The winner's edit and reality TV (spoilers!)

This thread will include unboxed spoilers on the Amazing Race, Top Chef, Project Runway, and any other reality TV show people want to bring in.

I commented to my husband after the most recent Amazing Race was over that a liked team had won all of the seasons I have seen with one exception, but that I wondered if that was a coincidence. He said he wasn’t sure how much the editors would try to make the eventual winners come out looking good. I think quite a bit.

Top Chef finished a couple of nights ago and the horrible bitch made it to the final but didn’t win. This is too good an outcome to be purely chance, I think. Either the editors chose to edit her in the worst possible way or, more likely perhaps, the judges decided to advance her because she makes good TV.

Similarly, Santino on the last Project Runway might have been either edited very negatively or advanced because of the drama.

Amazing Race, though, claims not to have judges making such decisions. A team should have to succeed on their own merits. But when the Chip & Kims seem regularly to beat the Colin & Christies, I start to wonder just how much my strings are being pulled.

Thoughts?

Not entirely – Zach and Flo won on Amazing Race a few seasons ago – Flo was a complete and total bitch whom everyone loathed – Zach, however, gained all kinds of sympathy points for dragging her sorry ass to the finish line. There was no way to edit her in any way that she didn’t look like a total harridan, though.

My first season was the Chip/Kim one, so that definitely colors my thoughts.