Here for the Right Reasons
Yes, this is about reality TV for once
When The Bachelor franchise — arguably one of the reigning champions of reality television — first aired in 2002, social media as we know it today didn’t exist. People may have been going on the show to be on TV instead of to find love, but they definitely weren’t going on to become Instagram/TikTok influencers. But how times have changed, and I’m measuring this by the amount of times I have been minding my own business when Caelynn Miller-Keyes or Hannah Godwin (both contestants on season 23 of The Bachelor) have tried to sell me Fabletics or Lancôme makeup, respectively. Those ladies can make the most soothing videos while trying to get me to spend $150 on a face cream that will sit forgotten in the back of my bathroom drawer for years and you know what? That’s talent. But it’s also taken away from the show. It’s hard to tell whether or not someone is there because they want to find love or want to be on TV or want to be the next brand ambassador for a soon-to-be-big-in-LA-only salad kit company.
In other words, no one knows whether someone is “here for the right reasons,” a phrase that’s become so ubiquitous in the Bachelor franchise that the US Weekly Bachelor podcast is called “Here For The Right Reasons” and there’s a Jodi McAlister book about romance on a dating show with the same name. Whether or not someone is “here for the right reasons” is of course a question in nearly every reality show now, from Vanderpump Rules to Are You The One. But who gets to decide what the right reason is?
On a recent Saturday, I found myself doing something I haven’t done since the dark days of the pandemic: Deliriously hitting “next episode” over and over again in some sort of trance until 3 A.M. The show that possessed me to stay up until the wee hours of morning, half moons forming under my eyes as I developed the type of headache you can only get from staring at a screen in dark, wasn't the latest season of True Detective or an old favorite like Law and Order or even The Gilded Age. It was The Trust: A Game of Greed, another one of Netflix’s silly reality shows — one that mixes aspects from competition shows like Squid Game: The Challenge and Love Island, and turns the “here for the right reasons” question on its head.
The premise of the show, which hit Netflix in January, is that 11 strangers from very different backgrounds are offered $250,000 total. Unlike most competition shows, they don’t have to fight for the money; it’s already theirs to split. As the host Brooke Baldwin1 — who was an anchor at CNN for more than 10 years before she left in 2021 and decided reality TV was a better option (given the state of the media industry, shall I do the same?) — says early on, all the participants start as winners and they can leave as winners, as long as they share. As you can imagine, they do not share.
In every episode there is a “trust ceremony” during which the contestants tell Baldwin and no one else whether they would like to continue to share the pot or to vote someone off the show, increasing everyone else’s share. People who choose to vote then tell Baldwin who they want to oust. If only one person chooses to vote, whoever they pick gets kicked out. The voting is secret but people talk, so there were some instances when people would vote just to potentially block another vote they thought would happen. In between the ceremonies they play games that obviously cause chaos (ex. during one they are given a secret and they have to guess whose secret is whose. One of the secrets is that someone there is already a millionaire which causes people to lose their minds.) They’re also sometimes sent alone or with one other person to “the vault” in which they’re given two offers: one that benefits them but hurts the group, and one that benefits the group. They don’t have to tell anyone else what they decide to do during the trust ceremonies or in the vault. But they can. Or they can lie.
They really did get a cast of characters for this, I’ll give them that. There’s a 22-year-old realtor, a 70-year old retiree, a rancher from Texas, a marketing manager who immigrated from Nigeria, a military contractor and an unemployed mother among them. Whether they choose to trust one another to split the money, lie, build alliances or keep to themselves and hope for the best, they all approach the game — and money — very differently. But they ended up divided into two categories.
Just reading the description of the The Trust you would assume that being there “for the right reason” means competing to take home a large sum of cash — and that’s what some of the contestants are there to do. But (from here on out, spoiler warning) there’s one crew of allies that gets bigger and bigger as the show goes on who are “there for the group.” They claim that their ideal outcome is no one votes, everyone goes home with their equal share. The most prominent members of said crew are 33-year old teacher Gaspare Randazzo, 37-year old military contractor Jake Chocholous and 42-year-old rancher Brian Firebaugh, all of whom drove me absolutely nuts. They spend the entire time making sermon-like toasts about how all the contestants need to stick together, stay strong, etc.
