Jeff Probst dreams, Carla Hall costumes, and why Disney and Below Deck are sinking
Dear newsletter friends,
Happy Carla Hall season!
I’m trying to enjoy the seasonal changes in the world and on TV, which include Carla Hall’s weekly, amazing costumes. Because, well, it’s been a week, again.
This morning, the Television Critics Association—the organization I’m honored to lead—spoke out against Disney’s capitulation to the Trump administration, just the latest in a series of damage done to a free press, all in the name of billionaires getting richer and protecting a weak, joke of an unpopular president with a teeny-tiny, fragile ego.
Back to fun things…
This week we learned Jeff Probst wants to be on The Traitors! Universe/NBCUniversal, make this happen immediately!!
Also this week, I ran out of time to watch and review the new Netflix show Next Gen Chef, which I’m excited to check out.
But I do have a bunch of great recaps and reviews and news for you, so let’s get to those.
🫠 Reviews
Reviews of contestants based on very little information 😅:
🍪 Recaps
The Great British Bake-Off
- Episode 2: Biscuit Week was a little soft
Big Brother
Dancing with the Stars
Bobby’s Triple Threat
- Season 4, episode 2: Joe Schmo: Voltaggio edition was the best of a still-bad show
Below Deck
- Episode 16: Rather than recap the rather repetitive finale, I wrote a longer piece about this season, with some finale references: Why Below Deck was such a wreck
🗓️ Reality TV premieres
This week’s reality premieres include the first of the Halloween shows: Halloween Baking Championship and Scariest House in America; The Weakest Link, now on Fox and with celebrities; and new seasons of Love Island Games (with Solene) and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
This week’s docs and specials include a new chapter in The Case Against Adnan Syed, which follows Adnan as he’s released from prison; and Black Snow, in which a local journalist investigates deadly fumes in homes, prompting the government to cover it up.
💬 Comments of the week
On my Below Deck review, Andrew wrote:
Stick a fork in it, this show is done.
Originally it was people who worked on a boat & they accidentally became reality tv stars. Now it’s just people who want to be reality tv stars (not) working on a boat. Losing capt. Lee was the beginning of the end and no matter what you thought of Capt. Sandy’s management style she at least acted like a captain but even that has now gone by the wayside, she was all about herself the last season & it’s only going to get worse now she’s had a taste of it.
On this recap, Cookie wrote:
What I love is the banter on the sofa between these three. Ayesha’s humor surprised me, and that’s because I’ve only seen her judge Beat Bobby Flay, which judges judge on food taste and not according to the dish or origin.
🗞️ Reality TV news
Show news:
People news:
- Davis Mallory—who you may remember from his racist tirade on The World Denver—said he's no longer gay because "God really pulled me out of that lifestyle a year ago." 🙄
- Shirley Chung gave an update on her recovery, writing that she's "feeling confident about my speech, taste is back 90%, slowly easing back to work while taking care of myself is still the priority," and that she's "Returned back to filming; started a new project."
- In this great interview, BenDeLaCreme talks about self-eliminating from RuPaul's Drag Race ("one of the most satisfying things I've ever had the opportunity to do") and how to play the game ("You need to win it by succeeding at making the TV show what they need").
- The "star" of Netflix doc The Tinder Swindler -- which launched a "spin-off" series recently -- got arrested earlier this week for stealing $50,000 from yet another victim. ...Allegedly. —SDB
- Per the (gift-linked) New York Times, "Ruth Paine...who in 1963 opened her modest ranch-style house in a Dallas suburb to Marina Oswald and, to a lesser extent, her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the months before he was arrested and charged with killing President John F. Kennedy, died on Aug. 31 in Santa Rosa, Calif. She was 92." —SDB
🤩 I recommend
- Watching Jeff Probst’s Emmy presentation
- Reading Hamsterwatch’s wild story about Facebook theft, with a hilarious twist
- Taskmaster, on YouTube, legal and free outside the UK!
That’s everything from me. Enjoy the rest of your day and week!
best,
Andy
P.S. If you like what I do here, maybe throw a tip in the tip jar? (Confession: it’s not an actual 🫙, but a digital thing. Same idea, though!)
🌄 This is issue 436 of reality blurred’s weekly newsletter, first sent on 19 Sept. 2025, and it is ready to cancel Disney+.