Chapter 1: What strategies can help win reality dating shows?
Well, as you know, we are now full-fledged experts on traitors and Dancing with the Stars. But we can still acknowledge that a little outside help will only strengthen our ability to dissect and break down the intricacies of these shows. A little. It'll help a little. It'll help a little. We're kind of experts already.
And so for traders, we've called in a fellow reality TV expert, the co-host of the Game of Roses podcast and the author of How to Win the Bachelor, which, to its credit, has resulted in a winner of The Bachelor.
You've also constantly seen him on your social media feeds as host of The Necessary Conversation, a podcast where he and his fellow liberal sister sit with their MAGA-loving parents to talk about the current political climate, a firecracker show that has become an internet sensation.
But since his own experiences in Hollywood as a writer give him a little behind the scenes leg up on analyzing reality TV, we wanted to dig deep into his feelings on this season of The Traders, which we know includes some very hot takes. So welcome to Podmeets Twirled Trading Places, unscripted TV expert Chad Colchon. Hello, hello. Oh, don't reinterrupting reading time.
I just am engrossed in this book. I would love it if it's your own book. Please tell us it's your own book. Is that a magic card? Is that a Magic the Gathering card? This is. Yes! Do you guys play? Of course! Hell yes, we play! Allow me to move three feet to the left and show you my collection. Wall of collector's boxes. Oh my God. Nice. Yes, dude.
I've been collecting Magic the Gathering cards way too goddamn long at this point. But yeah, I've almost got a full beta set. Ryder taught me how to play Magic the Gathering in the mid-90s in the basement of a hash bar in Amsterdam. Yep. And we've been playing ever since. And do you still have some of your... Those were unlimited cards. Do you still have some of those, Will? You do, right?
I still have my original deck. That's so cool. I still have my original Shiv and Dragon, my original Sarah Angel, all my original Instants and everything. Yeah, I've still got my... That's awesome. Literal original white and red deck. Yeah. This is just a little bird token that I use as a... Or at least in this book, it's my bookmark. Nice. I love it. I love it. Well, we're instantly friends.
Yeah. We're in. Magic is the thing that bonds all. And you're drinking a Trader Joe's purple zesty drink. I am. This one is a black cherry vanilla. It's black cherry vanilla. Oh, please. A fridge full of them, my friend.
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Chapter 2: How does Chad Kultgen analyze reality TV dynamics?
Wow. Well, we're the same people. Now that we've got that out of the way. So you've made a very interesting career out of this sort of this reality TV. But you actually you started as a writer. Am I right? Yeah, and still primarily that's how I make my living. The reality TV thing has been like a bizarre side project. Well, have you ever thought about being on reality TV? Has that ever been?
Yeah. I applied for the civilian traders and hurt nothing back. But my, um, I think my application, like I, I chose a direction and it was basically like, I'm an expert at this and I've been kind of controlling the bachelor franchise from outside of it, unbeknownst to the producers by like sending in players that I'm training secretly. Oh my God. And, uh, I think they didn't like that.
I think they don't want somebody who like kind of knows the game that, that cold. I just see this weird bachelor training camp where they're like, they're weighted roses. So it's like you're working your arm out as you're trying to like, it's like you're doing 50 of those with the Rocky theme song playing in the background, like that kind of thing. I wish.
No, it's much less interesting than that. It basically is just like helping people fill out their applications. I'll, you know, cut their application videos if they want me to. And then once they get into the show, we have about usually two or three weeks to just do a crash course in like mathematically, what are you most likely to encounter? How do you avoid a villain edit?
What do you do if you get embroiled in a rivalry? You know, what do you want out of this game? Do you want a million Instagram followers? Do you actually want to get married? Do you want both, et cetera, et cetera. So, again, knowing nothing whatsoever about The Bachelor at all. Yeah, I've never seen it either.
