Summary
An obscure pro wrestling-adjacent reality show from 2001 was mired in scandal. Was it really rigged?
Related episodes
Show notes
- Another Reality TV Show Is Under Fire (New York Times)
- Manhunt on IMDB
- The Stingray (Wayback Machine)
- Twenty-One (Wikipedia)
- Prohibited practices in contests of knowledge, skill, or chance (FCC)
- JK’s letter to the FCC (Wayback Machine)
- Steve Beverly’s letter to the FCC (Wayback Machine)
- Survivor rules: the contract that details pay, tie-breakers, prohibited behavior, and more (Reality Blurs)
Related episodes
- Original Overunderstood episode: Manhunt
Transcript
Adrianne: This is Underunderstood.
John: Hey, everybody.
Regina: Hi, John.
Adrianne: Hey, John.
Billy: Hi, John.
John: Okay. I have, like, a 20-year-old story.
Adrianne: Uh-huh.
Regina: Wow.
John: And it’s about reality TV.
Billy: I’m ready.
John: If you’re on our Patreon you might think you’ve heard this story already, but, um, stick around, you haven’t. So to set the scene, the year is 2001. You’re all familiar with the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation?
Billy: Yes.
Regina: I mean, loosely.
Billy: Not to be confused with the panda one.
John: No. Different, different organization.
Billy: Okay.
John: Now the WWE.
Adrianne: They changed it to WWE?
John: Yeah, it was a merger. WCW and WWF merged and they became WWE at some point, World Wrestling Entertainment. Anyway, you know, you know, th- when I say the name Vince McMahon, does that ring a bell with anybody?
Billy: He, isn’t he, like, the, the main cheese?
John: Well, he was the chairman and CEO until 2022. Uh, he stepped down at that point because of a hush money scandal over, um, his having affairs with former WWE employees. But in 2001, he was the infamous chairman of WWF, and this is kinda the point where he’s at the top of his whole thing. Uh, this is also the year he decided to boot up the first iteration of the XFL, the Xtreme Football League.
Billy: Oh, yeah.
John: Do you remember this?
Adrianne: No. What is that?
John: A famous failure of a, of an alternative football league where, like, the rules were grittier, everyone gets hurt more.
Playback: There’s a new brand of football coming, a league where players must train harder and push themselves to the extreme.
John: So this is that same year the XFL famously fell apart, like, midway through the season and it shut down without ever finishing its first season. That’s also not what this story is about, but it is about a show that was Vince McMahon’s idea in 2001. His pitch was you take the WWF and you team up with the syndicated TV network UPN and you make a reality show where three stalkers try to take out contestants with paintball guns, and the last contestant standing at the end of this gets $250,000.
Billy: I’m sorry. Three stalkers?
John: Three… Yes. The idea behind this was that there was predators and prey on this show, and the last prey contestant wins a quarter of a million dollars.
Billy: And the predators were WWF stars?
John: Well, we’ll get to that. But the idea for this show was a real thing. And yeah, he did want to involve WWF stars, and that was gonna be the tie-in, was like the, the predators were the ones going after them. The idea for this show was a real thing, but by sometime in 2001, Vince McMahon got kinda busy with the XFL as it was falling apart, uh, but UPN did air a show, and that show was called Manhunt. It aired from August 8th, 2001, through September 7th, 2001. Uh, there were only six episodes. So the idea was that 13 contestants were picked for this show. They were flown to the island of Kauai on Hawaii, and the competition lasted for six days, uh, while the contestants were chased by these, these hunters.
Adrianne: Oh. So it’s in a controlled environment. I was imagining just going about your daily life-
John: Yes.
Adrianne: … but there could be a stalker, like, behind the cereal in the grocery aisle.
Billy: Yes.
John: No, no. No, they brought them to Kau- and this was also around the time Survivor was getting popular.
Adrianne: Okay. All right.
Billy: So this is more, this is, like, more tropical aesthetic. This is like-
John: Yes, yes.
Billy: So is it, like, Survivor-type aesthetic, where they’re there, uh, they don’t have access-
John: Mm-hmm.
Billy: … to modern things, or…?
John: It’s more military than that. Uh, they’re all wearing, like, like, comms headsets and stuff, and their idea is that, like, they’re given maps and stuff and they have to go on these, on these excursions to find things on Kauai, and, like, while they’re moving, they could be shot at. Eh, but it’s hard for me to tell really because e- as far as I can tell, this show is not available anywhere. Like, it’s not on physical disc, it’s not on the internet. I haven’t found full episodes, just, um, short clips on YouTube. And I should mention one other thing. One of the stalkers was John Cena before he had gotten surely famous, and on this show, he operated under the name Big Tim.
Playback: Welcome to the island. I’m Big Tim.
Billy: Oh, whoa.
Playback: I’ve invited 13 unlucky souls to come here and play my game, the game I call Manhunt. These soft-bellied suburbanites have six days to cross my island. And the first one to cross the finish line wins a quarter of a million dollars in cash. I’m here to prevent that, with a little help from my friends, Rain… and Koa.
Adrianne: This is, like, a Mortal Kombat movie.
Playback: Our weapons of choice? These. Air-powered marker rifles. And just to make things sporty, we only carry three rounds per attack. And the rifles shoot once… every 10 seconds. Boom! The rules are simple. Three hits, they go home, and we take a trophy, their hair.
Adrianne: Oh, my God.
Billy: All right, wow.
Adrianne: Oh, wow.
John: That’s the setup for this game.
Adrianne: I wanna watch it.
John: M- me too.
Billy: I felt really, uh, targeted when he said “soft-belly suburbanites.”
Adrianne: Yeah, that hit home.
John: Is that how you think of yourself?
Billy: Well, I was just watching this. It’s like it goes from a young John Cena who looks… I mean, he’s, like, super muscular, and, like, looks almost fake. It looks, it looks like someone, like, wrapped someone in fake muscle.
