Can Alex Cooper Make Reality TV? Love Overboard vs Unwell Winter Games

This is Sam and Pete from Saying Relevance and we are currently sponsored by 2E. Sam, what is the one thing we always disagree about? Where to have lunch or what time we start recording the podcast. The title of the episode is even. I mean to be fair all of those but not what I was thinking I was going for holidays. Oh yeah right holidays so you and I have a slightly different vibe but that's where 2E comes in. 2E has more options and more choice with hundreds of destinations worldwide so we can find somewhere for you to chill and for me to get my adventure on which is perfect. 2E you pick it they sort it. Booking T's and C's apply Atoll and Abt are protected. Welcome to Game of Roses this is Pace Case. This is Bachelor Clues and today we're going to be talking about Alex Cooper. If you don't know who Alex Cooper is you probably do if you're listening to the show but a brief recap. She's the host of Call Her Daddy one of the biggest podcasts in the world. She has interviewed both Jen Tran and Taylor Frankie Paul. Let me just put this into perspective for you. Those are most recent two Bachelorettes. Okay what does that mean? I just thinking about it I'm like Taylor Frankie Paul season will never air and when was Jen Tran season? It already puts into perspective for me the disaster state. Oh the countdown. Yeah well get to the countdown. Should we start our countdown? Oh wait no we'll start it okay later. But she has also interviewed somebody named Kamala Harris. Maybe you know who that is. She has interviewed Miley Cyrus. She has interviewed Hayley Bieber, Demi Lovato, and if I own Natalie Joy. I'm just painting the picture of that. Call her daddy Alex Cooper is on the top of the mountain in terms of how influential you can be as a podcaster. I mean the Kamala Harris interview is insane. Yeah she had like a 60 million dollar deal at Spotify and then like a 120 million dollar deal at Sirius. It's kind of a female counterpart for Joe Rogan. Or is it? This is what we're going to kind of be discussing today. Well the bigger piece of this is she started as a podcaster making all this money super successful and now she is for the first time ever in 2026 she is doing her own foray into creating and producing reality television shows. Two of those are out now. Her third one is going to come out later this year. The first one was Love Overboard. All episodes of that are now available on Hulu. The second one is this YouTube show she's doing called Unwell Winter Games which has some interesting casting to say the least. And what we really want to talk about today is can Alex Cooper make reality television shows? Is she good at producing reality TV shows? I think the jury is kind of still out on that. I have very mixed feelings about it. If you're looking at Love Overboard the answer is absolutely not. She should never be allowed near a reality TV show again. If you're looking at Unwell Winter Games the answer is it's really good but Dakota's in it and Hood is in it and they didn't scuttle it like ABC did and like they're doing on Vanderpump Villa where they're cutting Dakota Mortensen out of season three. So it should have been scuttled as much as I did enjoy it despite myself. Yeah. Your audience is mostly women. They're going to care about this kind of thing. You know I'll kind of keep an eye on this as we're watching this as we're recording this as well. So this we watched the first episode of Unwell Winter Games. It came out three hours ago as of the recording of this podcast and it's going to Monday April 6. Monday April 6. One episode is going to come out every day for the next four days and that's it. That series will be over. But this first episode three hours ago it was launched on YouTube 24,000 views so far. I'll be keeping a running tally of that as we go through the recording. I feel like it was 21,000 when we started. Yeah. It looks like they're getting some numbers. It is on the Unwell YouTube channel. It's not on Call Her Daddy. So let me actually look and see what's on Call Her Daddy right now. She's doing any promotion for this. The Call Her Daddy YouTube channel is obviously much bigger. It has 2.1 million subscribers whereas the Unwell one does not. It only has 23.4K subscribers. It doesn't look like she is doing much promotion for this. Her most recent episode on Call Her Daddy was Make Dating Fun Again one day ago. Becky G, Adam Devine. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't look like she's promoting this at all. She certainly didn't promote Love Overboard that I'm aware of. That's what I don't get. I'm like, why are you not promoting these shows on your gigantic platform? Yeah, I don't know. It's odd. Agreed. I mean, I get why you wouldn't promote Winter Games, but Love Overboard? Well, let's get to it. Let's get to Love Overboard. We watched every episode of it. We binged it under duress basically because we wanted to be able to talk about it. I do think Alex Cooper's first foray into reality television is an important moment. We have never seen anything like this in reality TV where a podcaster has become so influential in the reality TV space that Hulu says, yep, we'll make a deal. We will make this reality show that you want to make. I'm not sure that this was the right one. This show just like at first glance was terrible, almost unwatchable on every level except one, which was casting. But we're going to get into all the details of this. So the details of Love Overboard, it was filmed on a luxury super yacht anchored off the coast of Malta in June of 2025 with 22 influencers of varying levels of success. Sophia Beverly has the most Instagram followers of anybody on that season at 1.9 million. So she was casting some influencers. And I do think that's one of Alex Cooper's strengths in reality TV. Yeah. If she understands social media and reality television are the exact same thing. She does not shy away from that. Like you would see Bachelors saying like, you said the word Instagram, you're off the show. Alex Cooper's not going to do that. She does get that piece of reality TV, which I think is pretty awesome. Absolutely. 100%. As we'll get to the first episode of Love Overboard premiered on ABC on March 22nd in what would have been the time slot immediately after Taylor Frankie Paul's Night One. That obviously didn't air. So I forget what they aired in its place. I think it was an American Idol reruns. American Idol reruns. The biggest disrespect. Well, not the biggest, but just added more salt to the wound. Yeah. To say the least. So her episode aired on that Monday night on Network TV. Then all nine episodes came out on Thursday, March 26th, that same week. All nine of them. And there is no word at least as of this recording about any renewal. And usually streamers will issue those renewals very quickly. We already know Age of Attraction, Nick Violinato, Joey Shoe and Netflix has been renewed for a second season about a week after it dropped. When you've got a hit like A of A, you gotta get on it. You gotta lock those two down. I mean, look, it did numbers for them. I don't know if Love Overboard did. It doesn't seem like it did. If it would have been a big hit, that renewal would have come immediately. We're now. I do not know anyone who's watched it besides you and I and anyone on our Patreon who's engaged. And I did some cursory following of Instagram accounts and stuff of the players as we watched it. Nobody's seeing nothing from it. Yeah. And I think that. What's the