Today’s Tuned In poll idea comes courtesy of time.com editor Josh Tyrangiel, and it’s appropriate for the morning after American Idol, Top Chef and Survivor. The headline says it all: Which reality show does the best job of kicking participants off and why?
Just in some of reality’s most popular shows, there are a wide range of approaches:
* Survivor, in which by extinguishing the torch—”fire represents life”—Jeff Probst figuratively kills the contestant.
* American Idol, which, idiotically or ingeniously, has the eliminated singer perform again, getting millions of Americans to happily sit through their least favorite performance they already saw the night before. Cruel yet sappy, the send-off is almost performance-art-like in its zeal to prove that Americans really will watch anything.
* Bravo’s Magical Elves reality shows (Runway, Top Chef, et al.), with their curt, job-interview-like efficiency. (Though I hope Top Design rethinks its farewell, “See ya later, decorator!”)
* The Bachelor/ette, in which (and I admittedly haven’t followed the show for a couple seasons), the cameras follow the rose-less ejectee in the hope that she will have a breakdown in the limo.
* America’s Next Top Model, which like everything ANTM, is chiefly about Tyra, in this case, how supportive and comforting she can be to a model whom she’s just torn apart in the judging.
&c. I’m sure you’ve got more favorites. Mine? I have to pick The Joe Schmo Show, in which guests on the fictional show Lap of Luxury were ejected as the host threw a commemorative plate into the fireplace (“Ashes to ashes / Dust to dust / [Your name here] You are dead to us.” The show was a parody, of course, so I’m cheating. Go ahead, vote me off.