A list of times Pittsburgh yinz’d it up on reality TV

When it comes to reality television, Pittsburgh rarely pops up as a location for the slew of shows that now define most of the media landscape — while we wish deeply for it, to the point of creating our dream cast, there’s little hope that Bravo will greenlight a Real Housewives of Pittsburgh anytime soon.

Sure, Pittsburgh has its Dance Moms and its Love Island contestants, but those hardly capture the city’s essence. Pittsburgh City Paper sifted through the endless trove of reality programming to find some of the most notable moments of Pittsburgh being Pittsburgh.

Cops (Season 3, Episode 23)

Eschewing any important, ongoing discussions about policing in Pittsburgh or treating people in crisis, we need to point out this 1991 Cops episode following local authorities as they talk a drunk, distressed man named Charles off the top of the Sixth Street/Roberto Clemente Bridge. The yinzer accents were so thick that viewers called Fox to complain of not being able to understand anything that was said (this is unsubstantiated, but a fun bit of lore nonetheless). Thankfully, Charles relents and descends to safety. An officer in the clip, who, at one point, tells cameras that she's known Charles since “they were kids,” says, “once he got dahn off the bridge, he told me he don’t remember climbin’ up onto the bridge.”

All joking aside, seeing Charles come dahn to a coat being thrown over him and a series of hugs from family members and first responders tears at the heartstrings.

Where to watch: YouTube

Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy (Season 3, Episodes 7-8)

Nothing speaks to the then-burgeoning “new Pittsburgh” like this 2006 reality saga. Barbara is a tattoo artist/roller derby competitor, aka the most stereotypical, early-aughts South Side woman you could imagine — all she needs is a faded music venue hand stamp and a lukewarm can of Pabst. She trades places with Alyce, an ultra-conservative Bible mom, who clashes with Barbara and her husband Tim’s agnostic semi-punk lifestyle that includes letting their son, Vincenzo, “run wild.”

I watched this episode when it aired — my coworker at the time knew the couple and poked fun at their involvement — and distinctly remember a scene where Tim tearfully confronts his misbehaving son. Say what you want, it was nice to see that Pittsburgh dudes aren’t afraid to cry on national TV.

Where to watch: YouTube

Restaurant: Impossible (Season 3, Episode 4)

When Del’s, a longtime Bloomfield institution, closed in 2015, local social media users quickly blamed it on gentrification and decried the loss of one of the few remaining Italian joints in Pittsburgh’s so-called Little Italy. However, anyone who worked or ate there in the years leading up to its closure would tell you its demise was imminent. There was a reason why the place had such a high staff turnover (friends of mine who worked there recalled awful working conditions) and the food was “Italian” in name only — the only time I ate there, I received a “white pizza” that was nondescript cheese melted on flatbread with no seasoning or sauce.

One of the most well-known figures at Del’s was Marianne DelPizzo, who owned and ran the restaurant with her brother, John. She features prominently in a 2012 episode of Restaurant: Impossible, a Food Network makeover reality show whose host, chef Robert Irvine, set out to help Del’s recoup the magic that made it a successful family-owned business for over 60 years.

Viewers are treated to Marianne and John going head-to-head with Irvine over the quality of their food while also telling on themselves — you can practically feel generations of Italian grandmas rolling in their graves when John reveals that they put ice cubes IN THE PASTA SAUCE to cool it down. Adding insult to injury are staff members claiming low wages, insufficient resources, and stress over Marianne’s antics, including yelling at them back-of-house loud enough for customers to hear. (While anyone who has ever worked in the food service industry will tell you that these are, unfortunately, garden variety issues, it’s distressing to witness nonetheless.)

All in all, Restaurant: Impossible displays the big, loud personality for which many native Pittsburghers are known, which, as the show demonstrates, can be endearing at best, and nerve-shattering at worst. It also provides a glimpse at the history and cultural roots of one of Pittsburgh’s most popular neighborhoods, which, as many residents will attest, has been both celebrated and exploited over the years.

Where to watch: Max, Discovery Plus, Amazon Prime (with Discovery Plus subscription)

True Life: I'm Hooked on Molly (Season 17, Episode 17)

Few shows captured the trials and tribulations of millennials like MTV’s True Life, a documentary series that tackled everything from teen pregnancy and chronic health conditions to fluffier, but no less fascinating looks into the lives of superfans, identical twins, and young athletes. If you ever wanted to know why your 30-to-40-ish DINK relatives are the way they are, you need only look here.

