try to find house parties, make homemade Slip’N Slides in their backyards, and rope-swing on the local river? Well, that seems an awful lot like growing up in New Hampshire.

Will you love “BUCKWILD?” No. But you may be surprised when you like it.

(OK, the body of water I would jump into was not green nor was it located behind the local power plant, as it is in “BUCKWILD.”)

TBS gives us “King of the Nerds” (Thursdays, 10 p.m.) as a bit of an antidote to the mudflaps of “BUCKWILD.” Hosted by pop culture’s original nerds Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong (“Revenge of the Nerds”), this reality competition features nerds fighting to be King—or very likely, considering the strength of the female competitors, Queen—of the Nerds. Unlike “The Big Bang Theory,” which reinforces stereotypes as much as it claims to celebrate them, “King of the Nerds” is the real deal.

Yes, this is still television, so a game of chess is going to be a life-size game of chess complete with harajuku girls and gladiators, but these nerds are everything I want from reality TV: sexy, smart, vapid, hilarious, insecure, brave, male, female, big, small, and even pink-haired!

But why is “King of the Nerds” one of the better reality shows of the last 20 years?

Because it subverts the script you think you know so well. All the editing and story steering that we’ve become accustomed to over the years lulls us into a false sense of security. I don’t want to spoil the trick of “King of the Nerds.” Just watch it. My pick to win: NASA engineer Moogega. These kids might not go muddin’, but they are obsessed with Batman, Halo, and Biochemistry.

Our TV is better if we have both.