Do most people go in wanting to get married or are they going in full on just playing, they're playing a game? That's all it is is they're just playing a game. I would say that is the vast majority. Even players that I've coached that are what we call 100% for TRR or for the right reasons.
still understand the immense opportunity that platform offers to to make a million Instagram followers or at least a couple hundred thousand. And then while you have some relevance, when you've just come off of that, whatever season you might be in, you're gonna get SpawnCon deals. And if your numbers are high enough, that can certainly be your job for the next year or two. Wait, what deals?
Oh, SpawnCon, sponsored content, sorry. Right, okay. SpawnCon deals, jeez. So here's what I'm confused by, because I definitely think of winning The Bachelor as getting married, right? Yeah. So do you get more followers by being better on The Bachelor? You mean by being better in what way? You're really about to get the dissertation now. Okay. Because I don't, yeah.
Because I mean, I'm assuming that you're strategizing that you're giving them is like how to be good at the game that they're in, but it's also how to just be a good reality show personality. Yeah. Yes, some of that is accurate.
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Chapter 3: What makes The Traitors stand out among reality shows?
You get to draw three cards. How many swamps do you have to tap to play your PTC? The PTC is... I'll say it like this, I guess. I really think reality TV right now is about where baseball was in the 1910s and 19 teens, where sports writers from all the major cities were looking at baseball, scrutinizing it statistically in a way that had never been done.
And it was sports writers who came up with terms like RBI and ERA that got absorbed into the game itself and changed how teams were made and contracts and all that shit. I think reality TV is kind of there now. Our podcast, Game of Roses, is doing a little bit of this work.
Other podcasts are too, where we're identifying these repeating patterns in the reality shows and seeing the game mechanics of them, taking the statistics. My podcast host on Game of Roses, Lizzie Pace, and I wrote a book called How to Win the Bachelor. It's kind of like the money ball of The Bachelor. Multiple players have been caught reading it in the mansion. Wow.
But the basic idea of the PTC, personal tragedy card, is at some point in any of these games, there will come a time when you are going to be, I won't say forced, but you'll be strongly encouraged to reveal the most traumatic incident that has ever occurred in your life. And then if you play it correctly... You can use it to deflect an attack from a rival.
You can use it to deflect a for-the-wrong-reasons attack that may be coming from a lead, someone like The Bachelor or whatever. But basically use the PTC by playing it, which garners you sympathy. If you can do tier play on top of it, it makes it more for the right reasons.
Then you go through a series of a short narrative that is, this happened to me, here's how it affected me, here's what I've learned from it, and here's why that makes me ready for whatever the premise of the show is you're on. Finding love... It's the whole show is a role playing game. It's an RPG. Yes.
And I would say the ones that are like Bachelor is one that is extremely simple because and this this is prior to what is happening right now. Right now, Bachelor just had a big changing of the guard. This guy, Scott Teddy, took over from Summer House. They were that whole franchise was basically like swirling the toilet. They brought him in to kind of revamp it.
And in a couple, in about a month, I guess, a little more than a month, we're going to have our first bachelorette under his new watch, Taylor Frankie Paul, who is by her own right, a giant social media celebrity. She's the star of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. And they've never cast anyone like this before. And I think that season is going to be fascinating.
How can she be a Mormon wife and a bachelorette? I mean, is mom talk going to survive this? You guys don't watch Secret Lives. Like the whole premise of Secret Lives is it is this group of these Mormon moms who started making TikToks together. Right. And what blew it up is Taylor Frankie Paul, the de facto leader of mom talk. I can't believe I know all this shit. And yet I can. That's so cool.
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Chapter 4: How do contestants prepare for reality TV applications?