The show — which debuted in 1998 and enjoyed a long, though sporadic run for the next two decades — also turned the spotlight on various substance abuse disorders affecting young people, with episodes covering Adderal, crystal meth, and alcohol. Aired in 2014, True Life: I'm Hooked on Molly features 21-year-old Ally, a Pittsburgh woman struggling with her dependence on what the narrator calls “the club drug of the moment.”

While Ally’s situation is no laughing matter (spoiler: by the end, she celebrates multiple months of sobriety), the episode may elicit a few groans from anyone living in Pittsburgh at that time. Her segment opens at the South Hills Beauty Academy, where, with her perfectly straightened, purple-tinged scene kid hair, she accepts her cosmetology degree. From there, viewers are treated to some thick Pittsburgh accents, brief glimpses of what looks to be the Strip District’s then-withering dance club days, and dudes with ear gauges and Pirates T-shirts playing beer pong.

Overall, though, it’s hard not to feel moved by Ally’s journey as she explains her battle with depression, guilt over lying to her seemingly loving, attentive mother (though I bristled at her using the term “druggie” to describe her daughter), and acceptance of treatment.

Where to watch: YouTube

Ghost Bait (Season 1, Episode 6)

You don’t have to tell anyone who’s lived in Pittsburgh for a significant amount of time that the city is haunted as fuck. From theater ghosts treading the boards to the spirit of a prison warden’s wife at a Mt. Washington restaurant, the city has more than its fair share of spectral residents.

In 2019, investigators from the Travel Channel series Ghost Bait set their sights on Spring Hill Brewing, a now-closed brewery and event space subject to paranormal activity, with staff becoming the target of hostile ghosts. As a result, Ghost Bait investigators attempt to capture footage of the spirit by using one of the owners as … well, bait. (For some bizarre reason, the baiting involved having a subject sit in a dark room with a burlap sack over their head.)

The episode captures one of the hallmarks of modern Pittsburgh life, transforming a building from the city’s heavily industrial past (in this case, the Workingmen’s Beneficial Union social hall) into something new.

Where to watch: Discovery Plus, Amazon Prime (with Discovery Plus subscription)

Ghost Hunters (Season 14, Episode 4)

Adding to Pittsburgh’s haunted cred is this episode of the long-running hit series Ghost Hunters (also on the Travel Channel) that highlights strange goings-on at Church Brew Works.

Church Brew Works, much like Spring Hill, turned an existing building — in this case, an old church — into a brewery and restaurant that, since 1996, has been a staple in Lawrenceville. The staff got more than they bargained for, however, when, not long after the brewery opened, they “reported hearing the sounds of footsteps, talking, and objects dragging,” and would often see the ghost of a “young woman in her late teens or early twenties.”

The episode, which aired in 2022, touches on Pittsburgh's heavily Catholic roots (the church, originally opened in 1902, catered to Irish and Scottish worshippers) and features a few yinzer accents, primarily one staff accountant who recounts seeing a chair seemingly move on its own.

This marks the second time Ghost Hunters visited Pittsburgh, which appeared in the show’s first season when the team investigated the Ulbrich-Fritz residence.

It should be no surprise that a spooky city produced a spooky guy in Ghost Hunters investigator Steve Gonsalves, who, in an “Inside the Episode” featurette, calls Pittsburgh his “old stomping grounds” and claims ownership of a Terrible Towel but never goes into detail about his relationship to the city (his scant bio says he was born and raised in Massachusetts).

Where to watch: Max, Discovery Plus, Amazon Prime (with Discovery Plus subscription)

Unsolved Mysteries (Season 4, Episode 3)

One term that comes to mind when describing yinzers is “unflappable,” a quality on display in this recently released episode of the Unsolved Mysteries Netflix reboot. The segment starts with the recording of a 15-year-old boy casually telling a 911 dispatcher that he “found a human head” in the woods of Economy Borough, and from there, subjects talk about the perplexing body part with a relaxed bemusement. Only in southwestern Pa. would a harrowing event be discussed by locals in the same tone as recounting the time they saw Marc-André Fleury at Costco.

To sum up, in 2014, Beaver County authorities were baffled by the discovery of a decapitated head with no connection to any murder cases in the area. No leads emerged after a call for tips and help from a forensic artist. Throw in some theories about black market organs, Satanic rituals, and red rubber balls and you have some prime localized content.

Where to watch: Netflix

Bonus: The original Unsolved Mysteries series also covered southwestern Pa. with a 1990 segment on the Kecksburg UFO incident, which includes some sick ’90s dad mustaches and an interview with Pittsburgh’s favorite paranormal investigator, Stan Gordon.

Where to watch: Pluto TV, Tubi