biggest gain? I don't even know, because the biggest player, like I said, was Sophia Beverly, 1.9 million. She's still at that. I don't know if there was some minor fluctuation that won't be recorded in the Instagram algorithm or whatever. But there were players who came in sub 10 K that also left sub 10 K. That's not good. So let's take a look at why Love Overboard was so bad. First and foremost, the game mechanics are terrible. I know there were some ex-bachelor producers that helped her put this show together. Clearly no one understood how to make a compelling game mechanic. The basic premise of the show is these 22 couples or 22 singles show up on this yacht. They have to couple up in romantic pairings that also are then forced to do challenges against one another to determine who gets to live above deck and below deck in an arbitrary situation that doesn't. It doesn't matter because the below deck people don't live in like squalor and the above deck people don't live in luxury. They're basically just like, you have to wear these shirts if you're below deck. That's it. That's really the idea. That's part of the problem with Love Overboard is they did not deliver on their premise, which is essentially, it's a dating show. Love Island meets below deck. Someone who watched both of those shows. Below deck, they actually have to do the deck work. And yes, maybe there is some like fakery into, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of fakery. It's focusing on the hookups. It's focusing on the interpersonal drama, but this didn't deliver on the below deck of it. You see the actual people who are actually preparing the food. Like I'm sure it's actually like insurance reasons, probably they can't actually be preparing the food. People are eating or whatever. They killed them all, incidentally. I think that we don't have the above deck suites are just like big beds, but it's not delivering on this luxury promise versus the squalor. The squalor is in the editing. They give it like a horror sheen and music. Oh, it's so disgusting. But the people are still laughing whoever's below deck. They're like having a good time and it doesn't really matter. They have to sleep in bunk beds as opposed to like a twin size bed in a kind of nice hotel room looking sweet. It just doesn't work at all. And the mechanics of the game part of it, which are every once in a while, somebody will get a date card. They have to take somebody on a date. And then that person has to decide between the person they were in a relationship with and the person they went on to date with, who they're going to keep on the show by making them go out and stand on these two planks that kind of like stick off the side of the boat. And the person who gets rejected, the plank drops and they drop in the water. That's kind of the elimination mechanic. So just in terms of game mechanics, it behooves you to stay below deck, never go on dates, never explore relationships, or you might get thrown off the plank. So the game itself is kind of antithetical to trying to make a good reality dating TV show. You want the most interaction possible between all of your players and you want the people who go on dates to be rewarded for it, not punished. And instead, this is the exact opposite. It just felt to me like people were making the show who had no idea or they had never seen any kind of a game mechanic in a reality dating format show before. I think that's part of the problem with Bachelor producers trying to make these type of shows with challenges. The most game mechanic you have in Bachelor is like, okay, this group date will be a play for time. But this is like so much more complicated. There's two different types of ways that you can get to the top deck. There's either winning a challenge and then you can, that person can either stay or go or you become, you come off for TRR in the happy hour where they're all mixing together. And then that person can choose someone to take on a date. And it has to be someone who's above what are they? Top Siders. The challenges are also super shitty. There's one challenge. They end up doing a like bring back all the people who got kicked off thing at Beef Something Club, this pool club that also has extras just lying around. And one couple are like, okay, we'll team up for this to get back on the show. And they fast forward through this challenge that I guess happened to say, oh, yes, you can go back on the boat. Yeah, they just cut to that couple standing on the planks. And then Gabby Windy being like, you both get to stay and they hug and move on. And you're just like, wait a minute, what happened? What was the challenge? Why are they here? And that's a huge part of what's that? Why even include it? Just cut there on the boat. That's another big bone I have to pick with this show. The producers in terms of editing, in terms of constructing the season, were like not there just out to lunch. None of it makes any sense. There's no compelling narrative built in the edit at all. The first five episodes, you can barely remember anyone's name because you just don't care about anything they're saying. And that's in the edit, they're choosing to put things in the edit that are like, well, I don't want to go below deck. I love being in the top deck. Do you think we should be in a couple? Maybe I don't know. You know nothing about any of these players. I still don't know. I think we learned one person's job, the entire show. Yeah, I think that's unforgivable. Yeah, and it's the cop. They cast a cop on this goddamn show. A fucking cop. It made me appreciate the bachelor name Chiron's because on the show, it's just their name and topside or or which which deck they're on as opposed to age, job, hometown, anything that can identify who these people are. And even the four TRR happy hour date, they gave it to Sophia, who openly said that she was trying to trick someone. So it's like, that's not even sticking to it. Well, it has tonally, it has a very, it's just a confused ideology. Are you four people coming into manipulate and play this game? Or are you against that? And the edit goes both ways. They even like a, I mean, I guess we can get to this next piece of it is the use of Gabby Wendy as a host in the show. An early start here. It's time to kick off your day morning. What a lineup. Oh, thanks very much. We do get some great guests on the show. The crowd is loving this. Thanks, guys. Thank you to kind from morning chaos to match day commentary and everything in between BBC sounds packed with personality. This is Sam and Pete from saying relevance and we are currently sponsored by two. Sam, what is the one thing we always disagree about where to have lunch or what time we start recording actually the podcast, the title of episodes even. I mean, to be fair, all of those, but not what I was thinking. I was going for holidays. Oh, yeah, right. Holidays. So you and I have a slightly different vibe, but that's where two comes in. Now, two, he has more options and more choice with hundreds of destinations worldwide. So we can find somewhere for you to chill and for me to get my adventure on, which is perfect. Two, you pick it. They saw it booking T's and C's apply at all and after protected saving seekers. We hear you seeking energy savings. Always keep your energy prices under the price cap. But next pledge, your energy prices are guaranteed to always stay below the price cap. Satisfy those savings cravings. Check out our full range of tailored energy solutions at eonnext.com forward slash save. Eonnext, we