John: He looks like a G.I. Joe with a blond Mohawk.
Billy: Yeah, he has, like, bleach-blond hair. So it goes from him, yeah, who looks like a literal action figure come to life, like a He-Man come to life, and then it cuts to these people that look like they just pulled them out of, like, some random IT office. I can- I feel like it’s easy for me to transport myself there and f- and f- feel the threat of a, of a young, bloodthirsty John Cena. Modern-day John Cena is very, very family-friendly. This guy just seems like a predator.
John: I mean, he’s out to shoot you with one of his three paintballs-
Billy: Yeah. Right.
John: … that he can shoot once every 10 seconds.
Billy: Wow.
John: So the way I found this show was I started looking around for newspaper articles about stories that might’ve gotten lost in the wake of 11, so I, I found this article from the New York Times on August 16th, 2001. The headline is, “Another Reality TV Show is Under Fire. A former producer of a new reality program says that he was asked to manipulate situations and create drama where there was none by his studio bosses at the Paramount Television Group.”
Adrianne: Um-
John: “Executives at UPN and Paramount, both units of Viacom, would not comment on any of the specific accusations last night, but in a joint statement, they said, quote, ‘UPN and Paramount have not supported and would not support persons or practices designed to manipulate the outcome of the show.’ Later on, it says, ‘Mr. Jaffe said he refused the requests and was told to step down from producing the program, although he is still listed as a producer in the show’s credits.’ “‘I would say that the show that’s on the air cannot be classified as a reality show,’ Mr. Jaffe said. ‘It’s been designed to overdramatize what was a fascinating, exciting event, a real-life event, in 13 people’s lives.’ Mr. Jaffe, however, said that the ultimate outcome of the program was not affected and that the winner of the game, which will be revealed in four weeks, won legitimately.” That doesn’t sound f- so shocking now, but remember, this was around 2001, where we were just coming off of the first season of Survivor.Reality TV is kinda having its boom.
Regina: We thought it was actually reality.
John: It’s not e- even that you were thinking of it as reality, it was just, like, it was kinda high-stakes. It was like, this is a game show where people win actual money. T- actually, take a look at this, uh, webpage that I’m dropping in Slack. Um, don’t read too much of it, just kind of … I just want you all to experience the aesthetic.
Billy: Ooh, the web archive, so this isn’t publicly accessible anymore.
John: It’s not. This is, uh-
Billy: Wow.
John: … from the Wayback Machine.
Adrianne: Are you telling me this story was broken by thestingray.net?
John: I think I’m telling you that.
Billy: Thestingray.net?
Regina: Yeah.
Billy: I have never heard of this. What is this?
Regina: I mean, look at that logo.
Billy: It looks like Drudge Report, like, meets Idiocracy, like the aesthetic of just, like, ads, but they aren’t even ads.
John: It’s got one of those Geocities, like, site hit counters in the top right.
Billy: And why is Richard Hatch featured so prominently on multiple parts of this website?
John: Yeah, Richard Hatch, the, uh, first Survivor winner and, uh, like, legendary villain character on that show.
Billy: The lea-… Uh, so is Richard Hatch the Stingray?
John: No. The Stingray, I believe, is the guy who runs this, w- ran this website. His name is Peder Lance. Uh, it says here on the website-
Regina: Mm.
John: … he is a five-time Emmy awon- Emmy-winning investigative reporter and lawyer, now working as a screenwriter and novelist. The story that we’re gonna be talking about took place in August of 2001, uh, and this was the guy reporting the story that we’re gonna go down into. And then S- September 11th happened. Uh, and you see midway down the page, Thestingray.net, A New Mission. “In the years since I began investigating allegations of rigging and producer manipulation on so-called’reality TV,’ a number of critics and some network execs raised the question, ‘Why should we care? After all, this was just television, a medium that commands our lowest expectations. There were bigger fish to fry,’ they said, and after the events of September 11th, there was little question that they were right.” Uh, so he pivoted the website, it seems, to be- … about 9/11 conspiracy theories at some point after, uh, being about, for like, for two years, about being a reality show of conspiracy theories. So, there’s kind of like a, an amalgamation here of Survivor, Manhunt, and 9/11.
Billy: Love it.
John: He did a very thorough job on his Manhunt research. Uh, this guy published a series of articles on this website, where he sourced a bunch of evidence that the show was manipulated, he says, “Even down to the outcome.”
Adrianne: No. Say it isn’t so.
John: So, he claims that this began in the first episode, when a producer on the show caused the first losing contestant to lose. Her name was Jacqueline Kelly. She went by JK on the show. And the allegation is that, during one of the encounters with the hunters, one of the contestants hurt himself in some way. JK stayed behind to help that contestant, and while she was doing that, a producer came by to interview her on camera. She says he shoved her to the ground, actually. I don’t know if that was by accident or on purpose. Made her do an on-camera interview, and that separated her from the rest of the group. It seems like there was footage of this encounter. It’s not online anymore on thestingray.net, but there are some freeze frames of it and it does seem to match up with that story. Uh, later that night, they did this kind of… I don’t fully understand the mechanic, but they did something like a tribal council, where you vote people quasi-out of the game, and she was voted out because it was perceived that she abandoned her teammates when, in reality, a producer purposely kept her from helping those teammates.
Adrianne: This seems so within the bounds of-
Regina: Right.
Adrianne: … reality television show producer, this is your job.
John: Seems like it to me.
Regina: Right.
John: Uh, here, uh, from The Stingray, he writes, “Jaffe, in an interview on August 3rd, said that the chief of Paramount TV’s production studio went so far as to ask him to fix a Gauntlet.” I- and the Gauntlet was this mechanism where, in every episode, uh, the contestants would vote one contestant into a Gauntlet, w- which was some high-risk scenario where they were much more likely to be shot by a paintball th- than elsewhere in the game. And this is kind of like- … their tribal council thing. I couldn’t find any footage of this, but my understanding is that someone leaves during the Gauntlet every time.
