Project Runway is in its villain era • BB27 recaps • WTF, Captain Kerry?
My Project Runway review, rib-cracking laughter from The Round Table Game Show, my thoughts on Big Brother, a debate flashback, and more!
Dear newsletter friends,
I had a good laugh this week, the kind where I laugh and then laugh more and pretty soon I cannot breathe and then I keep laughing and I’m pretty sure I might die but no I’m just laughing. 😂
The TikTok algorithm introduced me to clips from The Round Table Game Show, which has been producing viral episodes for a year now.
It’s a group of women who are friends and comedians trying to make each other laugh with hilarious, crude, and/or extremely offensive jokes.
If they laugh, they’re out. That’s the part that makes me laugh, watching them react, try to hold in their laughter, and sometimes eventually break.
Watch clips here or full episodes here.
A few recent favorites—and warning, these are NSFW! one, two, three, four, five, six
I hope they give you a fraction of the much-needed moment of joy they give me. 😀
🏚️ Big Brother
All my BB27 recaps now have a home! As I explain there, I’m not recapping every episode; I saw the results of last night’s Battle of the Block and then just decided to skip it! It’s fun being a casual this season. 🥳
This week’s recaps:
🧵 Reviews and recaps
Project Runway
Project Runway has entered its villain era — and it’s great!
Coming later today: My recap of Project Runway episode three
Below Deck
True crime:
🤬 Ask Andy about Andy Cohen + a flashback
In the latest Ask Andy:
My rage toward Andy Cohen and other questions, answered
P.S. I wrote this before I read about the news below
Elsewhere in Andy news:
And finally: This summer was the 25th anniversary of reality blurred, but I recently remembered that it was also 25 years ago this summer I flew to Minneapolis and then drove to a tiny town in northern Minnesota to compete in a debate broadcast live on C-SPAN.
I posted a photo from it—I barely recognize that child 😅—and discovered the video of the broadcast still exists, should you have three hours, 14 minutes of time to fill.
I looked and The Great American Think-Off is still ongoing; it’s no longer on C-SPAN, but on YouTube!
🗓️ Reality TV premieres
New reality TV shows and seasons include new seasons of Forged in Fire, The Great Food Truck Race, and Bering Sea Gold. Plus, three sports shows: Hard Knocks, which focuses on the Buffalo Bills; SEC: Any Given Saturday, which follows college teams; and Necaxa, which follows a football club in Mexico
For docs and specials, we have documentaries about the murders of two teenagers, the robbery of the Diamond Center in Antwerp, and a doc about JFK, Jr.
💬 Comments of the week
On this American Ninja Warrior news, Brad wrote:
I appreciate the fact that you're not totally eliminated if you lose just one race, but the racing permutations went on and on, and it quickly became totally monotonous and uninteresting viewing.
I complained about Bravo forcing me to record Watch What Happens, and Rose wrote:
Regarding the #1 answer about Andy Cohen's question, they aren't the only ones who do that and it's maddening. House Hunters sometimes will make the episode an hour when they are actually 2 episodes--2 different locations, and I am usually only interested in watching 1.
Other shows do it too, make you watch 2 hours at once when it should be broken up into 2 separate hours as they are 2 separate episodes. TLC is guilty of it. Can't think of others.
🗞️ Reality TV news
Show news:
American Ninja Warrior is returning and expanding (the wrong thing)
Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, a one-hour film drawn from footage shot over three years for a reality series, will air on BBC Monday, Aug. 17, BBC said.
BBC is investigating cocaine use by cast members on Strictly Come Dancing, BBC News reported. Meanwhile, the host of BBC's The Repair Shop, Jay Blades, was "charged with two counts of rape," BBC News reported, and, as The Independent reported, was in court Tuesday due to unrelated charges, which he "denied[, of] engaging in controlling or coercive behaviour towards his estranged wife."
People news:
Kenley Collins, who placed third on Project Runway season 5, called Andy Cohen "a racist predator" in an Instagram video. Pride reports that, on set of the Bravo show back in 2008, Kenley says Andy Cohen was "propositioning designers to have a threesome" and "was disgusting, horrible, worst, predator with the gays, hopping around the set like, ‘Hey Twinks!" In a subsequent post, Kenley said, "I’m not stopping. There is more to come."
Survivor: Palau’s Jolanda Jones—who's running for Congress—is one of the Texas legislators who fled the state to prevent its governor from gerrymandering congressional districts to create more Republican seats and try to prevent Donald Trump and his minions from losing the House next year.
Texas governor Greg Abbott whined about having Jolanda and other lawmakers arrested or replaced, but Jolanda told The Hill, "He knows that we’re using a tool that was given to us by the founders of the Texas Constitution. He knows what the rules are and he’s trying to manipulate the situation to make it play in his favor. It’s not going to work."
Jolanda told BlackPressUSA in an interview that the redistricting "is about racism. This is about taking Black folks back to before we had voting rights and before we had the Civil Rights Act. ... The only way they get the five seats that Trump wants is if they go find Black people and Brown people where they are concentrated in Houston and Dallas and crack our communities and put us in districts with a whole bunch of white folks. It’s that simple."
Someone at ABC must have threatened to lock Golden Bachelor Mel Owens away in Shady Pines retirement home, because he's given an extended interview to Glamour about how sorry he is for saying he'd reject any woman over 60. (Mel is 66.) He says he figured out he had to apologize because a 65-year-old friend called him. I guess it's okay to have friends over 60? Anyway, he's filming now and already destroyed his goodwill so hopefully he'll pick a woman under 60 and she'll say, Surprise, I'm 61, and I don't date ageist pricks!
🤩 I recommend
Revisiting this episode of Survivor Borneo, which aired 25 years ago and shocked those of us who were super-online ❌
Hope you can start your weekend with a laugh or some reality TV.
Thanks for having me in your inbox, and I’ll see you next week!
best,
Andy
🌄 This is issue 430 of reality blurred’s weekly newsletter, first sent on 8 August 2025, and it’s going to go watch more Round Table Game Show clips now.