“Don’t go into this situation using fear or some kind or insecurity,” Chocholous, who dubs himself the leader of the group if that tells you anything, says before the first trust ceremony. “We’re all here for each other. So let’s start this as a family and let’s leave this as a family.”
They’ve known one another for less than 24 hours at this point. Why, when they all have loved ones at home — many of whom need money — would they put these strangers first? But the “family” language quickly devolves into a question of who is moral and who is not, pitting these sharing evangelists against first all the women, then eventually the two Black women in the house, Tolú Ekundare and Winnie Ileso, a 26-year-old marketing manager and 31-year-old bartender, respectively. Being there “for the right reasons” no longer means being there for money; it means being there for sharing money. And of course I do not believe this was actually the intention of these three men, much like I don’t think many of the women who claim to be on The Bachelor to find love actually want to have to spend the rest of their lives with Pilot Pete. But the actual “right reasons” for being on a reality show and the perceived “right reasons” don’t always go hand in hand. Nor do I believe that there is one right reason to be on a reality show to begin with.
Ekundare and Ileso become fast friends. Along with Julie Theis, they’re pretty open with the audience about why they’re there: money. They’re down to team up but at the end of the day they came on a reality competition show to win some cash. Theis opens up throughout the show about growing up poor. Ekundare talks about how her parents came to the U.S. with nothing, and how she wants to bring the money home to them. To be fair, all the contestants seem to have good reasons for wanting the cash. Firebaugh, for instance, wants to prove he’s financially stable so he can adopt a child his family has been fostering.
But when Theis and Firebaugh are given an enticing offer that could benefit themselves but hurt the group, Theis takes the money while Firebaugh says “my integrity is not for sale.” The title of the episode resonates: “Selfishness is NOT Black & White.”
“People like me don’t always get offers,” Theis says when she takes the money. “If you come from where I came from, to reject an offer is stupid because life isn’t fair outside of here and it’s not equal.” To me, this was a smart move because you would think everyone else is doing the same thing — as they should! This is a reality TV competition show literally about getting money! But of course, the decision comes back to bite Theis when she’s forced to reveal what she did, and the men are able to once again question her morality.
Is the “right reason” to be there to share a collective pot of money? Is it to earn big on your own? Is it none of those things?
Theis now has nearly 35,000 followers on Instagram and she, and many of her counterparts on the show, will probably get offered brand deals and partnerships. While the reality-tv-to-influencer pipeline may not be as lucrative as it once was, we’ve reached a strange moment where so many “influencers” are famous and at the same time, none of them really are. There are thousands of Instagram and TikTok influencers who have made a job out of their posting thanks to a type of respect for this “fame” that was not around in the early aughts. If someone gets on a popular reality TV show, they have a pretty good chance at benefiting from brand deals. And that’s a shame for reality TV. It was much more fun to watch someone earnestly looking for love or even earnestly seeking fame. Maybe we’re a little sick for that, since we know this kind of striving will likely end in disappointment or desperation.
The question of whether someone is “here for the right reasons,” is stupid and shallow in the context of a reality show. There’s nothing inherently or morally better about being on The Bachelor to find love in a truly hopeless place (I mean… there’s only one man! Even Tinder gives you better odds than that) or to find a brand deal. But it’s also not an irrelevant question. It comes up in our everyday lives all the time and perhaps viewing it through the reality TV lens, we start to see it rings just as hollow. In any job interview, employers will ask you why you want this job, and the expectation is for you to talk about how much you love the company and their growth opportunities and their work culture, speaking in circles so you don’t have to mention the real reason you’re there: you need the money. Even in a social context, I’ve often forced myself out on a Saturday night because I feel like it’s what I should do instead of because I actually wanted to be at a bar or a party.
What is the right reason to be anywhere? It’s a far more philosophical question than I think any reality TV contestant intends it to be.
As more reports are coming out about how horribly some of these reality shows treat their contestants, of course the “reason” anyone would want to come on that sort of hellscape is because it might jumpstart their influencer business or benefit them financially in some way. Yet we beg them to perform for us, to let us exploit their deepest, most earnest desires, concealing this kind of bloodlust with a morality complex. It’s telling that even The Trust, a show that SHOULD allow contestants to be completely transparent about their financial motivations, becomes a morality play in the end, a social experiment about collectivism versus individualism. But the reason that those “pro-sharing” men sound pious and condescending instead of righteous is because there can be no “right reason” for existing in a system that’s already corrupt, whether it’s the behind the scenes drama about how little all reality stars get paid or the cruel outside world putting contestants like Theis in a position where they’d do anything to have that extra dollar.
