Amazing Race pit stops • 2025's first great holiday show • Don't Date Brandon!!
Dear newsletter friends,
Happy Halloween! 🎃
I’m not much an adult Halloween person, besides the candy part. However, this year, I did come up with a fun costume idea. (Or maybe “fun”. 😆)
Besides all the recaps and reviews I have for you, I took a deep dive into a reader’s question: What do Amazing Race teams do after elimination and at pit stops?
After I wrote that, this week’s TAR episode included the detail that a boyfriend (Tucker) and girlfriend (Rubina) who are on opposing teams had no idea if the other was still in the race the next day.
That tells you about how locked down players are in-between legs—and why, for at least one Amazing Race alum, the experience was frustrating, sitting in hotel rooms and not being able to go out and explore.
Then there’s the crew, racing around to set things up and move the production around the world. Reality TV can look glamorous, but the reality is often less so!
For more of that, check out my season one oral history, where people who were there talk about everything we didn’t see.
🙅♀️ Reviews
😍 Recaps
🧂 The Amazing Race
👻 Dancing with the Stars
🥗 Below Deck Med
☀️ Survivor
🗓️ Reality TV premieres
This week’s reality TV premieres include new seasons of Ink Master, Ghost Adventures, and Selling Sunset; and international series Physical: Asia, Naked And Afraid Brazil XL and Rhythm + Flow France.
Specials and docs premiering this week Love is Blind: The Reunion; real-life Halloween horror in the form of docs about Aileen Wuornos, the Boston Strangler, the DC sniper, a bad boyfriend named Brandon, and a kidnapper who pretended Bigfoot did it; and the docs Country Doctor, Chasing the Plague, and Superfloods.
🎧 My podcast
This week, I shared a system for organizing and prioritizing your life and how that connects to a cancelled show that one producer single-handedly revived.
💬 Comments of the week
On my Below Deck Med recap, Zee wrote:
OMG I will never unhear the waffle poop story now that your link MADE ME click through and listen. 🤣
On this Project Runway news, Kristoffer wrote,
I actually like that idea of bringing Tim back and making Christian a judge. I liked this season but did notice that there was more time spent with the designers having issues with each other and less time for them to design.
🗞️ Reality TV news
Dancing with the Stars’ ratings are wild: double Survivor and four times The Voice—and they aren’t all olds! “15 percent of its ABC viewership is adults under 35, up from 9 percent a year ago,” Joe Adalian reports, noting that the show made a “decision to lean in on Gen-Z tastes.” Our recapper Marshal noted this very thing in his first recap!
Holey Moley producers Eureka Productions just started production on The Golden Ticket for Netflix. The Willy Wonka reality TV show is being filmed in Australia, at the Village Roadshow Studios in the Gold Coast, and Netflix said the game "will challenge players not just physically, but mentally as they navigate games, tests, and temptations designed to probe their instincts, resilience, and ability to thrive in chaos."
NBC’s holiday programming will include not one but two Jimmy Fallon shows, including Jimmy Fallon’s Holiday Seasoning Spectacular. I guess we’re being punished this Christmas?
Selling Sunset’s producer Adam DiVello says “It’s a hundred percent real”—except for, and this is a direct quote, the “stuff we have to reshoot.” 🙄
Reality TV producer Devin McGovern, who’s worked on shows such as Bar Rescue and Chasing Flavor, edited his family vacation footage into a reality TV show trailer.
He told People his goal was to “share a real experience, because it’s not just sunshine and rainbows all the time — parenting in general.” I think the first Instagram comment says it all: “Is this a contraception ad?” (Yes.)
🤩 I recommend
This explainer about something that affects 1 in 8 Americans
Have fun with your extra hour this weekend, unless you’re in one of those fun places that just ignores Daylight Saving Time!
best,
Andy
🌄 This is issue 442 of reality blurred’s weekly newsletter, first sent on 31 Oct. 2025, and it’s going to go find some candy corn.