make energy savings work. Next pledge is a 12 month fixed time trucker tariff with variable rates lower than off chance price cap for standard variable tariffs. Direct debit required, T's and C's apply. She's obviously hilarious. Fantastic. I love everything she does. In this show, she is 100% misused. And I don't think it's like they had an idea of what they wanted the host to be and they just kind of try to crowbar her in there. I think the show didn't have any idea of what they wanted the host to be. And they were like, we've got Gabby Wendy. Put her out there. And so they write all these bad jokes for her that don't make sense, that aren't funny. They're making her deliver them. It's very much, it felt to me like the goat with Tosh.0 delivering his stupid jokes in that stupid show. They had an opportunity here to do something with her, like present her as an almost dark lord Alan coming type figure who is like a rich lady that's on her yacht. And she's just there to watch these people date and go through these challenges for her pleasure. None of that is true. They just put her in some bathing suits and have her come out and read these stupid jokes. Terrible use of Gabby Wendy. And I think that again speaks to the idea that the producers of the show had no idea what they were doing. And it was just kind of like throwing a bunch of stuff together and being like, well, we have enough footage to cut nine episodes, right? That's all that matters. You can tell that they didn't know how to use her, that they didn't plan out how to use her or the game mechanics because 90% of her lines are off face. So she's recording them later in a soundstage 80 yard in. I would have loved if they had done the dark lord coming treatment on her. Yeah, maybe she's, you know, the owner of the boat, maybe she's actually the captain. Another way that they are not delivering all the promise of the show, the boat goes nowhere. Yeah. So they're basically in a prison by the sea. The boat is anchored in this port in Malta for the entire series. It's unbelievable. There's even one shot, I remember, where they have a couple of the players are sitting at a table on the deck of the boat, but the shot is from like a high angle. So it looks down on their table and behind them, you see the ground, the sidewalk in the background at the port where the boat is docked and people are just walking around. They might as well just be like eating lunch at a rooftop cafe somewhere. You know, they don't not only does it not deliver on that premise of having people above and below deck. It doesn't even deliver on the premise that they're on a yacht for the most part, because it never goes anywhere. It's unbelievable. And I guess that's like a budgetary thing or whatever, but it's like, well, then don't do this. Just put them up on a hotel. A hotel. Then at least you could maybe differentiate the top side downside a little bit better on a boat. I get that there's restrictions. We also have we have some good things in the show. Let's be real. All right. Maybe it's a little, you know what? I'll do this. There was a player. Okay. There was a player early on in the first episode. She has a crash out. And in this crash out by Bella, she makes my face play of the season. She puts two tissues up to her eyes as she cries about the downside. She says she's too hot to be waiting on people and it's just it's just phenomenal. And Bella was, I'll just say here, my MVP of the season. I loved everything she did. Unfortunately, their production messed up in not delivering her apart, a romantic partner. So she wasn't able to go through with the whole show, but I thought she was such a standout. I agree. She was my MVP too. Also had my face play the season. That same face play. It's iconic. It's not just that they didn't deliver her romantic partner. She self eliminated and they let her go. On like half way through the season, your star player. And so it's like casting on this show. I think actually was one of the shining moments of it. They have a stellar cast of some real heavy hitter like up and coming reality stars, Bella being one of them. Unfortunately, the way they're presented and the situation that the producers create for them to play in is just fucking miserable. She identifies it. She also is on Vanderpump Villa, by the way. So this isn't just like some fly by night reality player. This is somebody who's going to. She's got promoted from this to Vila. So it that's what you're looking at. And this player self eliminates because she recognizes this show sucks. I'm out of here. That's the only reason a high level reality player or even like a high level rookie reality player who she clearly understands how to play the game, the meta game I'm talking about of reality TV, how to work a camera, how to work a situation. She gets it all at a very high level. And you have that player saying, piece, I don't want any more screen time in this horrible pile of shit. That's a massive problem. She did everything she could with what she was given. I mean, she's doing mansion freeplay antics, making the little fish talk to each other when she's in the downside. We never even got to see her go top side to see her like arc that way. We see her try romantically once or twice and that fails. We see her getting rivalry with Chaudet and then squash the beef. She's very much an Ashley I can Eddie type player. I feel like they have kind of the same cadence when they speak. They both emphasize to your play. And she even in herself elimination wears the dress that she would have worn if she had gone topside this very sparkly number. And I mean, actually, I must be her hero player because actually, I when she doesn't get the pretty woman date on bachelor wears the dress that she would have worn and cries. I need to corn on the cob while Chris Solz is on his day with someone else. No, totally. And I think like for Bella, who hopefully has like a lot of huge things coming her way in reality TV, I really think she's going to be a star. She to me is just kind of the canary in the coal mine for what is a show that's so confused. Players don't know what to do. And if you're a high level player in a situation like that and you can kind of recognize like, oh, this is a fucking train wreck. I'm getting the fuck out of here. Those other players didn't quite recognize that or maybe they had a little more incentive to stay if they were in a couple or whatever. But you can see the same kind of thing seeping into that player base, which is they don't know what the hell to be doing because the producers don't know what the hell they're doing. If the if the show and the structure of it is confused, your players are going to be equally confused. So they might have a moment here or there that's funny or sad or whatever pops off. But that's all due to their playstyle and their skill. If you don't give them a well constructed game to play, how can they play it? Also, this is produced by Alex Cooper. Why is she not in the show? We will later see that she has the ability to join a show. Why is she not in the show at all, not even hosting one date or the intro first episode, nothing, and not promoting the show on her gigantic platform. It is so odd. I agree. I don't understand. I would be promoting the shit out of a show if we were were being a show. Yeah, no, no shit. Me too. I don't quite get that. And like we were saying, she's not really even promoting this bachelor winner games and or bachelor winner games. We'll get to that show in a second. That'll be like the second