“Can’t spell honest without hon,” reads the bio atop Ben Frisone’s Instagram page.

“It’s an original!” he says, proudly.

To the 31-year-old Calvert Hall College High School graduate and electrician, the self-coined phrase represents Baltimore perfectly. ”I feel like a normal American guy," the Perry Hall resident said. “There’s nothing that special about me to be that pretentious about. I’m a very down-to-earth, humble, working-class guy.”

Those qualities made Frisone, who works for Baltimore County, the perfect choice to star in the sweetly silly “The Joe Schmo Show,” now airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on TBS. In it, Frisone believes he is a contestant vying to win money on a reality show competition called “The Goat” (no, not that one). In actuality, he is the only person that doesn’t know the increasingly bizarre competition he’s on is filled with improvisers and completely fake.

“Joe Schmo,” a reboot of the series that first aired in 2003, follows an everyday guy through bizarre on-camera situations — sort of like if “Jackass” had produced a version of “The Truman Show” but made it kinda look like the cast of “Squid Game” was on “Jury Duty.”

I am normally not a fan of programs like this. They’re often just a mean-spirited setup, such as Fox’s terrible “Joe Millionaire” and “I Wanna Marry ‘Harry,’” which made unsuspecting women look like thirsty idiots for believing they were wooing, respectively, a wealthy man and the current Duke of Sussex. To my pleasant surprise, “Joe Schmo” isn’t trying to make Frisone look stupid, but rather like a nice man eager to throw himself into weirdness while the actors playing his fellow contestants try not to give it away.

“It was a kind-hearted thing, with ‘We’re gonna bring in all these crazy characters and see how this dude reacts to it,' not like ‘Bring in this guy to look like an idiot,’” Frisone explained. “It was, ‘Let’s bring somebody into this situation that would have a normal, honest reaction to these hyped-up reality personas.’”

Frisone is a big-time fan of reality shows such as “Survivor” and “Too Hot to Handle,” but was recruited for “Joe Schmo” through a dating app. He happily followed through with the invitation, though he was admittedly unclear on exactly what he was signing up for. “It seemed like a really cool vacation, to be able to tell people you were on some silly reality show,” said Frisone, who was relieved to find out upon filming that it was not a dating show. “I feel like they don’t find their match very often,” he quipped.

That’s absolutely true, but I’m pleased to say “Joe Schmo” absolutely found its match in Frisone. He smiles his way — albeit confusedly — through a series of absurdities, including the discovery that one of his fellow competitors is former child star Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid from “Jerry Maguire” and “Stuart Little,” playing a nightmare version of himself.

“He [Lipnicki] was on the phone with his agent complaining about getting booked on this crazy gig, doing all this diva stuff, and I thought, ‘This guy would never make it a day in Baltimore,’” Frisone said.

The show is currently airing, so the electrician can’t reveal the details of how and when he realizes that the whole thing is a trick. In the premiere, though, he immediately clocks that the first contestant kicked off must be an actor because of her over-the-top response to her elimination. But that still doesn’t tip him off that something bigger is afoot. “At this point, the game has just been revealed to me and I don’t know anything about it, so when she acted the way she did, I thought maybe actors are a part of the game.”

Frisone didn’t tell anyone but his immediate family that he was filming a TV show. The taping was actually back in April 2021, so by the time it premiered this month — almost four years later — “they all forgot that I was gone on a pretty long vacation.” He invited his former schoolmates and family to join “a big old viewing party” for the first episode.

Given that this is Smalltimore, I had to ask if one of those family members was, by chance, my friend Nick Frisone, of the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee. “That’s my cousin!” he told me. Of course it is.

“Ben was always a down-to-earth kid growing up,” confirmed Cousin Nick, who attended that “epic” viewing party. “It’s cool that the world is getting to see that.”

Though reality TV doesn’t often bring out the best in its contestants, the newly minted reality star thinks “The Joe Schmo Show” made him look good. “It’s true to myself and how I normally act. They captured everything well.” But it hasn’t helped him so far in the romance department. “The Schmo is still single,” he said, laughing. “Tragic, isn’t it?”

Time will tell if that tragedy continues, but Frisone said he wouldn’t mind continuing his new side profession. “I’m open to any more reality shows, any future connections with ‘The Joe Schmo Show.’ I would wanna go as far as it will take me. I will do anything else, but it better be real.”

Well, it’s not like they could fool him a second time, right?

“I would start out by saying that I hope they couldn’t fool me a second time,” Frisone said wryly.