Billy: I’m still struggling with the concept of the show. So, the concept is just, like-
Regina: Yeah.
Billy: … who can withstand bullying the longest, basically?
John: It’s not bullying, right? It’s, it’s like…
Regina: Being hunted?
John: Yeah, you’re being hunted.
Billy: But you can’t actually be killed. You’re- you can only be voted off.
John: No, you get voted into this intense situation where you’re more likely to be shot at.
Regina: I see. Hm.
Billy: So, that’s presumably to add, like, a social layer where you want people to like you so they don’t put you in a higher risk position.
Regina: Right.
John: Yes. And the first accusation here is that the producers were manipulating that by putting the first person who got voted out, or who got voted into the Gauntlet, in a situation where it looked like she had abandoned her teammates.
Regina: Hm.
John: So, he’s compiled here a bunch of the manipulations that he claims happened. One of them is that they, in the final version of the show, uh, replaced the maps that the contestants were using, which, on the island, were really detailed and had topography on them, with ones that seemed really basic and, like, kind of, uh, hard to navigate, to make it look, at home, like the show was harder than it actually was. But thestingray.net was really fixated on one manipulation, that when the contestants got home after their six days of shooting, Paramount apparently decided that there wasn’t enough drama between the contestants and they wanted reshoots. So, they called up all of the contestants and said to meet in a park in LA, and Peder Lance got the call sheet and an extensive shot list for these reshoots. They had everybody show up and recite lines from a script, there’s also screenshots of the script, and kind of enact parts of the contest that didn’t happen on the island, in this park in LA, to make the whole thing seem like there was more conflict than there actually was.
Billy: Okay, question.
John: Yes.
Billy: Are these, like, testimonial-type things, where they’re talking to camera, or are these, like, actual scenes that they are claiming happened during the, the filming?
John: Paramount claimed what was going on was mostly testimonials, but there’s one scene in particular where the contestants are looking at a map and, like, figuring out a game plan for where to go. That was completely concocted. Like, it was scripted before they showed up on that day, and they were just told to say the lines that were in this script. So, it actually is gameplay that was being scripted.
Billy: Yeah. ‘Cause the first thing is extremely common in reality television, right? Like-
John: Yeah.
Billy: … doing the testimonials way after the fact, when they have most of the story figured out and they just basically need people to say certain things to kind of carry the story and bridge certain gaps.
John: Yeah.
Billy: Like, on Keeping up with the Kardashians, they don’t even really try to hide this. Their, often their, like, hairstyles or their look is, like, completely different in the testimonial part than it is in the part that’s happening on the camera. And they still have them speak in present tense, as if they w- had just been pulled aside or whatever.
Adrianne: This first article by Peder Lance refers to FCC anti-rigging rules.
Regina: Mm-hmm.
John: Yeah. So, do you remember 21 Questions?
Adrianne: Is this another, another one of your games?
John: It was a 1950s game show where two contestants would play against each other in these booths and they were asked general knowledge questions, and I think there was 21 of them, and the one who answered the most correctly would, like, move on and become the champion.
Adrianne: Oh, yeah. This was turned into a movie called Quiz Show.
Regina: Mm-hmm.
John: Yeah.
Adrianne: With Robert Redford.
Playback: That little box in your living room is plugged into something crooked. Dick’s on a witch hunt. He thinks 21 is rigged. Is it?
John: It came out eventually that all of the… basically, after the first episode, all of the contestants were rigged and told to lose or win. They were given the answers in advance. And like a year after all of this, other shows also started cheating. And, uh, in 1960, The Communications Act of 1934 was amended, and the amendment specified in Section 509, prohibited practices in contests of knowledge, skill, or chance, A, influencing, pre-arranging, or pre-determining outcome.
Adrianne: How do we feel about this- … as a law?
Billy: I mean, I don’t know how I feel about it as a law. I do think if you watch early game shows, they’re basically, like, just elaborate ads that they were doing to kill time and make money. I mean, they’re all sort of like The Price is Right is now, but e- even more sponsory. Yeah, whether it, as a law, it’s good or not, I do like kind of the assurance that when you’re seeing a game show on TV, you can be reasonably sure that, like, the people are normal people who are actually playing for… It’s just more fun to think that they’re, to know that they’re playing for real money.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
Billy: Right.
John: Jacqueline Kelly, that first contestant who was manipulated out of the game presumably, allegedly, filed a formal FCC complaint to say, “Hey, this show was rigged. I think this falls afoul of game show laws.” Reading from that letter, it says, “I believe that the producer intervention and tampering on Manhunt may well violate several federal laws, including 47 U.S.C. Section 509 and 47 Section 73-1216, copies of which are enclosed. I have no doubt that as a contestant, I was defrauded by Paramount’s initial representations as to the fairness of the game, their conduct of the game, which involved heavy manipulation by the producers, and later in their attempts to get me to participate with the 12 other contestants in a fraud on the television viewing audience.”
Adrianne: Was this show popular?
John: It, no, it was not popular.
Adrianne: Seems like a lot of drama for a-
John: Yeah.
Adrianne: … show no one’s watching.
John: Well, that, that’s why I think this website is so funny, because it was so focused on this game show that no one was watching. So there was this, this Professor Steve Beverly, he’s a professor of broadcasting at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He also, uh, started beating this drum and wrote a second complaint to the FCC, and his complaints are kind of interesting. I’ll read here from stingray.net. “In the past, the FCC has taken enforcement of this rules provision so seriously that in the mid-1970s, CBS lost two years from the license of KNXT, its Los Angeles-owned station, for billing a series of Jimmy Connors’ tennis challenges as winner take all, when in fact both Connors and his opponents were guaranteed substantial appearance fees.” So like, in the ‘70s, that was enough for a CBS affiliate to lose its license for two years.
