Late comment I know but I've just watched the Alone TV show where individuals try to survive in remote Patagonia. It was all looking good, with the contestants doing really well, and then the show flopped at the end. The last two were a man and a woman and the producers seem to have pulled the plug by disqualifying the woman on the grounds of a low BMI. This handed the victory to the guy who was starting to look shaky. The woman was looking pretty good. Was it rigged?
The show suddenly announced that if a contestant falls to a BMI of 17 they would be pulled as that was life threatening. Really? Then why did the female contestant look so healthy? The whole exercise looked suspect, and it seemed like they wanted to wrap the show up as it had dragged on to 86 days, the point where they disqualified the woman.
I looked this up; the female's BMI of 16.80 is only moderately anorexic. Not life threatening at all. Severe is below 16, extreme below 15 - and then you're in trouble. So the contestant being DQ'd at 16.8 is nonsense. They simply didn't want her to win, the man was looking psychologically weak and physically he'd slowed up a lot while the woman looked healthy.
Across all seasons I've noticed other issues with the show. Some contestants don't appear there to win, they tap out as soon as they've shown off enough. And for some it must be a holiday as they're gone almost immediately with one guy not even spending a night outside. Now finally I think we can see that the whole exercise is flawed. Instead of the contest being a struggle with self, it came down to who could start fat and last the longest. Basically the beefy dude could last longer as he had fat to lose - is that what the show is about? It makes the whole Alone thing pointless.
And are these people really so good at surviving outdoors? How come few can actually catch anything?
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