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Dear newsletter friends,
Good morning! Welcome to the first Monday edition of Reality in Focus. You’re getting this preview of the week ahead hours before it goes live on the web, because I appreciate you. (This will eventually be available only to those who are super-special: supporters of this newsletter or reality blurred patrons.)
So, let’s get to it!
It's the last day of September, because this year is evaporating faster than a ghost on paranormal reality show once the camera is pointed at it. Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like Halloween, and quite a few of the more than two dozen reality shows that premiere this week—plus a bunch of documentaries and specials—have Halloween or ghost themes. But many do not!
Let's start with a special, which I don't think I need to describe because its title, The Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Challenge (TLC, Monday, Sept. 30, at 10), does all the work. That said, it did make me imagine people wearing elementary school mummy costumes as wedding gowns. But the opposite is true: just watch the trailer for this special, which Trading Spaces host Paige Davis hosts.
In each episode of Bravo's new social experiment reality show In a Man's World (Bravo, Tuesdays at 10), a woman who's struggled with sexism in her professional life will live as a man (thanks to make-up effects) to see what life is like for men. Read my full review.
The daily lives of eight families with undocumented members facing deportation are the subjects of a new documentary series, Living Undocumented (Netflix, Wednesday).