part of this. But I did find it very strange that like, especially as Alex Cooper, this is your first reality TV show out of the gate that you've created, that your name is all over. And yet, you are not doing any promotion of it on your biggest platform. That sends the message that you think it's bad. Yeah, you don't want anyone to see it or associate it with you. And she would be right in that thought. It is bad. This is one of the worst reality dating formats I've ever seen. But still, don't you want people to watch it? Don't you want a season two? Because I will say this, you know, go back and think about Mike Fleiss, his first reality show out of the gate was Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. That show was met with disaster. Everybody hated it. There was a big controversy about was the guy really a millionaire, Darva Conger, who won that season. I think I know the marriage like the next day or something. It was just a total train wreck. However, the very next year he makes bachelor and that works and everything is off to the races. So I think you can learn a lot from your first four A's into this, especially the ones that are not successful. That may be the case here with Alex Cooper. Maybe she's learning a ton about how not to do things. All of that said, you still want to get a second season so that you might be able to correct those those errors in your first season. And to do that, you should be promoting that show. Because whether it's good or bad, all Hulu gives a shit about his eyeballs. How many people watched it? You could get the numbers just by heavily promoting it on your show. Like I agree. It's probably part of the reason why they picked it up is they think you have this huge platform to help promote it. That being said, I think she doesn't have to worry because no matter what show they make with Harry Jowsy, I think it'll be a success. He'll definitely promote it. But I don't know. I have my questions about it at this point. Simply because of Love Overboard. I just don't know how to convey how bad it is as a TV show. You think they can mess up the Harry Jowsy show? Yeah. Are you kidding me? 22 hot singles dating on a super yacht. That is a slam dunk. I'm sorry. You have to be extremely bad at producing to make that premise bad. Like we're talking about, they didn't. The premise was the haves and the have nots, but they all have. Nobody's a have not. It doesn't make any sense. Then the mechanics of the game. Some of you get to go on these dates, and some of you don't. Now you got to go stand on a plank, and some of you don't. But you can still date each other, and some of you can't. Just there's no rhyme or reason to any of it. You would think they would learn from Gabby and Rachel Recky's season that you don't want to divide the player pool. You want all the player pool to be together. Totally agree. Even the fun game mechanic of walking the plank is not shot well. You could have some cool slow-mo shots with it. And it also takes away your love triangles, basically, so that no one is having to watch whoever just dumped them date someone else. They're off the boat. Because they get eliminated. Yeah, they get planked. Then they're like, well, they're in the ocean dead. Sharks got them. Not even. That would have been pretty good. But there's also a component. Like you brought something interesting about how terribly the planking ceremony is shot. They basically have one camera kind of overhead, one camera directly overhead. And that's it. They have one wide shot from out in the ocean. So you don't get what they should have done is attach cameras to the boat under the planks, shooting at a very high frame rate. So you get super slow motion of the player close up, coming down through the frame as they're being dropped, and they're screaming or whatever. None of that. The shooting of this show seems like they didn't realize they were shooting on a boat. And they were just like, I guess just whatever you can get. There's no thought given to if this shot looks good or bad, what the composition of the shots are when they introduce bombshells or they call them shipwreckers on this show. When they introduce them, it's just like some fucking long shot from off the boat. Here's a guy. Walking around the corner. My God, it's terrible. No hero shots like you have on LaVylin where they walk in and kind of give the camera a wink, super slow moment. You're like, oh, fuck, who is this? They're going to fuck shit up. None of that. It's fucking zero of that. To your point about not knowing they were going to be shooting on a boat. The first episode, the sound is really messed up, which I think is part of why a lot of Gabby's lines are ADR'd, but it's like, yeah, you're shooting at a dock. Yeah, I don't I don't get it. Also, put a camera underwater. Those shots are really easy to make look cool. Slow-mo underwater. They had some underwater shots of people dropping in. But again, they were like these big wide shots. You don't you need people's facial expressions when you're visiting torture upon them. That's reality TV 101. I need to see what's going on in their eyes when you're dumping them 30 feet into the ocean. Instead, you just get like these, yeah, I guess that's a body falling in the water. Cool. Speaking of torture. Yeah. The squids that the downsideers have to pretend to be cooking were my creature of the season. I hate that they basically were doing food play and this probably wasn't even eaten Yeah, probably with these beautiful creatures. Yeah, I guess I have to give them my creatures of the season too. Thank you for your sacrifice. Unfortunately, no one saw it. Sorry. Sorry, squids. And also regarding Bella, Brad pushing Bella's advances off of him when she's clearly the star of the show was my error of the season. Interesting. They could have been They could have been a power couple. Let's talk about your favorite 90. Favorite 90 minutes. It's so hard to choose, especially as Five Life Sport has more live premier league commentaries than anywhere else. No, I meant your favorite 90s song. Ah, sorry, third. Well, if it's the 90s, it's going to be take that. Great choice. Let's see your dance moves. From football to throwbacks and everything in between. BBC sounds packed with personality. Right, this is Pete and Abby from the therapy crowd. So we're currently sponsored by Tui. Now, Pete and I never disagree about where to go on holiday, right? Really? Quiet Pete. But if we did, then we know Tui is the place to go. If you want to find a holiday that works for both halves of a couple or every member of the family, then Tui is the answer. Have you just said quiet Pete? Oh, yeah. Tui has more options and more choice with hundreds of destinations worldwide. So you can find a place with water slides for the kids, a beautiful beach for Abby and around the Gulf for me. Tui, you pick it, they sought it. Book and tease and seize apply at All-in-Ab to Protected. My error of the season was slightly different. It was there was one moment that kind of unfolds in the end of episode five through episode six, which is the only entertaining thing that happens in the entire series. And it involves a love triangle between this guy named David, I think. Okay, I did remember it. David is dating a player named Lowe, Lauren. And he basically all exes are. He says, you're my girlfriend. They've been having sex. We know all of that. He's issued some complaints to some of his guy friends about the sexual chemistry not being exactly as he liked it. And he can't come. He says