Masked Singer's nonsense, The Quest's return, Project Runway's host's exit, and much more
Dear newsletter friends,
It’s a lovely and cool April morning here, and I’m sitting outside writing these words to you. The gentle breeze is carrying lots of oak pollen into my lungs, however, and little fuzzy caterpillars are crawling and landing on me—which would be cute except they cause skin irritation.
But I also just watched this video, and it made me grateful that it’s only itchy, rash-producing caterpillars that the only creatures joining me in this space.
On to the reality TV content—a lot of news this week!
Three recaps
From Kermit the Frog’s appearance on The Masked Singer to what happened this week, I was annoyed and wrote about:
Why The Masked Singer is just stupid now. And to be clear, I mean it’s no longer just silly and fun dumb, but increasingly waste-of-time stupid.
I’m continuing my Survivor: The Australian Outback rewatch 20 years after the original episodes aired. This past week:
Re-watching Survivor’s first auction really made me yearn for the auction’s return
A Survivor broke the law on a reward challenge but it’s unclear if anything ever happened as a result of that lawlessness
Filming news
Project Runway’s new host is out as production begins
Tough As Nails season three is filming soon
The Quest filmed earlier this year, and at a winery. (Season two will be on Disney+ and have teenage contestants.)
More news!
Premiere dates for ABC's summer reality shows—including Holey Moley, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise—are now on my reality TV schedule, as are Fox’s summer premieres, including themed seasons of Hell's Kitchen (chefs under 23 for Gordon Ramsay to scream at) and Masterchef: Legends (I don’t understand it).
The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula is moving to Shudder for its fourth season, where it’ll have a Drag Race-level prize: $100,000.
In January, I reported that Mike Rowe's new Discovery show is sponsored by the oil industry, despite Discovery saying it "is committed curbing our own impact on the environment." Now Earther’s Dharna Noor has added another piece: "the massive fossil fuel and petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries [...] and the Koch Foundation [...] have together donated more than $1 million dollars to Rowe’s foundation since it was founded."
Fox's announced a competition, Crime Scene Kitchen, which sounds to me like 1) the baking version of Quibi's Dishmantled (which was already too long), 2) except it has Joel McHale instead of Titus Burgess, and Curtis Stone (ugh) instead of guest judges, and, 3) Fox is so obsessed now with guessing game shows that they think people will sit on couches watching Crime Scene Kitchen and try to guess desserts based on "crumbs, flour trails and a few elusive clues."
⭐️ I recommend
This show, which is free for Amazon Prime members until the end of the month, as I learned thanks to Margaret Lyons
This story about how documentary series are unnecessarily bloated
This 2014 show, if you haven’t already seen it. Worth the $14 for reality TV’s best example of hybrid scripted and reality
The varied responses to this question I posed on Twitter: “If you had to cancel Survivor, Big Brother, or The Amazing Race, which would you let go, and why?”
Okay, that’s everything for this week! Have a terrific weekend.
best,
Andy
🌄 This is Reality in Focus issue 238, first sent April 9, 2021, and it feels a little dishmantled at the end of this week.
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📷 Photo of trees near Ferchensee lake in Germany by Daniel Seßler