Billy: Huh. I guess also, this is, so this is enforced by the FCC, so this really only applies to broadcast television. Doesn’t apply to cable channels-
John: Yeah.
Billy: … presumably, and other… Okay.
John: Yep.
Adrianne: So UPN is broadcast?
Billy: Yes.
John: Or was. It’s not around anymore.
Billy: Yeah.
John: And then, uh, here, this, this, uh, this wronged producer, Jaffe, said, “In the original production of Manhunt, 13 people banded together to act as a team. They were determined not to exhibit the kind of cutthroat behavior that had been seen on shows like Survivor, but Paramount executives were disappointed that they didn’t act with more conflict and backstabbing. For the sake of ratings, they asked me to change the very reality of the series, and I couldn’t in good conscience go along with that.”
Adrianne: Wow. This guy has a really strong moral compass.
Billy: I kinda wanna watch this show now. Have you watched-
John: It’s-
Billy: … any of it?
John: I can’t find it. I can’t f- I found, like, highlight reels on YouTube, but I can’t find-
Billy: Mm-hmm.
John: … like, episodes of this show. It would be such a quick binge-watch, too. Six episodes, 13 people. And, and I wonder if any of this controversy, like, contributed to why I can’t see this show. So, what I wanna find out is, whatever happened to this FCC complaint? 9/11 happened. That seemed to distract everybody from pursuing this any further, but did anything ever come of this? And ultimately, what I wanna know is was Manhunt rigged? Was this a legitimate game show, or a sham? Okay, we’re back.
Adrianne: Hey, John.
Billy: Hello.
John: Well, most of us are back. Regina is-
Billy: She was taken out by one of the- … one of the jungle assassins.
John: One of the predators.
Billy: One of the predators. John Cena got to her.
Adrianne: Big Tim got her.
John: Yeah, Regina’s traveling, so she is unfortunately not here for this thrilling conclusion of this story. But I have a lot more information now about how Manhunt was presented.
Billy: Okay.
John: And that’s because I have seen all six episodes of Manhunt.
Billy: Wow.
John: I have seen the entire show.
Billy: Wow. May we ask how you procured the episodes?
John: We’ll, uh, we’ll come back to how I got it.
Billy: Okay.
Adrianne: Did you, I mean, what’s your review though?
Billy: Yeah.
John: My review of the show… Um, I would say it is simultaneously completely nuts and much more boring than it really should be for its description.
Billy: Okay. Yeah.
John: So the premise is basically like what we already knew. It is 13 people, they need to trek across, um, Big Tim’s island. The- … island is never named by name as Kauai, but that is where it was.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: The premise is right, though. The first contestant to cross the finish line would get $250,000. Uh, the whole time, there were these encounters with the three predators.
Adrianne: How far away are they?
John: The, the predators to the prey?
Adrianne: Is this a sniper situation?
John: No, they’re pretty close. Like, they get right up on them. So, so like I said, the encounters are totally over the top. They always begin with a bunch of pyro and explosions.
Adrianne: What?
John: And that just, like, continues happening while-
Adrianne: I’m imagining, like, the 1990s-
Playback: fire!
Adrianne: … Mortal Kombat movie.
Playback: Go forward! Gotta go forward! Go, go, go, go, go, go!
Billy: Wait, is that John Cena there?
John: Yeah, that was John Cena.
Billy: Oh my God.
Playback: Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!
Billy: He looks like such a Chad. They got him, like, in the most stereotypical Chad look.
Playback: Remember what I said. I wanna see paint. If you get one mark, you keep after them, and you go for the elimination. Go, go, go, go, go!
Adrianne: Oh yeah, this is, like, a bottleneck sort of that they have to go through.
Playback: Off the rope! Watch this. When they hit the verticals, they’ll slow down like molasses. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. Off the rope! Come on!
Adrianne: Okay, so there are some explosions that are sending-
Playback: Careful. Now off the rope!
Adrianne: … sand up into the air.
Playback: She’s got two shots off. She’s at one mark. Watch this. Hit. Marker one, hit. She’s at one mark. One more. That’s enough. Show me where you got that, all right? You can raise your hands and surrender. Let’s go right now. You stay right there, come on. Come on.
John: John Cena is, uh, so unnecessarily aggressive.
Adrianne: Yeah. This is-
Playback: You surrender? You surrender right-
Adrianne: … boring.
Billy: Yeah, it’s not well-made. It does somehow seem faker than WWE does.
John: Well, ‘cause he’s not in a wrestling ring. He’s, like, out in the-
Billy: Right, like-
John: … middle of outdoors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Billy: But the, but the stakes feel so much lower. Like, you, like, you watch professional wrestling, you know it’s scripted and staged, but there are still stakes.
Adrianne: It also seemed like the hunters were holding back on purpose.
Billy: Right.
John: So the game works basically like we’re, like, what we had already known. Contestants who get shot a total of three times are out. They’re removed from the game and the predators do take their hair.
Playback: You’re going to find out if bald really is beautiful.
John: Ooh.
Playback: When you take this back to the folks, you let them know how much you were humiliated.
John: The fir- th- this is the first thing that seemed a little bit weird to me. They don’t actually shave the heads of the women. They just kind of put their hair in a ponytail and then use the razor to cut the ponytail off.
Billy: Hmm. So they crop their hair?
John: So you leave with short hair, not a shaved head.
Billy: Okay.
John: They… Basically, yes. Yes.
Adrianne: Hmm.
John: What else about this show? There are testimonial interviews throughout the whole thing. And at least just looking at them, it’s pretty obvious that they did happen after the fact.
Playback: As open and vulnerable as we were, it was pretty amazing that only two of us got hit. Romy got her first one, I got my second one, which puts me that much closer to getting out. I guess just one more hit.
John: Every contestant is wearing a bandana over their head in these interviews. And, uh, it definitely seems like-
Billy: Ah.
John: … they’re trying to hide the fact that everyone had their hair chopped off- … before the interviews happened. Like, no one’s wearing a bandana in the show.
