How should TV shows manage allegations against central figures? The second season of Cheer drops today, and evidently has taken a bull-by-the-horns approach to the allegations faced by the “breakout star” of its first season, Jerry Harris (Sarah Bahr has a solid explainer of where his cases stand in the Times). That’s probably this sort of show’s best option; other reality shows have gone a different way, with RuPaul’s Drag Race disappearing Sherry Pie to the extent it could, and a recent Below Deck Med season silently reducing the screentime of a deckhand after a racist Instagram post.

And then there’s And Just Like That, which had already killed off Chris Noth’s Mr. Big but had to kill off planned flashbacks as well when numerous women alleged he’d harassed and/or assaulted them.

I guess it depends — on the property; on the allegations in question; on how central to a narrative’s functioning the alleged perpetrator is — but what do you think: engage and confront? or delete and retreat? — SDB