2x11 The Reunion

I don't support Shake, but he does raise valid points about the pretense of the show putting people in a hyper emotional position and then presenting them with marriage after 6 weeks. A real legal marriage they have to plan in one week. One that their real friends and family will attend. Where they aren't allowed to say no until they've gotten fully dolled up in full wedding attire and walked all the way down the isle in front of everyone they know and everyone the fiancé knows. It's ridiculously manipulative. In that situation I'd say yes just because of the sheer pressure and then break up after the wedding. I mean some of these women clean up NOICE. This whole thing is at least 100 times worse than the peer pressure in high school and kids self-terminate over that stuff.

That said, Shake is still a dick. Not just because he can't play along, but because of all the insulting things he did throughout the season which is tripled and quadrupled down on in this episode. Also based on what everyone is implying, it looks like he was not only the villain of the series but a steelmaned edit* was going on to make Shake seem viable until the wedding. Some other things were blow way out of proportion in part because everyone is treating this situation like it's regular reality and not reality TV. People behave different on TV. I don't know how the PAs spike everyone's food in order to get them to share things they KNOW will be aired on the reunion but they do and then they have to justify the things they say and apologize to the people insulted whether or not they were insulted intentionally or not, whether or not they were offended or not because everyone is playing the game.

Honestly that big old goofball Shane... poor guy. Never thought I'd root for someone like him but he got sucked into the game and got married to someone he shouldn't have been paired with purely because of the mechanics of the game during which everyone has to pretend it's their choice and not the game that's put them there.

Honestly I could go the rest of my life without hearing Vanessa Lachey say the word "Experiment" ever again. It roiled me up every single time because they do it to give credence to the show's presentation of context as authoritative when it's highly manipulated.

One of the things the game players wanted to find out was HOW Shane got into a pod with Shaina when he was expecting Natalie. As soon as the guys brought it up to discuss how confusing it was for Shane suddenly Vanessa and Nick change the subject so fast you get dizzy. The discussion absolutely ENDS. Something Shake's PR team is going to wish they did when he spoke. The show is still a game but the players are still people and Shake never gets that. Whomever his producer is, they're gonna rake in the money for getting the ratings gold that is Shake to continue playing as far as he did. He has almost enough character to get a spin off. If he had shut his mouth or maybe apologized to Deepti maybe he could have been a bad boy gone good looking for love. Heck they might still do it. Lord knows they used to take the worst person in this romantic reality shows and then spin them off in their own show.

• - steelman being the opposite of a strawman. I'm suggesting here the editors are doing their best to present Shake in the best light so to speak