Billy: Uh-huh.
John: But they are all wearing them in the interviews.
Billy: Okay. But that’s fine. Like, we discussed, like, it’s normal to shoot testimonial interviews after the fact.
John: Totally, yeah. The Gauntlets… You remember the Gauntlets?
Billy: Yes.
Adrianne: Right.
John: All of the players are given a few minutes to vote for one member of the team to participate.
Playback: Ah, the Gauntlet. It’s my own creation. We all line up, and one of those pathetic suburbanites has to run 50 yards, grab a flag, and run 50 yards back without being marked. The best part is, they get voted in by their own kind.
John: So, some players like JK were eliminated this way. JK was, uh, the first one eliminated. But other players actually did get through Gauntlets without getting shot at all, which is kind of impressive. It was like… ‘Cause they’re basically sitting ducks.
Playback: Now, that’s funny to me. Bzz. Know what I mean?
John: The thing that stuck out to me watching this is that it does not feel particularly high stakes. No matter how you slice it, you’re watching six hours of a paintball match where one side doesn’t have guns.
Adrianne: Right.
Billy: Do they incorporate personal stories to make you, like, care about the characters? Like, “Oh, this person needs to… They just had a kid and they can barely afford rent, and they need to, like…”
Adrianne: Right.
John: No.
Adrianne: Like, the storylines are what make wrestling entertaining.
Billy: Yeah. Or like Survivor, you know?
John: We basically only get their professions.
Billy: Got it.
John: But no, there’s none of the, like, emotional backstory.
Billy: Sure.
John: And like I said, like, only one side has guns, so it’s just people running away from people with paintball- … um, guns. Except for the… In the very last episode is when they gave the remaining four contestants paintball guns to fight back.
Billy: Yeah.
John: And that was, like, an actually fun thing to watch because it was-
Billy: Yeah.
John: … like, now they were matched in the… Like, John Cena had to actually, like, dodge and stuff.
Adrianne: Were they any good at aiming their paintball guns?
John: Well, they were given some training by a former Navy SEAL in how to operate-
Adrianne: Oh, right.
John: … and, and move tactically with their paintball guns.
Billy: Right.
John: So, like, we’ve identified a bunch of problems here with the show- … that didn’t make it particularly compelling. Uh, in the week of August 13th, 2001, it ranked 103rd of 113 shows in its time slot- … in the 18 to 49 demographic.
Adrianne: Oh, boy.
Billy: Okay.
John: So, I think the failure of the show might have something to do with why it’s not available online anywhere. And why I had to get it directly from one of the contestants.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: My name is Liz Forsythe-Donaldson. I am a firefighter in Austin, Texas.
John: Liz was the sixth contestant voted off of Manhunt, so she basically made it halfway through the game. Liz was, uh, very kind and she let me watch her own copy of the show, which she had on VHS. In Manhunt, she is identified as a firefighter trainee.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: That was kind of funny ‘cause I, I knew I wanted to be a firefighter. I knew that that was, uh, something that was my focus. I guess they kind of needed to summarize everyone in their little quick sound bite. I wasn’t working for a fire department at the time and I wasn’t employed by anyone. Each of us fit a very specific stereotype, and that was mine. It was kinda that, like, tough girl or tomboy or something like that.
John: Had you wanted to be on-
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: Yeah.
John: … reality TV before this?
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: No.
John: Huh.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: I mean, I hadn’t… Uh, but I’m, but also, oh, uh, I should back up. I was an actor. That’s why I was in Los Angeles.
John: Oh, okay. Okay.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: So, uh, yeah, I should’ve said. So, at least half of the cast had some sort of acting background, but they did not want us to talk about that.
John: Sure.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: So, when I signed up, they asked me what I did and I, and I remember I was gonna put actor, and they’re like, “Mm, maybe let’s not talk about that,” ‘cause everyone in Los Angeles is an actor. And because I wanted to be a firefighter, they’re like, “That’s the edge that you want.”
Billy: Interesting, but again, not that abnormal for reality TV.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
Billy: And not that abnormal that they try to kind of, like, not emphasize that part of things.
John: I think you’re right, but, uh, the takeaway for me was that all of these contestants were from LA and there was no… There wasn’t any kind of large nationwide casting call for this show.
Billy: Oh, right.
John: This was, like, recruited literally at gyms. Um, I spoke to another contestant, too.
Adrianne: Oh, wow.
Nicole Gordillo: Hi, I’m Nicole Gradillo. I’m one of these contestants on, um, the Manhunt show that was filmed in 2000 and aired in 2001.
John: And you’re a little more than a contestant, right? You are…
Nicole Gordillo: Uh, well, yes. Uh, I guess I, I won the show. Um…
John: Congratulations.
Nicole Gordillo: Uh, thank you.
John: Nicole was cast after she found a casting call on one of those, like, pull tab telephone pole flyer things. You know, with like- … those. Uh, it was hanging outside of a Gold’s Gym. Both Liz and Nicole were… They were young, they were enthusiastic, and they basically just saw this as a potential adventure.
Nicole Gordillo: It was just like, “Can you believe that we’re on Kauai and that we’re getting to do this thing? And, oh my god, we’ve already won, really.” I’m, I’m 21 and I’m gonna get a free flight to Hawaii and I’m gonna visit an island that nobody else sees ‘cause it’s owned by Paramount.
Adrianne: Wait, Kauai is-
Billy: Wait.
Adrianne: … owned by Paramount?
Billy: Yeah, I’m sorry. What? That’s not true.
John: It’s an area… Yeah, so it turns out this is an area of Kauai that Paramount owns.
Billy: Oh, part of it. Okay, that makes sense.
John: And at this point in time, it was something like the third thing to ever be shot there. One of them was Jurassic Park.
Adrianne: Right.
Billy: That makes more sense then that-
John: Yes.