that, yes. And he's also said that he prefers plastic, meaning fake boobs, fake, whatever. And Lowe does not represent that. So he then gets to go on a date with a shipwrecker named Val, who is all of the things he wants and more. She apparently performs fallatio on him in the shower. And that leads him later to say to another guy, what happened when you were on that date? And he says, fallatio is in shit, maybe the line of the season. He then is forced to do a plank ceremony where Val and Lowe are on the two planks. He's got to make his decision. And it takes him 45 minutes supposedly to make that decision with them on these planks. And David's inability to make a decision on planking Val or Lowe for 45 minutes was my error of the season. It basically was a whole game. Yeah, I liked watching it. I thought it was very funny. Yeah. But I think in terms of his game, it destroyed his game. You think if he had gone faster, they would have forgiven it more? Yes, because of a decisive decision. He, by the way, dumps Lowe. He dumps the player that he had just all eggs like literally 24 hours prior and goes for Val, who was the shipwrecker. If he had been more decisive in that, he could have then played the look. Isn't that what the show is about? We're supposed to explore relationships. I felt a very strong connection with Val way stronger than Lowe. I know I told you she's my girlfriend, but say, Lowe, that's the game. Don't hate the player. I think he could have played that instead. He had everybody out there on the deck of that ship for 45 minutes being like, what are you fucking doing, dude? Just standing silently looking into the sky. Like insane. It was very funny. He was a terrible player, however, involved in what you're saying. One of the most interesting storylines in the whole season. Val, the shipwrecker, her chemistry play was my play of the season. Strongest shipwrecker play we saw. I mean, just phenomenal to be able to peel off a player from the person that they literally made their girlfriend. I don't know, eight hours prior. Is I can't recall seeing something like that. I 100% agree with you. Val's chemistry play was also my play of the season because it was so fucking extreme. Felatious and shit. Felatious and shit is we don't see that a lot on a first date. I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't think I've ever seen that in a reality show. Have you? Well, I watched the early seasons of Love Island, so maybe I suffered it and whatever. I've seen that. That was love Island UK. Was it UK? Yeah. We see Lo sleeper them the first night, even though she later slut shames Val. No, it was so strong. Yeah. That was well produced to know we need them to have a shower scene and get them all muddy. But it's also like the shower scene and getting them all muddy doesn't mean Felatious and shit. That's just like, oh, you know, Lo's going to be pissed. They were in a shower together. It's Val who takes that initiative to just destroy the game with chemistry play. So that's kind of what I was talking about earlier. The casting here is fucking great. You have some heavy hitter players who are going to the mat with just like chemistry play out of this fucking world, hardcore supervillain manipulation play like Sophia was doing. It didn't work for her in the context of this game, but hats off to her. Holy shit. She's literally like manipulating this guy and then going in her ITMs and being like, he's a fucking idiot. I would never be with him. I'm just trying to go topside and you're just like, wait, what is this fucking for real? Fantastic. You know why Val probably hasn't so much good chemistry play. She's a chemist. Was she? Oh, I didn't even know. Something like that for her job. Okay, fantastic. But overall, this is a huge swing and a miss. If the question is, was Alex Cooper's first reality show out of the gate good? The answer is absolutely not. In my opinion, this is a disaster of a reality show. I don't think it's going to get picked up for a season two because the timeline that we're on right now is like, they should be making that decision now. But also it was an abysmal show. And I know that that doesn't matter. Quality doesn't matter to the corporate greed machines. It's just how many people watched it. And I don't know if the quality of the show translated to low viewership or not. We don't know those numbers. Only Hulu has them. It may still get picked up, but I just don't think it's going to. And so to have your first reality show out of the gate be a kind of disaster, an unwatchable pile of shit that probably won't get a season two. That ain't good. I do think she's going to get more chances because she is who she is. So hopefully, you know, she will have learned from these mistakes and the next shows she does will be better. Plus probably no one even knows that she's associated with it because she didn't promote it at all and was not in it. Exactly. Or at least she cut herself out if she was in it. Yeah, that's where all the budget went to editing her out of the show. Yeah, I mean, I maybe she's making the right play by not promoting it to just distance herself from it. I don't know. Maybe. But I was super excited for this. Yeah. When it got announced, I was like, oh, this is it. She's going to push things forward. Alex Cooper's the exact because I do think she's like a modern media genius. I think no one can take that away from her. And I know she knows a lot about reality TV. You can hear it when she's interviewing all these reality TV players. She's a student of the genre. And so I was like, this is going to be amazing. And the premise, like I said, oh, shit, it's like Love Island or Too Hot to Handle on a yacht. This is going to be fun. Oh, Gabby Winty's hosting. Oh, like as they were announcing all the pieces coming out, you know, you were like, really, that's what I was like. When I heard this shit, I was like, this is going to be the best fucking show I've ever seen. And then what is delivered is just a fucking dry turd. Yeah, I would also say casting previous reality players might help with season two if they get it. I don't think the winner games. And extras who were at the pool beef club, because I guess they couldn't rent it out fully for that merge were my Jorge Moreno bystanders of the season. My Jorge Moreno bystanders season was probably that producer, the SDCO'd somebody. Do you remember that? I don't even remember who it was. This is how how bad the show is. Oh, it was for David, the one who played his mother. Yeah, she was good. David was crying because of all the planking that he had to be party to for 45 minutes. And after he came back from that, a producer literally emerged for him to or SDCO'd him shoulder to cry on. And I thought that pretty sweet. Okay, let's move on. Let's talk about this Unwell Winter Games now, if we can. This is her second reality show. Again, a third one to come later this year on Netflix with Harry Jowsy. That's basically going to be like a bachelor ripoff. Unwell Winter Games is the other reality show. It is out now. By the time you're listening to this, possibly two episodes will have been put out on YouTube. It was filmed in February of this year in Park City, Utah. Production took place at the Utah Olympic Park. Contestants compete in activities like inner tubing down Nordic ski jumps. Scenes also shot at this luxury chalet where the players get to mix and mingle. And the players on this show are all reality stars. This is Bonafide Third Wave. You've got Louis Russell. You've got Huda Mustafa. You've got