Celebrating (The Quest!), worrying (Survivor! Biggest Loser!), and appreciating (The Good Place!)
Dear newsletter friends,
Happy Friday, and last day of January. Please let me know if you see any days from this past month, as I seem to have lost them somewhere. But let’s get into this week’s news.
The Quest is coming back! Hurray!
And Love Island is returning sooner than I expected!
I am thrilled for the return of shows like Legends of the Hidden Temple and The Quest (it was one of my favorite reality shows of the past decade).
But last night’s finale of The Good Place (no spoilers, I promise) made me think more about appreciating endings.
I wrote about that here: Saying goodbye, and other things taking me to a good place this week.
Several shows ended forever this week, including Lt. Joe Kenda’s Homicide Hunter.
Meanwhile, a show that I never expected to return—because it was silently cancelled when it was engulfed in a cloud of scandal—came back this week.
I reviewed The Biggest Loser, and certainly don’t recommend it (though I still recommend you read my review 😃).
I also reported on its return for the L.A. Times, interviewing researchers, experts, and people who worked on the show.
The big takeaway for me: What The Biggest Loser is mostly doing is perpetuating damaging myths about weight loss: that you just need willpower and hours in the gym, and the number of pounds lost is the most important measurement. Science—and even research on former Biggest Loser contestants!—has proven otherwise.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, here are two books I recommend:
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works
Not everything from my interviews could make it into my L.A. Times piece, so I included some excerpts, plus transcripts from The Biggest Loser’s TCA panel, at the end of my review.
We’re less than two weeks away from the premiere of Survivor season 40, and one of the most respected members of the Survivor community has issued a dire warning about the show’s future, focused specifically on the potential for the Edge of Extinction to become permanent, and what we can do to try to stop that.
Also in that story: Jeff Probst’s astonishing response to criticism of Survivor. I can’t even adequately summarize it.
Speaking of criticism: Several Drag Race alum criticized the show after season 12’s queens were revealed.
Finally this week, it’s Super Bowl Sunday on, well, Sunday, and following the big game is the return of The Masked Singer.
Enjoy that, or whatever you watch this weekend! Talk to you in February.
best,
Andy
🌄 This is Reality in Focus issue 179, first sent 31 January 2020, and even though it sometimes wears a Green Bay Packers t-shirt, it isn’t invested much in the football.
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📷 Photo of the Getty Museum, which was used as the location for the actual good place, by Ludovic Charlet