Billy: … those are the- that’s-
John: Traversing the entire island of Kauai? No way. No.
Billy: Right, yeah.
John: Uh, to hear Nicole and Liz tell it, they were… They really were playing a game, and they really were put in stressful situations during that game.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: We covered a lot of ground. We started pretty early, and then there would be a safe zone that they’d put up in rope, so as long as you made it into the safe zone, you knew that you couldn’t be shot by a hunter. And then at night, they would play loud music and babies crying and that kind of stuff so you couldn’t sleep well.
John: Oh, my god.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: Um, yeah, it was g- it was kind of like-… like, mind, mind warfare, you know?
Adrianne: That’s dumb.
Billy: That’s, like, what they did at, uh, Waco.
John: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Billy: Jesus.
John: Exactly. Uh, Liz, Liz said that the encounters with the hunters were particularly intense.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: We never knew where we were gonna get engaged. All of a sudden, they’d shut off these flash bangs and these fireworks, and we would know we’re being attacked. So then we’d have to run.
Playback: Use that light, use that light! Use that light I’m circling it.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: I remember we were coming into a ravine, and we came in, and it was like an old quarry, and it was, there was, like, no way out but just to climb it.
John: Yeah.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: And it was the end of the day, and it was, uh, at that time in my life, that was the most exhausted I had ever been. That was everything I had, and I remember thinking, “If I could do that, then I can be a firefighter.” Which was really cool. It was a very, uh, emotional experience for me.
Playback: Hunters, three o’clock.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: And I remember on several of the engagements that we had, I, I very specifically experienced that slowing of time and being able to take in more information and, and funnel through what was important and what wasn’t.
Playback: Say hi to the bad guy. Marker one here.
John: The Stingray.net made a somewhat big deal over the maps of the island being faked. There’s a lot of footage of them, like, looking over maps, and, and, and the website said that these maps were replaced by, uh, more complicated versions of maps.
Adrianne: Did you confirm that?
John: Well, Liz told me that, in fact, there were no maps at all during the game.
Adrianne: Hm.
John: And that instead, they had to follow markers on trees, like it was a marked trail through the Paramount.
Adrianne: Wait, I thought there were shots of them looking at maps though.
John: Those were probably part of the reshoots.
Adrianne: Oh, okay.
Playback: Okay, who’s got the map? We need the map. I’ve got it, it’s right here. We can go- Let me see it…. through these mountain trails or right through Slaughterhouse Slope. No, let’s totally take the slope. It looks like the quickest way there. You know, whatever way we go, it’s gonna be tough.
John: At the end of every episode, there is a little disclaimer in the credits for, like, a half a second that says, “This program includes dramatic scenes intended for entertainment purposes only.” Which I think is probably in reference to these concocted scenes that were shot after the fact. And treat it as if it was a But on the gameplay side, there is this spoken disclaimer at the end of some of the later episodes.
Playback: In addition to the $250,000 grand prize, contestants on Manhunt participated in several team challenges for extra cash awards. Due to time constraints and storyline content, some of these events were not included in the program. Yo, bro, do you have any-
John: Did you catch that?
Adrianne: Yeah, so they did a disclaimer?
John: They did a disclaimer that in addition to the $250,000 grand prize, there were also team challenges for extra cash awards.
Adrianne: Right, and The Stingray said this wasn’t disclosed.
John: The Stingray said this wasn’t disclosed, and it seems like The Stingray may have caused this disclosure to happen in the last two episodes.
Adrianne: I see, so The Stingray was publishing contemporaneously?
John: Yes.
Adrianne: I didn’t realize that.
Billy: I love that they were feeling the heat from The Stingray.
John: Well, it was getting picked up places. Like, it’d, it, it-
Billy: Right, right. And there’s probably the threat of it becoming a bigger story if they didn’t.
John: And it’s so weird that the bent of every one of these articles was like, not that it’s, like, a broken game show, but that it’s, like, “Oh my god, this reality show is fake.” Like, of course it is. That- It’s reality TV.
Billy: Yeah.
Adrianne: But this was at the beginning of reality TV-
Billy: Yeah.
John: Kind of.
Adrianne: … and people were just heated about it.
Billy: It makes sense to have a think piece about reflecting on the n- the nature of w- what really is reality on reality TV- … right at the time, right? It’s a new thing.
John: Yeah.
Adrianne: I think people still think it’s more real than it is.
John: That’s probably… I mean, it has been on my mind as I’m doing this that the thing you are literally listening to right now on our show is, like, a reconstruction of a casual conversation that probably took three times as long to have- … as what the e- edited episode is. And, like- … you know, we, we take it, like, we, we’re gonna re-record bunch of, uh, like, huge portions of this conversation to make it sound like the natural conversation we wish it was. Like-
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: And hopefully we’re presenting truth.
Adrianne: Is there an FCC anti-rigging rule for podcasts?
John: No, because, uh, no one’s, no one’s winning anything on this.
Billy: Well, and we’re not on public airwave, so it wouldn’t apply to us anyway.
John: Also true, yep. So, so these extra challenges, I think this is kinda funny. One, that they had to disclose it, but also that they cut them at all, because they were… Of all of the things that I’ve heard about this show, this might be the thing that would’ve made the episodes more watchable.
Adrianne: Right.
John: They’re like cheaper versions of Survivor challenges, and they involved grabbing literal wads of cash, like, hanging off of trees and stuff. I have no idea why all but one of these were cut from the show. There still is one in the show, but they seem to contribute to a group pot of money on top of the grand prize for the one person who-
Playback: Okay, heads up. Listen up, listen up, listen up. There are three fruits hung from our tree. What each bears, you will have to see. Levers and hooks are how you should choose. A prize is guaranteed, you cannot lose. Do we wanna do this? Yeah. Yeah.
John: So they can choose to accept these challenges or not. Also, the fact that they were done in rhyme is, like-
Billy: Yeah.
John: … extremely aping Survivor a year after Survivor premiered.
