Life Below Zero's end • BB26 & Survivor • Menendez Brothers • Summit sacrifice
Dear newsletter friends,
Greetings from Central Florida, where reality blurred international headquarters was very lucky with Hurricane Milton.
We lost power until midday Thursday, and have a few branches down from the 70+ mph wind gusts and some puddles from the 18 inches of rain (!) (in 24 hours!!), but otherwise are fine.
I hope you and yours are safe from this storm and Helene, and hope we all are done with hurricanes for this season, at least.
🥶 Life Below Zero
I reported:
Newsletter exclusive!
Life Below Zero itself has also been cancelled by National Geographic, someone who worked for the production told me after I published the above piece. That means this 23rd season will be its last.
🔔 Recaps and reviews
Survivor 47:
My recap of Survivor 47 episode 4, during which a player appeared from nowhere to change the game
Big Brother:
Hamsterwatch reviews BB26, which had twists that added a “freshness and unpredictability we desperately needed” and “the most chaotic and unpredictable” player yet
The Summit:
My recap of The Summit episode 2, in which producers pretended to be a helicopter and demanded a sacrifice
Below Deck Sailing Yacht:
🔪 True crime
Making the case for The Menendez Brothers, the new Netflix documentary series
🎧 Listen to The Docket:
FYI:
Sarah's Exhibit B. Books bookstore—which has true-crime books—offers 15 percent off any of its books for Best Evidence and reality blurred readers! Just use code ExBlurred at checkout
🗓️ Reality TV premieres
Highlights of reality TV shows and seasons premiering this week: the return of Shark Tank for Mark Cuban’s final season; new seasons of Drag Race Thailand, The Impact Atlanta, and Married at First Sight; and Vice’s new series Black Comedy in America.
This week’s specials and docs: Kids Baking Championship: Scary Good; Killer Cakes, a special on Amazon that looks like Halloween Wars but with more gore; Oprah’s conversation with Riley Keough about her mom Lisa Marie and grandfather Elvis Presley; plus NatGeo’s Expedition Amazon, PBS’s The Solar System: Strange Worlds, and HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.
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💬 Comments of the week
So much great discussion on so many stories. Here are a few of those comments, ones that made laugh, think, or both:
On this review, Kiara wrote:
I couldn’t watch more than 15 minutes of Trivial Pursuit. Unlike the actual board game, I hated it.
I felt it was like a cheesy version of Jeopardy but even worse, I was sad to see that Levar Burton wasn’t as good a host as I expected given the massive outpouring of support for him during the search for a new Jeopardy host.
On this Summit recap, Stan wrote:
I loathe the stupid forced decisions that only exist because the producers are cheap; they had a bunch of those on the Australian version and it was stupid every time. I’m fine with quitters losing the group money because that’s at least something you can kind of control, but how were they supposed to not lose money here? It’s completely impossible to win the advertised “million dollar prize”, this should count as a scam
On this review, Cookie wrote:
I watched all the episodes and have to admit that the person(s) who devised this show was pretty ingenious, as it made zero sense to me at the beginning (primarily the tiny kitchen and so many chefs, dark scenes and didn’t get the whole hotel thing) which says more about me than the show. But it’s interesting to watch the intricacies of each personality, what they brought and how quickly some forget the rules/goal
🗞️ Reality TV news
The Bachelor franchise does a terrible job with background checks and The New York Times is on it!
The latest revelation: The Golden Bachelorette’s Guy Gansert's ex-wife received a protective order for domestic violence.
Below Deck Captain Lee said his least-favorite Below Deck cast member is "Captain Sandy. And we all know why," he said at an event.
People yelled "why?" at him, and he said, "Why? I don't like her. Normally, I don't have to like people to work with them. I can work with almost anyone ... if they do their job. Key word: do your job. Do it properly then I can put up with almost anything. Don't do your job, and then pretend to be something you're not? Nah, I'm not there."
No idea if this has anything to do with Captain Sandy's Below Deck Mediterranean having the best ratings of any Below Deck in three years, and Captain Lee being replaced on Below Deck.
NBC's Deal or No Deal Island is doubling down on the Boston Rob of it all for season two, casting Survivor’s Parvati Shallow, Big Brother’s Will Kirby, and Australian Survivor’s David Genat, plus a bunch of normies.
Former Great British Bake-Off co-host Sandi Toksvig really didn't like the job: “Three of the longest years of my life," she told The Times. “It’s not for me. I walked away from the biggest paycheque of my life, but that’s fine. I’d never watched it. I still haven’t watched it. I didn’t understand it. Cakes are readily available in the shops. I didn’t enjoy the process. You stand at the end of a long table for hours when Prue and Paul taste everything and we literally didn’t speak or taste anything. I used to say, ‘Can we not sit down? I’m not contributing,’ but no.”
🤩 Recommendations
Sarah recommends Netflix’s The Menendez Brothers
I recommend a brilliant move on Survivor, even though it left me frustrated!
That’s it for this wild week.
FYI: I have a few spots left in my writing workshop next Saturday. It’ll be a small group, just three hours, and lots of tips and fun!
Hope to see you there, and definitely will see you back in your inbox and on reality blurred next week.
best,
Andy
🌄 This is issue 394 of reality blurred’s weekly newsletter, first sent on 11 October 2024, and it’s exhausted just from watching weather radar