Grozries, Dorjo and fucking Serena Pitt inexplicably are thrown into this mix of people who have like 66 million followers across all platforms. They have been scuttled from the edit of the first episode completely. Just some massive heavy hitter reality players in this show, as well as Dakota Mortensen. Now, that piece of this before we get into is this show good or not? That piece of this almost makes anything else we're going to say after this meaningless in my opinion. Dakota Mortensen. Everybody listen to this knows who he is, but just a brief rundown. He is the baby daddy of Taylor Frankie Paul's most recent baby. He is the guy who now allegedly leaked that video that got her entire season of Bachelorette scuttled. He is also the target of domestic violence allegations from Taylor Frankie Paul in all of these same incidents that she is now bearing the cross for that ABC has canceled her season for. Yeah. So ABC scuttled her season. Hulu cut him out of the next season of Vanderpump Villa, which he's prominently featured and he has sex with one of the players there. And so they removed him from the edit. Yeah. All news came out in deadline and stuff. This is maybe a couple of days old now that they are cutting him completely out of that show, removing his presence. I'm sure at great narrative cost to whatever they were putting together for that season. And now we have Alex Cooper. Now they have to go with baby Grinch confronting Marciano. I mean, are they going to cut baby Grinch out of it now with all his fucking allegations? Who knows? Wait, what do you mean? What baby Grinch allegation? What's that? What are the baby Grinch allegations? I thought his wife went on call her daddy and was like, he spent all my money on prostitutes and all those shit. Oh yeah. Right. So he also was. I forgot about that. Oh, and he was like recording her or something? Yeah, he's got. I mean, I don't think it's as bad as domestic violence necessarily, but he's got some unsavory allegations as well. Nonetheless, I'm just saying all these things to say that like ABC Hulu, the corporate greed machines are removing him from their schedule and anything that has to do with these allegations. Alex Cooper is not. Not only is she not, she's putting these episodes out. She's in them. This show opens with her direct addressing camera saying, welcome to my show, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's all these players. We're going to have fun. And Dakota Morton sent at least in the first episode, which is the only one that's out as of the time of this recording. We watched it this morning. He's all over it. He's one of the main characters. Yeah. As is Huda, who has a restraining order against her from her boyfriend, Louis Russell's ex girlfriend slash baby mama. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of the theme of the casting is kind of like reality TV villain. You also have kind of Anna Delvy. Yeah. They're somewhere and they make a meal out of her having to wear an ankle monitor. Like there's some villains in this, for sure. But also there's grocery store Joe and Serena Pitt. Grocery store Joe and Serena. I'm like, I guess because they have the new podcast in under her production company, but they kind of stick out. They stick out even more than a guy who they supposedly pluck from production to be one of the characters when Kendall from Love Island misses his flight or something. Yeah. Which is, I think, completely fake. I'm pretty sure this guy's a ringer because he's like, real comfortable on camera. Real comfortable on camera. Getting it immediately involved in love triangles. Yeah. So the bottom line is, again, we're going to kind of critique the episode now. But Dakota Morton's in it. She is the only reality TV producer right now still airing stuff with him in it. When all of these other companies are either cutting him out of it or entirely scuttling a full season that is already shot and still being edited of his baby mama Taylor Frankie Paul in the Bachelorette. So an entire Bachelorette season scuttled his storyline in Vanderpot Villa scuttled and all future storylines on slomwa theoretically scuttled as well. Yeah. Of which he's a main character. So it's not like just one. Yeah. It's here he is. We're a snow suit and going on a jet ski or what do they call it? Sonoma Biel. And he's presented as like, I'm just a cool, happy, fun guy looking for love out here in the snow. Yeah. Will they won't they? It's a complete ignoring of anything that is going on in reality TV right now. All that said, this show is fucking great. The the producing is impeccable. It is beautifully shot. The editing is fucking like this. It doesn't give you a second to breathe. You are just like the whole time. It's fantastic. It reminds me very much. I won't say it's on the same level as Love Island in terms of editing and production, but it's like approaching that for a kind of winter area. The casting fucking insane. These are a murderer's row of heavy hitter reality and social media stars, the likes of which you have never really seen in one show. Yeah. I mean, some of them have done third wave. You have back in Sue who did Traders, Julia, also on Perfect Match and Siesta Key. The cast is so good. They also cast the TikToker Cameron. And there's this level of care in the editing where they introduce him. And there's kind of this rivalry set up between him and Louis and Huda. And they show different clips of him talking shit about them on TikToker, fast paced in a row. Like there's it's a it's a degree like you can phone in the editing first of like this. You don't have to do all that. So I really appreciated that little detail. Yeah, the editing in it is is really like it's how all reality shows should be edited, I think. And I even love Island is a little slow by comparison. But because the island is making five episodes a week and they're giving you time sometimes to sit in a conversation and hear the weird shit they're talking about or whatever, this doesn't really give you that. This is like no shot in the show is lasting more than like three and a half seconds. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But it also works because it like the challenges are like whatever we don't give a fuck about that. And so they kind of set up like here's what you're going to do. You're going to go on this snowmobile, get this bag and then the first challenges in the bag are these like coins that have numbers on them. And you have to put the number next to a picture of somebody's head that you think it represents their total follower count. So they're embracing social media in the challenge. But it's also like we don't care. We don't care about how many you get right or anything. So they just fucking cut the shit out of the super fast pace. People are throwing snowballs at each other. There's the jet ski who gives a shit. Nobody cares who wins. And the challenge is kind of stupid. But the way it's edited is like it's just all action, fast pace, frenetic. I just loved it. I really was blown away by how good production wise and casting wise the show is. Editing is like an underrated aspect in reality TV. I think it's one of the things that makes Vanderpump rules. One of my favorite reality shows of all time is the editing because they will instantly, you know, Jux Taylor will say something and they'll instantly flashback to something that's making him that's the butt of the joke, basically. I'm always honest. And then you see him be like, I never slept with Chris. Yeah, I mean, I unfortunately, as