Billy: How would… As a, as… You’re a Survivor fan. As a Survivor fan, how would you compare the, uh, the writing quality of the poetry?
John: Oh, I’d put them on par probably actually.
Adrianne: I, I was gonna say-
Billy: Okay, okay.
Adrianne: … it seems about, seems like maybe the same writer.
John: Survivor’s good at a lot of stuff, but I don’t think poetry was one of them.
Billy: Okay.
John: This wasn’t made clear in the show at all that there was this additional group pot of money that they were all playing for, and that verbal disclaimer in the last two episodes seems to have been caused directly either by Peter Lance’s reporting or JK’s FCC complaint.
Billy: Hm.
John: Then we’ve got the hair trophies. Anyone eliminated from the game did get their hair cut, but they were supposed to be totally shaved. Liz told me that was actually changed at the very last minute.
Billy: Hm.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: The contract that we all signed, that we were going to… That we, when we lost, we were gonna get, like, women, men, our heads were gonna be shaved. And then, like, just before we went in, maybe the night before, JK was putting her foot down and she was not gonna go in because she did not wanna shave her head, and we’re all just like, “Hey, that was, that was the agreement.” Like-
John: Huh.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: … I knew going into this that the only way I was gonna keep my hair is if I won. Production allowed us to, to change, and we all initialed… I remember this, that’s right. The night before we went in, we all initialed the contracts in that adjustment, and so they made it so we, the girls would just get their hair, their ponytails cut off.
John: And a fun fact, it wasn’t just the losers. Nicole actually had to cut her hair too-
Adrianne: What?
John: … in order to hide who actually won.
Adrianne: Ugh, that’s so… This whole show.
Billy: Okay.
Adrianne: It’s frustrating to hear about.
John: Uh-huh. So, that’s all the stuff that you would expect from reality television on UPN. Like, the TV elements of this, none of this is shocking to me. But the game itself, did producers really rig the outcome of this game? Nicole, who was obviously there for the whole thing, she says no. So there’s this whole thing where JK alleged that, that a producer kind of, like, pulled her down to the ground and prevented her from finishing up or, or getting to where she needed to be during that encounter. Like, was it your impression that… Well, and did that happen? Did you see that happen? And also, like, were the producers trying to affect the outcome of the show?
Nicole Gordillo: I mean, I do not have any recall of that at all. Um, I didn’t see many producers around at all. Like, I felt like we were very much alone. There weren’t a lot of people kinda telling us what to do. So… … and that’s my memory of it. But the fact that she says that, it’s interesting. She was very upset that, that she did not win, or that she was the first to be out.
Billy: I feel like if you need someone to tackle someone to affect the results of the show, you don’t, it’s not the producer. You send, like, a PA.
John: It’s a little more subtle than that, I think. I mean, even reading the allegation, I don’t think the implication is that, that a producer attempted to stop her from fi, like, get her shot by the paintballs. I think it was more, like, them keeping her back to, she says, do an interview, alienated her from the group.
Adrianne: And then they-
John: I see.
Adrianne: … voted her off.
John: Into the gauntlet.
Billy: The allegation is just that it wasn’t, like, a fair show.
John: Right, exactly. Yes.
Billy: Yes.
John: So, I actually had a very brief conversation with JK on the phone the other day.
Billy: Hmm.
John: She wasn’t able to do a formal interview. But I got the impression she still feels like the game was unfairly manipulated, uh, and that she was grabbed by a producer that ultimately, that led her to being eliminated from the show first.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: And she says that because of her FCC complaint and the media that was around it, she was on Geraldo, she was, uh, in The New York Times. This got some coverage. Because of her FCC complaint, now reality shows always have a disclaimer that says that parts of the show might be scripted. In 2001, a judge and a consultant on the show, this is all on the Stingray.net, a judge and consultant on the show did think that this played a role in the outcome of the game. But, I don’t know, since it was so early on, it’s really hard to say that, if someone else would have won if that incident hadn’t happened. But can I tell you something?
Billy: Yeah.
Adrianne: Yes, please.
Billy: It’s a podcast, John.
John: Even if the game wasn’t rigged by th- producers, it definitely was manipulated by the players.
Adrianne: What do you mean?
Billy: Hm.
John: Remember Nicole mentioned that the contestants got close to each other before the game began?
Adrianne: Right.
John: Depending on who you ask, there were a number of days before the game began where they were all staying in the same hotel and hanging out a lot.
Adrianne: Uh-oh.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: There was a lot wrong with the show. But what they did is they, they put us on the island together as a cast for, like, five days before we went into the jungle. So, we all really got to know each other, and we all liked each other.
Nicole Gordillo: This was before, you know, the very early ages of reality-based TV shows, where the contracts didn’t really include that type of language as far as not interacting with each other or not making alliances with each other. And that’s exactly what happened.
Playback: And I think what we decided was the winner would get half, and then everyone else would split the rest of the prize.
Nicole Gordillo: And this was all raised by Joe, who was very much a businessman.
John: Hmm.
Nicole Gordillo: But also very much a team player. He was thinking about it like, “I’ve looked at the contract. It doesn’t say we can’t share this money.” And he had done the math. Somebody gets 250, what’s the government gonna take? Okay, the person walks with 140. What if the winner gives everybody else 4,000 for cutting my hair. That sounds fine.
Billy: They should’ve made sure they had a tax attorney while they were figuring out this math. But you know?
John: So, to clarify, all the contestants agreed that the winner would get the 4,000 to each of the other 12 players and keep the remainder-
Nicole Gordillo: Mm-hmm.
John: … which would be around $100,000.
Billy: Okay.
Adrianne: These are the lessons of early reality TV. You don’t let everybody get chummy together on a tropical island for five days before you put them in a competition.
Billy: Also, that sounds like a way better show. Like, if they were documenting that process- … that’s way more interesting than what you just showed us as a clip of the show.