She has a couple of different baby daddies. And she's a Mormon? She herself has a very checkered past. Sure. Like they live in Utah and they say they're Mormon wives, but it's like, wait a minute, none of you are going to church or doing anything that's remotely Mormon. Okay, so it's bullshit. I just feel... It's a brand. Listening to you talk, I feel like I'm such like a naive...
innocent me too you know i just don't like i just i'm still like you go on reality shows to make friends and maybe exactly and i think most players are like that and most producers are counting on it right users for most of these shows don't call the players players or the people people they call them subjects um right i would say in my kind of tenure doing this weird side project
I have been given access to various documents. We'll put it that way. Some of them include very long discussions by producers as they're producing a show, as they're doing like a season of a show. And so you get to read in these giant, like, you know, thousand page group chats, how producers actually think about the players.
how they're manipulating them, what they call them behind their back, all of that. And you're just like, okay, I get it. That's the real game. So back to like, what is this game? All reality TV breaks down essentially into what we call the four audiences. And if you are playing in a reality game, you're playing to all four simultaneously. Audience one is the lead or main character of your show.
So if it's a bachelor or bachelorette, it's the bachelor or bachelorette. Right. If it's like a housewives, it's the main housewife. That's the person who's going to keep you in the show or kick you out of the show. They kind of control it. Audience two is the other players. So like on Bachelor or Bachelorette, let's say we all three go in as the dudes dating the Bachelorette.
We are each other's second audience. Right. You both have to play against them and with them. Audience three, arguably the most important, is the producers. They are the ones trying to cause you to have a nervous breakdown on TV for good TV. Right. And then audience four is... Us at home watching you play. In no other sport is it like this, but in reality TV it is.
We decide how much money you make by putting that number next to your head on TikTok and Instagram. Wow. I hate it. But then, hold on, hold on. I'm going to throw the fifth crowd, or fifth audience, because isn't there the critic audience, like people like you, that you're talking, this sort of like fifth estate that's rising up. That's the fourth audience effectively at this point, you know.
It's not like I think what I'm doing is like potentially unique in terms of like infiltrating these games and controlling them to some degree. But I think for the most part, with the advent of like podcasts that talk about reality TV and all this stuff, there's a lot of us now at the same kind of tier that isn't like Nick Viall level.
But we're also like, you know, we're able to monetize and stuff like that. I think there's a lot of us that are affecting how these shows are made or at least the discourse around them. Like producers can't get away with as much as they used to be able to.
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Chapter 5: What are the motivations of reality show contestants?
Well, I mean, you know, it's one of the things that we've talked about because we're going through Traders right now, season four, which I've never seen. Will was convinced that he could win it. So that's kind of the conceit of our podcast right now.
And, you know, one of the things that we've talked about is how ridiculous it is that they even offer money because it doesn't seem like anybody cares. And we're like, to your point, exactly. We're like, it's like a thing. $3,000. And they're like, you made another 7,000. We're like, no one cares. None of these people want, they are here for that money, which is exactly to your point.
They're there for, yeah. That's been a thing that has come out as a result of this season. Carolyn Weiger, who was on season three, she was a survivor player and really popped off in season three. She came out and basically said like, To housewives, $250,000 is meaningless. They're making millions of dollars per season.
But to somebody who came in like third place on Big Brother or something, that's money that can get you through the next year or two. So the disparity of kind of like how much the money means to people is gigantic. And I think the money will obviously mean more in the civilian version, but like- Traders has so many pieces of the game.
It's still a very young show, and none of these shows solidify their formats in the first four seasons. Right. Bachelor notoriously took season four to 12. That's like the experimental era where they were creating group date roses, one on one date roses, first impression rose. None of those game mechanics were in the game until they were invented in those seasons.
So I think traders is kind of going through those growing pains right now. Eventually, I think the challenges will have nothing to do with money. I think it'll be like you're saying, a kind of overall million dollar prize to the winning team. Traders are faithful. And I think the challenges are going to have to start skewing more towards survivor-esque challenges. Exactly.
Individual people going against each other. The winner gets immunity from some kind of banishment. Well, we also talked about, the other thing we talked about was the idea that one of the things you win is a clue to find out who the traitor is. Yeah, exactly. Something that affects the game in some way. Gameplay, right. Yeah, 100%. They have to start doing that.
