Airing on Food Network since 2012, the reality series titled Mystery Diners is a show all about catching the bad guys in the service industries, diners and restaurants specifically, red-handed. Host Charles Stiles has been with the show since episode one and still continues to do the show very enthusiastically.
Over its eleven seasons, the show has managed to become an extensive, well-equipped investigating team that goes undercover in restaurants to catch their employees in the act of misbehaving or scamming customers.
This is done at the request of the owners of the place, and when we tell the Mystery Diners’ force to come in prepared, we mean it. With surveillance cameras and mics in place, there are some agents who pretend to be the customers who would get scammed.
Charles Stiles narrates and observes the entire operation unfold before his eyes. The sting operation is conducted in a very professional with updated gadgets and a proper control room set up. The producers of the show clearly mean business.
Fans of the show would know that every episode starts off with Stiles meeting up with the restaurant owners, who tell him and the viewers all about their problems and why they called for the producers of the show to send the team over.
Next, they wire the entire restaurant, making it easy to tap the conversations that take place. The mics usually work two ways, and the control room is set up in a place the targets would not even think of.
We get to see the confrontation part of the operation in the end as well, which usually involves Charles Stiles exposing the operation to the target. This usually ends with the employee getting fired from the place or legal action.
While the show ended in 2016, when it aired its eleventh season, fans continue to question its authenticity, despite the show putting up disclaimers that “the people and events depicted in the program are real.”
Is Mystery Diners Fake?
Many who have watched the show have found it ridiculous how the show barely makes any attempt at appearing even remotely true. Be it the actors, the documents, and sometimes even the situations they show in some of the episodes, most of it appears completely untrue.
A lot of the time, the apparent ‘disguises’ could be so easily spotted by the targets but would still somehow manage to go unnoticed that it left viewers speechless. With so many reality shows getting revealed to be scripted, fans definitely seemed to be upset that Mystery Diners was a part of the list.
A lot of the former employees from restaurants have come forward and revealed that a lot of what we see on screen is completely staged, including, at times, the situations and owners. Fans have dedicated time to spot the fake scenes, too.
They’ve recognized that, at times, the “secret videos” taken without the target knowing aren’t even shot from the right angle, that the stakeouts could not be more obvious, and the “new technology” that the Mystery Diners host so gladly gloats about is utter nonsense.
Not only has the show been called out for being so painfully fake, but viewers have also expressed their anger at the blatant violation of people’s privacy. Stiles had, during one of the episodes of the show, revealed that the show had gotten its hands on a new tech called the Stingray.
Using this, they could easily access the target’s phone and go through their texts to better understand the intricate workings of their crimes. Though we doubt such a technology was actually even used in the first place, it still shows that the series really has no regard for law.
The awkward acting and Stiles’ save-the-day attitude could not get more repetitive and fake on the show, and fans got so sick of the show ignoring the allegations that they have even dedicated a full-blown online forum to exposing the show’s fakeness.
