On last night’s season finale of Face Off, the reasonably entertaining special effects makeup competition reality show on SyFy, we got to see one of the most common cliches of such shows… the eliminated contestants coming back and being helpers for the finalists.
I’ve always wondered… is there an incentive for these people to try at all? Do the helpers of whoever wins get a prize or reward of any sort? Also, where have they been this entire time? Did they just hang out in a hotel on SyFy’s dime for a few weeks while the intervening episodes were filmed?
Most reality show competitions try to bang out as many episodes in as short a period of time as possible both to keep costs down and because working contestants to exhaustion makes for fun television. So if you have 10 episodes and each takes place over two days, that’s 20 days total from start to finish. So not a huge amount of time. They’re probably contractually obligated to remain there the whole time anyway and know that upfront so every contestant has already cleared off the full shooting schedule from their calendars (which is no problem as every contestant assumes he or she will be the one lasting the entire time anyway).
As for why they’d come back, it’s a combination of a few things:
Money (they probably get paid scale per day)
Face-time (they’re all looking for jobs and the more their name gets out there (especially as a team player) the better a chance they have).
#4: Contractual requirement? I suspect some shows may build various penalties into their contracts to ensure that people show up and play more-or-less nice even after they’ve been “voted off.”
I think it was actually on the FaceOff series premiere where two guys were actually reprimanded for not playing well together. They blamed each other for the failure during the unveiling before a judge said anything. The judges said, “This is the big time. You don’t choose who you work with, your employer does. You NEED to work well with anybody and everybody…” So I think that for many contestants it is the need to show that you can be creative but you can also take someone else’s directions put your own spin on it and make it fantastic. So I think the final episode enables them to highlight their plays-well-with-others ability. This goes for the food and baking shows too.
As for why they do it on Celebrity Apprentice, that is just about more screen time to keep relevant to TMZ.
Is there any reason they can’t actually go home? After all, for Face Off, the contestants are all housed in one big house, and as they are eliminated they leave the house. Is Face Off simultaneously paying for a second big house to keep the rejects? Or sending them home, and then calling them back for the specific dates of the finale? I would suggest the latter.
If you are eliminated, as long as you keep the scheduled dates for the followups clear, you should be free to make other work arrangements or personal plans.
On the last season of All-American Handyman, the remaining contestants got to choose which former contestant would help them with their final project. There were a few folks who you knew would never get picked (some of the first to be sent home), and it seemed kind of harsh/mean for them to have to sit there and watch everyone else. Though who knows, by then maybe they were relieved.
Going home early would telegraph to your friends and family that you are NOT the winner. I am pretty sure they are all under contract to NOT to reveal the winner or any spoilers at all. Depends on the lag time between filming and airing, I guess.
Yeah, I don’t believe for a moment they didn’t want that to happen. They didn’t even actually chastise her, let alone punish her. I would have refused to watch after that, if I’d seen it. Heck, I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it now.
Good point. I forgot about the lag time between filming and airing. We’re watching things play out on a weekly basis often after the whole season has been filmed.
I’m not sure what you think they should have done. Replace her mid event? She was already an eliminated contestant, right? Or was this earlier in the process, when she’s still a competitor?
I think getting in her face on camera, calling her out for being “leisurely”, and commenting that that usually results in losing, is a form of chastisement. Perhaps not as direct as saying “step it up or you go home, too”, but definitely a call out.
Wanted to mention, since Face Off started the thread, I saw the finale episode challenge. At first, Roy was having trouble getting in the right mindset. He was annoyed he was eliminated and then helping someone else win. There was a lot of tension for a bit, and he was being difficult. Eventually he got his mindset adjusted and they got working more smoothly.
At least he got there eventually. Kind of dickish to hold it against Nicole that she was in the finale and he wasn’t.
That’s a great example, especially because Next Food Network Star is a show where the benefits of being a good sport are so clear! Runners-up and contestants the judges like often show up in various food shows later - being on the show and doing well at all gets your foot in the door at the network.
I was dumbfounded that Penny was so…spiteful because of her dislike of Mary Beth that she sabotaged any residual good will the network had toward her.