Another conversation Ryder and I have had over and over and over again, and we both go back and forth on it, frankly, and I'm so curious what you think. Do you think being a reality show contestant takes talent? 100%. Really? Oh my God, yeah. After like coaching people through the casting processes of all these different shows,
I feel like I'm as good as any casting producer at this point in seeing almost immediately if a person can be on reality TV or not. Because all of these shows cast archetypes. You have to be the nerd, the professional, the athlete, the weirdo, the whatever. If you don't fit one of those things, you are never getting on reality television. Period. And there's a bunch of them now.
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Chapter 6: How do audience dynamics influence reality TV gameplay?
Or is it an entertaining reality show about wacky characters? They never know what it is. And so when you see somebody like Mark Ballas, I've watched a bunch of his TikToks where he has like, here's all the notes I took when I was in my hotel room and I was involved in this play and that play and they never show it.
That is the, I think, detrimentally so, the part of Traitors that is like, we're trying to make an entertaining reality show. And so if somebody is playing the game too good, or they express too much of an acumen for being able to detect deceit or whatever, they get cut out of the show. And that's just because the producers think they know what makes a good show. The truth is...
The real version of Traders, in my opinion, the best version of it, would be like a Big Brother type thing, where the players actually do live in that castle, not in a hotel at the airport. And we get to watch them 24 hours a day online. And you cut an hour-long show out of that every week, just like they do in Big Brother.
But for people who really want to see how the game is being played, it's all right there. And I don't know if they'd ever do that, because there's so much... Traders just has a lot of stuff that's not real, like the clocks on the challenges and stuff, you know. Right. Those are fake. So it's like. Wait, what do you mean the clocks on the challenges?
They give them like a time limit to do the challenges. Yeah. That is not real. Wait, so there's no time limit? Do you ever wonder why they always finish the challenge with like three seconds left? It's incredible. Yeah, I've interviewed some people on our Game of Roses show, and that has been corroborated. Chad, you're taking all the mystique away. I'm kidding. You're not at all.
The idea that the reality TV show is fake is not crazy. None of them are, though. Of course, not just at a very base level.
You are looking at one hour of edited content and every shot in it, every music choice, everything you're seeing and hearing is put in there for a very specific reason, either to conceal the truth or reveal the truth or entertain you or make you afraid or sad or whatever the case may be. But you're never seeing everything. And so it can never actually be real.
Has there ever in the history of television been a real reality show? Big Brother, I think, is the closest because those feeds are available. You can literally watch all their camera feeds in that house 24 hours a day if you want online. The program they present or the document they present is obviously like a drastically edited down version to fit network TV hour time slot.
But I would say Big Brother is like... But I don't know. I mean, you look at it like, are we going back in history here? Reality TV technically started in 1945, I believe, with Candid Camera. Yeah. You go up through the 70s, and you're looking at This American Family on PBS. Yep. Wow. I mean, that was kind of a first of its kind, certainly, and it was doing very innovative things.
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Chapter 7: What are the flaws in the current reality TV game formats?
Traders, for sure. The celebrity one, for sure. OK, you should 100 percent apply. And I mean, whatever. I know you shouldn't even apply. You should be reaching out to whoever, you know, NBC and getting on the show. There's no real application for the celebrity one. But of course. And if you do, let me know. Well, you've also yeah. Well, you've also mentioned this a number of times now.
I'm so curious. What does an application for a reality show look like? You just have to do a video, right? Yeah. For traders, like for the civilian one, it's essentially one question. It's like name, address, blah, blah, blah, job. But then it's one question. Do you want to be a trader or faithful and why? And then you have to put a picture, full body length picture, headshot, and a little video.
And that's it. Wow. So, I mean, and that's another, and you put your social media handles and stuff too. That's kind of like a very common thing that I coach most people to do is like go through your Instagram and archive everything except what makes the producers understand what you will look like in their show.
So if you're going into bachelor, it's like, I want to see some pictures of you in cocktail dresses. I want to see some pictures of you in like athletic wear. Cause you'll invariably be on a group date. That's like a sporting event. Um, pictures of you in like, a hoodie, what you'll wear in the morning for those shots after they wake up from night one.