I said, this is a quality piece of reality television. There's only going to be four episodes of it. I don't know what the, you know, when we were watching it, there was a poly market ad that popped up on the bottom like, that on who you think is going to win. I'm still like, I don't understand that calcium poly market. It's like people worked on this fucking show. Multiple people know who wins this show. They can just go on poly market, I guess, and make money. Anyways, that's my secret theory for why they didn't scuttle it is they did a huge deal with poly market. That could very well be. They need to recoup some money. Let's see what we're up to. Although, what about that Cinnabon deal? Sounds like that was a big part of bachelorette. I went, I went into Cinnabon. This may be a screamer at 29,000 views. I went into Cinnabon in Century City the other day and asked them if they had any Taylor Franky Paul like packaging or boxes or anything. They said they had to get rid of it all. Like burn, delete from the planet or throw in their trash cans that are still out. Delete from the planet. They put it on a spaceship and launch it into the sun. Gone. It's unhardimus. That's why they had to get the Artemis to launch. They were having all these problems. We got to get this Taylor Franky Paul Cinnabon packaging into space now. Another thing they have any. But the bottom line is this. There are like being a TV show creator, especially if you are producing your own media and releasing it. So there is no studio. There is no streamer behind this. This is something she made with her company Unwell. I don't know where the funding ultimately came from. Polymarket, perhaps. I don't know. It doesn't seem to have any like hardcore super brand forward shit in it yet. But whoever paid for this wants it to be aired. She wants it to be aired. The Dakota Mortensen put a Mestafa piece of this. They are just flat fucking ignoring. That I don't think is a good look. I don't know if it will be two weeks a month from now. I don't know if anyone will care. But right now, I think people do. I know I've gotten multiple DMs about how can she air this. Dakota Mortensen is in it. I think a lot of people are talking Alex Cooper and things, being like, why aren't you scuttling this? And it is flat out ignoring it. They are not touching that edit, I'm presuming, because both Dakota and Hada have, I haven't counted this, but I think they have two of the largest counts of ITMs in the first episode. I'll see you going forward if that stays. Maybe the main narrative in the first episode, which is that she and Louis get split on different teams and they're pissed about it. And then Dakota has this narrative that's like, in the end of episode one, Demi gets brought in as like a secret surprise player or whatever. They have a whole conversation where he's like, she's like, so have you been? And he's like, let me fill you in. And this was in February. The show was shot February of this year. So that means all my god was swirling around. He was thinking at that point, I can only imagine about like, how am I going to get this video out to fuck her over? Her season had been shot. Wait, is this before after the February DV allegations that it was shot? That I don't know. Those February DV allegations, I think we're on the 24th. So I assume this is statistically speaking, it was probably before, yeah. God. I know. And maybe narratively tied to his, whatever his love story is in this. Yeah, could be. We don't know. Oh my God. Dark darkness. I would say though, for anybody out there, it is worth, you can skip Love Overboard. That's just a fucking disaster. Do not watch it. It is a waste of your time. It's a terrible. But if you want to watch it on our Patreon. Yeah, watching us watch it, you might find some some joy in because we do dissect it quite a bit. And there are funny things that happen in it. And at least there are things to make fun of in it for sure. We did a lot of experimental play ideas for what people could do instead of what is actually in the document. Yeah. And we also like gave our ideas about how they could have made the show better, etc, etc. That said, I do think Unwell Winter Games is worth a watch. It's just from what we're talking about in terms of the production style is it's so good. And it really does give you a glimpse, I think, of what a reality show can be in terms of pacing in the editing, how it shot just the superstar, mega heavy hitter reality TV player cast. There's like some really good pieces of this. And if Puda didn't have a restraining order, and if Dakota Mortensen didn't have domestic violence allegations against him and be embroiled in a custody battle with Taylor Frankie, Paul, and if her season hadn't been scuttled, and if he wouldn't have released that video, if all of those things wouldn't have happened, maybe it would be an easy watch. But it's like every time Dakota is on screen, you're just like, you feel very bad. I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching it. I would recommend to Alex if you're listening. You could still scuttle it. Can you? It's I'm we watched it. You can't scuttle it now. You can delete a video that you put on YouTube. I'm pretty sure. Of course, you can. But there's still time to scuttle. I don't think so. That's why I'm official advice. There's now 30,000 people have watched it. You can't scuttle that. There's still time to cut it to cut certain people out of it. Reupload. I don't think you're going to be able to scuttle it. Well, fortunately, I'll say this. Maybe you don't watch the entire thing, but watch the first like the little intro is maybe 45 seconds long at the very beginning of it. And it's this montage of players like zipping up their kind of 80s style snow suits. And it's cut to almost look like an old 80s ski movie of which there were many. I don't know if you remember this space case. I've seen the it's always sunny episode where they they shoot it like that. OK. Well, there were a lot of good ski movies from the 80s. Trust me on this. And it has that vibe. It's like even that component of it to me just shows you that creatively the people making that show are thinking about what should this look like, what kind of tone should it have. And they just hit it out of the fucking park. It's so good. It's so well made, unfortunately, for whatever reason. And maybe it comes with the idea that you're even like Anna Delvy casting her is like, that's a little questionable, you know, a little. So it's wild. They also casting a podcaster to throwing her in the mix. Like I would just be crying, but she's apparently entering love triangles. But it also is like the the one complaint that I might have with it outside of, you know, the obvious Dakota and all this stuff is like you almost the winter games element of it. Although it looks cool, visually, and all that. It's almost like a different show than take all these reality heavy hitters and social media people and throw them in a house or in some kind of a competition game. I don't know exactly. It feels almost like a little too much. I almost would just rather see all of those players forced to interact in some bizarre scenario. I like it. Yeah. Apresky, I feel like it's like a it's a good vibe. Also, you're at like a high altitude that probably makes the alcohol hit harder, etc. Yeah. That's always good. Yeah. Yeah. The bottom line is I love to watch reality like really good reality stars all together. I believe it's just so enjoyable. Most of the time. Do you think Alex Cooper is