The Next Great Baker is a reality TV show on TLC, where contestants compete for a job with Cake Boss Buddy Valastro. The person eliminated in the most recent episode, a young army sergeant named Wesley Durden, committed suicide in October (after the show filmed but before it started airing), and viewers were only notified of his death by an “In Memoriam” tribute at the end of the episode. TLC and the show had made no prior acknowledgment that he had died, and he had become one of the more likable and memorable contestants.
While Wesley’s family felt the show did the right thing, and credit the competition with giving him some happiness in his last months, the way the news was revealed upset a lot of people, and TLC has received several complaints. From the above linked article:
This is not the first time a participant in a reality show has died mid-run: Russell Armstrong of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was mostly edited out after his suicide, and both Megan Wants a Millionaire and I Love Money 3 were canceled completely after the suicide of a contestant who murdered his wife.
While I too was surprised by the news of Wesley’s death, I’m not sure what more TLC could have done. Should they have announced from the beginning that a contestant had died? Edited him out to make him a less prominent character? Canceled the show completely?
First of all, I don’t think TLC handled it badly. I’m not sure what else they could have done – to cancel it would not have been fair to the other contestants, the crew, the cast, the producers, the investors… They certainly don’t seem to have contributed to Durden’s death, nor did they exploit it. I don’t see what the better option would have been.
Years ago, didn’t a contestant die during the filming of another country’s version of Survivor? IIRC this was before the show even premiered in the U.S. Did they ever air that competition?
There was a boxing reality show a few years back and one of the contestants killed himself between filming and airing. I believe they also just put a note up at the end of his final episode.
It does seem a little odd that (at least according to the article) they have forward-dated his age to 29 years old, considering that he was apparently 28 when he killed himself. Other than that, I don’t see what TLC could have done differently.
I don’t know about Survivor, but on the show Pirate Master (another Mark Burnett production) one of the contestants was found dead of an apparent suicide before the show had finished its run[sup]1[/sup]. Sounds like they handled it the same as the others.
Why limit the question to reality shows? Actors have died during the run of their shows; I’m thinking of Michael Conrad during Hill Street Blues or John Spencer during The West Wing. It can be a little disturbing to watch someone you know is now dead, but there’s not really a good way around it.
The show was cancelled from its broadcast time slot on CBS, but the remaining episodes were released on the web. I think it was during the web-only run that her death occurred. Even I had stopped watching by then.
That’s the thing - people watching the show didn’t know he was dead, even though it had happened weeks before airing. I would say a key difference between this situation when an actor dies (or even the other reality shows I mentioned in the OP) is that viewers usually find out about those death when they happen.
For example, Russell from RHOBH’s death made TMZ the day it happened, and even though, as ZipperJJ mentioned, it cast a creepy pall over this season, I went into it knowing he was dead.
I’m not saying the death of the fourth person eliminated on a third-tier reality show should make the cover of the Times or anything, but I’m wondering if people would have reacted better to the news if it had been announced by the show before the first episode. Something like a title card saying “Contestant Wesley Durden passed away after the filming of The Next Great Baker. We dedicate the season to his memory.” I myself think TLC handled the death the best they could, but was curious to hear the thoughts of others who might not agree.
I don’t have a cite for it, but after the WTC collapsed, with the deaths of so many firefighters, there was a dilemma. Twelve guys had posed for one of those “sexy firefighters” calendars, for 2002, as a charity fundraiser. It had been all set to go to the printers, but then two or three of the guys were killed. The way I heard it, the families of the deceased were asked if they wanted their loved ones in the pictures, and were told to go ahead.
Storm Chasers did a pretty good job last season when one of the chasers committed suicide. He actually died in the middle of the filming, so the last episode with him was basically a tribute, complete with some post-filmed interviews about him with the other chasers. Then the next episode featured the guys reacting to the news. They didn’t try to hide it at all.
Damn you, enalzi, that’s what I was going to post. I think Discovery Channel handled it really well - there wasn’t any mystery about what happened, so you weren’t left with any “huh?” It was pretty shocking for the viewers; I can only imagine that it was moreso for the storm chasers.
I sometimes wonder how the Amazing Race producers would handle it if one of the racers was killed in a car crash partway through (or went truly batshit from the killer fatigue and attacked his partner or a cameraman.) Would they re-edit everything to make it seem like the guy never existed? Or even call a halt to the race and scrap the whole season?
Soooooooo…contestants from *The Next Great Baker, the Contender, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Storm Chasers, *and *Megan Wants a Millionaire/I Love Money * (same guy, so I combined those) have committed suicide, with the final guy committing homicide first.
Suggests these reality show folk aren’t in the best mental/emotional health. In case you haven’t noticed.
How many folks of other, non-reality programming have committed suicide in the last 5-10 years?
You’re talking five suicides out of hundreds of reality shows with thousands of contestants. There have been almost 1,000 different people just on the big three of Survivor, American Idol, and The Amazing Race. Something tells me it isn’t too far off the US average of 11 suicides per 100,000 people.
I don’t remember for sure, but Wikipedia gives the air dates as ending on July 17th and Cheryl Kosewicz’s suicide discovered on July 27th.
I thought the show failed on two fronts. The gameplay didn’t add up; you didn’t know who was going to be on your team from one episode to the next, so you didn’t know whether to vote off a strong player or a weak one. And it wasted a great location, a beautiful sailing ship in the Caribbean, and mostly ignored that and just showed the interpersonal bickering.