It's basically like, just look at what is in the show, recreate it in some pictures and make that all that's on your Instagram when you apply for the show, because the producers will look at your Instagram. Same thing for traders.
If you want to be on traders, you know, have a couple of shots of you and the athletic stuff that you're going to be wearing for the challenges, have a couple of shots and what you're going to wear to a round table, get some dark lighting, some mood lighting, couple of candles, glass of wine, over the top breakfast gear. Yeah, salmon.
So what happens if you're like me and you have no social media? Will you ever be cast? You have a podcast. That would be hard. Yeah, I mean, a podcast is social media, but I think for the celebrity one, you do need some kind of a public profile. Okay. So interesting. Cause I have no Instagram, no Twitter or whatever the hell it's called now. I literally have no public profile whatsoever.
I mean, maybe they would though. Look, I don't know. I think as a result of the Colton Underwood thing, I think what you're going to see in the next few seasons of the celebrity traders, and this is bearing out in the people that are getting calls right now for the next season, in my opinion. I just think it's going to be squeaky clean.
There's not going to be anybody with a restraining order cast like Michael Rappaport. There's not going to be anybody who stalked their co-star on another reality show like Colton Underwood. And so maybe having no social media footprint at all is actually a good thing in that regard. You know what I mean? So how did they get cast if they have these backgrounds?
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Chapter 8: What innovative ideas could reshape reality TV shows?
And there were two others that I now cannot remember for the life of me, but you think it just made for a boring, a more boring season or less dynamic. Uh, I, I mean, no, I don't mind it, I guess. I just like, for me, The Traitors is really like the mixed martial arts of reality television, where you get to see, like, housewives discipline versus survivor discipline versus Bachelor.
And I'm like, I want to see which of those games trains players to do this weird thing together better. And I think Bachelor does, like... Bachelor basically is just a game of detecting deception. That's the whole thing. And so I think when Bachelor players come in there, they're like... People are like, oh, they just... try to find love on reality TV, and they way underestimate them.
And it's like, no. Pilot Peter Weber has the things those producers put him through has hardened that motherfucker, and he is going to run this game. I just love that shit. But in Colton Underwood's case, so do you guys know the story of what happened on his season? I do. I...
kind of vaguely know that at the end it got very bad with him and whoever he picked or yes i can give you a in my head i'm like i can give you a quick breakdown of it and i'm like this is going to take 20 minutes okay this is the basic breakdown of colton underwood he is a top three finisher on his season of the bachelorette his bachelorette was this woman named becca kufrin Oh, I'm sorry.
So he wasn't the star. It wasn't The Bachelor. He was after that. But how he got the job as The Bachelor was, it was up to him and the guys who finished, or he was top four, sorry. And the guys, two other guys who finished in the top three with him were both like super viable candidates to be The Bachelor. Supposedly the story is per his own telling.
He walked into Mike Fleiss, the creator of The Bachelor's office and said, I know you're talking to these other two guys, but I'll do anything you want. I'll give you the best TV you can imagine. And they gave him the job. Kind of the rumor is many of the producers knew that he was likely a closeted gay man, and they were hoping to induce a nervous breakdown on camera. Oh, God. Shit.
Which they did do. In his season, he performed an act. This was also an executive producer, Alon Gales, last season on that show. He was kind of the mastermind of the whole franchise for a while. He created Bachelor in Paradise.
he got colton underwood basically so flustered at one point that he runs into the night and jumps over this fence and that moment is collectively known as the fence jump amongst all of us in the fourth audience and uh chris harrison is then sent out into the night colton colton like yelling for him and and it was wild right um so that season ends he has this ring winner named cassie randolph
it kind of ends in like a muddy are we together he dumps two of his other candidates so there's like no final rose ceremony exactly it was kind of like a mess of an end of a season structurally but um after they rotate out of the show that relationship starts to fall apart he begins stalking her He puts a tracking device on her car.
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