pushing reality TV forward? I would say want to marry Harry. My expectation is that it will because it might be the first celebrity bachelor style show in a long time since Tila Tequila shot at love. Right. I don't think she is. It's hard to say, I guess. I don't know that we have enough data on it, but I don't think she is. Love Overboard is dragging it back into. I don't even think it's dragging it back. It's just terrible. It's like almost unforgivable that that show was made. This other one, Unwell Winter Games, although technically beautiful and the editing is amazing, it's tonally dragging it back to early 2000s, Jerry Springer style, where you have somebody with an ankle monitor and you have somebody with a domestic violence allegation. It's like, yeah, whatever, throw them all on TV. I just think we're beyond that in terms of what reality TV audiences want. Yeah. It's not the first third wave show. Yeah. It's to me. Yeah. Sorry. What? Go ahead. What? I like embracing social media, but again, it's not like, it's nothing new. Yes. I would say Alex Cooper for me has been getting a lot more like boring, safe. Like her interviews very much feel like they're just like puff piece PR at this point. And they are, but I mean, that's because podcasts have taken over late night TV, which is what that was. Late night TV is where you go to come up with your projects and Johnny Carson or Jimmy Fallon or Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien or whoever just lobbed you some softball that's about like, wow, that's the craziest thing that happened all year on set. Well, George Clooney played a prank on me. Whatever. That's what they're getting now out of her podcast. But that to me is material to the reality. Like all these long explanations about how to give a blow job and the stuff. Oh, she really was she talking about pioneer? Yeah, no, I and maybe that's part of it. You make a lot of money and you get comfortable. And so you're just like, let me get some stuff out. I don't know. Authenticity is expensive, honey. Yeah, but there is no sense that I'm getting from either of these shows so far that Alex Cooper is the answer to a kind of a bad state of reality television, at least in the dating format arena, which I think right now, the dating format shows are maybe in the worst place they've ever been with now bachelor going into as of recording this, the 145th day without bachelor product, which we'll get to on Thursday. Is that the longest dry spell we ever had? Maybe. Your biggest slum was stars in chaos. Your biggest love Island stars in chaos. Love is blind, utterly unwatchable at this point. I don't know what I was hoping that Alex Cooper was going to be kind of the thing to push this forward and be like, here's how to do it. I just don't have that sense anymore. I'm going to watch the Harry show for sure. Honestly, I'll probably watch everything she does because I just still have such a huge amount of hope that she is still the answer. She is still the person who is going to direct reality dating formats into where they need to be in 2026. It's just her first foray. I wouldn't judge us by our first podcast episode. That's probably unlistable. Yeah, I wouldn't either. But just to let you know, for our first podcast episode, we did not have a team of producers, millions of dollars in budget from a corporate greed machine, a yacht and 22 reality TV players. So let's make that podcast. That's true. That's true. We did pretty good for like recording into a fucking potato on my being inspired. We just had inspiration and a tape recorder. We did. And now we're here. But to me, the bottom line is this. I think Alex Cooper's first two forays into reality television out of the gate are not good. One, because it's a bad show. One, because tonally, it's ignoring what is going on in reality TV with some of the most controversial players that we've ever seen. Will let's marry Harry pick up the pace. Will it raise the bar? Possibly. Time will tell. I'm not sure when that premier sometime this year. But I still have hope that Alex Cooper is going to get it together and deliver to us some of the greatest reality dating formats that we have yet to see. Unfortunately, it just ain't the first two out of the gate. I have hope for Harry. Me too. The way his short little cameo in Salama and now he's like, he seems to be a Salama super fan now and keeps like analyzing their social media on his TikToks. And commenting on it and stuff. I'm very much enjoying that. He's just become a Salama commentator. He's just in there. But I think like he's a person who correctly identifies how to ride controversy. He knows obviously what's going on with the Bachelorette season, getting scuttled and all this shit. And she's making her posts now. Taylor Frankie Paul is actually posting now on Instagram and TikTok again. And he's commenting on them. So he's like, let me just somehow be involved in this controversy. But yeah, orbs like, he's like, people don't like baby Grinch. I'm going to screenshot his DMS. You know what? I don't know where Alex Cooper is at in the casting of Let's Marry Harry. But at this point, is it out of the realm of possibility for her to cast Taylor Frankie Paul as a player on his season? I don't know if this is a case of like, well, we've already spent the money, we have to air it because of our whatever ad duties or like, this is our MBO going forward. Let's lean into cancel culture. Let's get Louis CK on summer games. He's back, baby. His grocery store Joe Serena canceled. Louis CK. Oh my God. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem like she's courting controversy. And like time will tell, we're at 31,226 views on this first episode. I don't know. Time will tell, I guess, if if it was a smart idea to air this or if it's going to be like detrimental to her brand. Ultimately, I think probably it won't be that, you know, things move fast in the news realm of reality TV. I think the show will be forgotten as quickly as it's put out. We're in chaos world right now. There's no standards for our president. Why would there be higher standards for our reality TV characters? I bet she will have Harry on to promote that show. Hopefully. Yeah, he's big enough probably. But anyway, that wraps it up. Alex Cooper's first two shots out of the gate. Not great, but we still have hope. Thank you for joining us. And we'll be back on Friday with this week in Bachelor Nation where we're going to be talking about this length of time we are now going without any bachelor product. Is it the longest span of time that we have ever had? Tune in Friday to see and what is it doing to Clues and I? Nothing. I'm fine. We're totally fine. We watch all of Love Overboard. We're fine. I'm fine. I'm just having dreams about you and me hosting secret watch parties of Taylor Franky Paul's season. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine. Oh my God. Praise me, Dark Lord Wendy. And who's the guy who's hosting the Winter Games? I don't even know. I don't know. Dark Lord Winter Games. Dark Lord Angle Bracelet. It's the King of Cork City. I'm BBC Eye Player. There's only one way to get rich roomed here. Yes, boy. I like it. Become proper gangsters. I was going to say get jobs. The boys are back. We're looking to expand the organization. We are performing a bit of a gang. What's going on here? I'm fine. The new series of the Young Offenders. I'm going to be a bad boy forever. Watch on BBC Eye Player. Fancy making your day even brighter at Gala? 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