After reading more of Kai's blog about TBL during her season there, and watching the show more carefully, I'm more convinced that we can't believe that anything is remotely what it seems. It seems that the producers may be behind more of the contestant and trainers behaviors and the outcomes of the challenges and weigh-ins. It almost seems like they thought "wouldn't it be cool, if we have one of the trainers get to pick what seems like the team with a huge advantage, and then have the underdog team win two weeks in a row - wouldn't that be cool?"
Trent was the biggest loser so far, and even tonight they didn't really clarify why he was going home, but his friend pretty much spilled the beans when he mentioned that Trent had to have his knee "worked on." Ah, now this makes sense - and last week makes more sense too, except that the "bait and switch" kept him on another week despite his needing knee surgery?
While I was watching, I channel surfed during commercials and saw that Big Brother House (which I normally wouldn't watch five minutes of) announced that they were pairing up people for Big Brother Couples - and the real hook - the contestants did not know they were being hooked up. A pair of ex-fiances were hooked up. Also a girlfriend and boyfriend were both put on the show and were assigned different partners. The rest were strangers paired up with strangers AND they have to share beds like "real" couples (Two couples per bedroom. I did not get to see whether girlfriend/boyfriend are sharing the same bedroom with different bed partners). So much for the theory that a reality show wouldn't assign co-ed strangers to the same a bedroom.
Reading more about reality shows in general, it seems that you literally can sign away all of your rights against everything but intentional murder. Parents of kid nation particpants promised among other things, not to hold the show responsible if their child became seriously injured, got pregnant, or got an STD on the show (weren't some of those kids like 10?)
I think this is finally the last straw for me. It's going to be hard, because I really want to see what happens next week, but I know that these shows are going to get worse and worse as long as people are watching. The shows keep pushing the envelope and people keep watching. We are going to end up with a Running Man scenario where people watch specifically to see someone die.