The irony is that for all this “family” language, the only two people who seem to have really formed a meaningful bond that they will carry with them outside of this experience are Ekundare and Ileso. Watching their friendship strengthen was one of the best parts of The Trust. So it’s too bad that in the end, they’re made to feel less than simply because they want money… on a show all about getting money.
In a smug conclusion, Firebaugh tells Ekundare, “you deserve to be here,” as if he is the moral figure who gets to dole out acceptance as he sees fit.
“Tolú has very much grown in this experience,” Firebaugh says in a confessional. “I look at her and she is a beaming light.” That may be true, but “tHe rEaSoN” behind her glow sure isn’t because she decided to split a pot of gold with some strangers she’ll never see again.
B Plot
Question: What’s a reality TV show you think you would do well on?
Mallika: I couldn’t be on a reality dating show because I know I would simply not say one word and get sent home the first night. So I think it would be best that I go on a show in which I could mind my own business like Netflix’s Alone. On this show, survivalists compete to live off the land until there is only one standing (to be clear, the losers don’t die — they just call Netflix and say “take me home.”) If Leonardo DiCaprio could sleep in an animal carcass that one time, so can I.
Rachel: I would also not make it on a dating reality show. I would be so embarrassed and I would have to do my own makeup and my foundation wouldn’t perfectly match my skin tone and the lighting guys would do me soooo dirty. I also don’t wear string bikinis which seems essential. They would not be having it with my high rise swim suit bottoms no matter HOW flattering. Anyway, I think I could maybe survive on The Real World. Would I be having the worst time of my life? Absolutely. An Airbnb with 12+ people is the definition of my personal hell. But I think I’d be so mentally unwell I’d be inadvertently starting so much drama in the house and DISHING it out on the confessionals. So the producers would love me and I would at least feel accomplished. Also despite having no fashion design background, I think I would have a blast on Project Runway. Starting every episode running through the fabric store? Doing those wacky challenges where I’d have to make a dress out of like candy wrappers? Heidi Klum would be singing my praises and I would be eating it up. I truly think society as a whole took a dive when that show left the air.
C Plot
If Sharp Objects has 100 fans, we are two of them. If Sharp Objects has two fans, they are us. If Sharp Objects has no fans, we are dead. So you can bet we are celebrating the fact that HBO is adapting another Gillian Flynn novel, Dark Places. Flynn (who also wrote Gone Girl) will serve as co-creator, writer, and co-showrunner on the upcoming series, which we hope is much better than the 2015 adaption of the book starring Charlize Theron that nobody saw. Now how are they going to get the messenger bag in there…
Idris Elba is returning for Hijack season two, according to Apple TV. Considering Mallika watched the first season in less than 24 hours, we’re seated. We hope this goes on for a million seasons in which Idris is on a hijacked train, a hijacked boat, a hijacked bike, a hijacked writers room a la True Detective season four where the show creator Nic Pizzolatto shit the bed for two seasons and is now extra salty that a woman (Issa López) has taken the reins and made something more exciting.
In since deleted social media posts, Pizzolatto wrote that the new season’s callbacks to season one are “so stupid,” and told one fan, “I certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else. Can’t blame me.” Reader, True Detective season four has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Season two got 47%. We think what Nic meant to say was you can’t blame him for the absence of Alexandria Daddario’s tits.
Everyone who is sooooo mad at Larry David for pummeling Elmo on live TV let’s maybe remember when that lil red puppet laughed his friend Zoe into an oblivion while making fun of her pet rock. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out (and that is what we learned on Sesame Street).
After playing a district attorney on the OG Law & Order, Sam Waterston is saying goodbye to the NYPD. He is being replaced by OUR president Tony Goldwyn. We hope this character makes as many bananas decisions as his character in Scandal did …never forgot when the president of the U.S. was willing to save “F U” to the entire country so he could save Olivia Pope from kidnappers. Iconic.
If you can believe it, I was initially going to write an essay on what makes a good reality TV show host, arguing that Brooke’s interviewing skills from her years as a journalist brought so much to The Trust because she was able to bring out the contestants’ real, raw emotions. But I shall dunk on Nick and Vanessa Lachey another day.