John: Yes.
Billy: Which I think, like, Survivor very quickly caught onto, is that, like, the conspiring, the alliances, like, that is the show.
John: Yeah, well, but, but what’s going on here is generally banned in reality competitions now.
Billy: Sure.
John: I found a copy of the Survivor rules, uh, from 2010 and in the, this is a very fun document by the way, ‘cause it’s like-
Adrianne: Oh.
John: … mostly legalese, but then it’s filled with, like, terms like tribal council and, uh, like, immunity challenge. It’s very fun. Um, and in those 2010 rules, contestants are explicitly forbidden from interacting with each other before the game, and they are barred from sharing any prize winnings with each other or each other’s families-
Nicole Gordillo: Mm-hmm.
John: … after the show.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: Like, this is something they, like, explicitly want to head off.
Nicole Gordillo: Right.
John: Manhunt had none of these rules in place.
Billy: Hm.
John: So-
Billy: There’s ways around that, though.
John: I mean-
Billy: For example, Sia.
John: Hm?
Billy: Do you know about Sia?
Adrianne: Explain.
John: No, please.
Nicole Gordillo: No.
Billy: Sia does this thing now every season of Survivor, she’s apparently a, like, a big fan of the show. And so, she just selects people who didn’t win the grand prize who she thinks deserve money-
John: Holy crap.
Billy: … and just gives money to them.
John: That’s so good.
Billy: Like, it’s significant, significant amounts of money. Like, “Oh, I loved your story. Here’s a bunch of money from me, Sia.”
Nicole Gordillo: Wow.
John: So, if you’ve got all the contestants colluding together to split the money in any way, you’re immediately, like, removing some tension and removing s- some competition from the show. So, right from the get-go, Manhunt was just not as competitive as the producers probably would’ve wanted it to be.
Nicole Gordillo: We built this team because then it became, which is not what I think the producers wanted, it became, it became us against the three hunters.
John: I think this probably played a role in needing those re-shoots in LA. There just wasn’t much real in-fighting or drama happening live inside the game. And it sounds like the producers wanted there to be some and there wasn’t. Plus, I mean, the producers just didn’t seem to do much in the way of actual testimonials at all in Hawaii.
Billy: Well, and they also, it doesn’t seem like they put much effort into casting, which is, like, how you end up with-
John: Yeah.
Billy: … like, really volatile situations, is you cast people who you know will create those situations.
Adrianne: Right. You need personality. You need people who don’t go to the gym. You need that personality on your reality show.
Playback: What they were hoping for was what Survivor had, which was the in-fighting and the, you know, the, like, fighting against each other. And JK was really the only one that brought that to the show. So, we were not interested in that kind of in-fighting.
John: And she was the first one voted into the-
Playback: And she was the first one voted in. And it was such a hard thing, because we all really wanted to like everybody. And she was the only one who really wasn’t going along with what everyone else was saying. And it was hard. Like, it really was emotional to vote her off, but it also, it was like, she’s the only one who doesn’t really wanna play along. And we all still split the money with her, like-
John: Oh.
Playback: … I think sh- I, I have every expectation that she got the same amount that I got.
Adrianne: So, they actually split the money?
John: Yeah. Nicole really did stay true to her word. She sent everyone checks.
Billy: Wow.
Adrianne: That’s very cool. That’s very interesting and cool. I wonder how often that’s happened.
John: I think by now this is completely banned in all of these games. Uh, this is, like, a weird slip through the cracks thing.
Billy: I feel like as, like, a young kid watching these shows, I was always like, “Oh, that would be my strategy,” whatever.
John: Mm-hmm.
Billy: … but then I realized eventually, like, “Oh, you’re probably not allowed to do that.”
John: But they were. And even weirder, this is, this is the one that blew my mind. Nicole actually wound up losing money on a second deal made during the game. So for this, you need to know that the final four players were Nicole, Romy, Ed, and Jim.
Nicole Gordillo: Jim started to get nervous, I guess, and decided to make the second proposition-
John: Oh.
Nicole Gordillo: … for splitting of money. His proposition was that the winner walk with 40 and the rest of us, the three last people, walk with, uh, 20.
John: Okay, so that’s the hundred thousand that the winner would have gotten redistributed-
Nicole Gordillo: Right.
John: … to the four of you.
Nicole Gordillo: Yup. And so at this point, I’m deliriously tired. 20 sounds good to me.
John: That handshake cost you what, uh, $60,000?
Nicole Gordillo: Mm-hmm. No skin off my back.
John: You didn’t regret that?
Nicole Gordillo: No, not in any way.
John: Huh. True to her word, Nicole kept around $40,000, used it to pay off her student loans, had a little bit leftover for, uh, a sushi dinner with, like, 40 or 50 of her friends.
Billy: Aw.
John: And then she distributed the rest to the other contestants.
Adrianne: Wow.
Nicole Gordillo: I wrote personal checks, right, to each person, mailed them, and also included a personal letter with each of them.
John: So this was, everybody agreed to this split at the beginning?
Nicole Gordillo: Yes, at the beginning.
John: Cool.
Nicole Gordillo: Yeah, everybody did. Mm-hmm.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: I remember she sent me this envelope and she put all these, like, um, like, confetti in it, and she wrote this pretty note, and it was like, “Congratulations,” and I wanna say it was maybe 4,000 after taxes and everything. And so I went out and bought a vacuum. That’s what I was so excited for. I was like, “Yes, I’m a grown-up.”
Billy: Wow, what a hero though.
Adrianne: I know. There was nothing binding her.
John: No, nothing. No.
Billy: This is so much more interesting than the actual show.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: I completely agree. This experience seemed very different for Liz and Nicole than it did for JK. Like, JK went in. She s- she told me on the phone that she did six weeks of intensive training going into this. She came in intending to win, and she was the first person eliminated from the game. And of course, she would go on to file that formal FCC complaint. And by the way, she did tell me by email that the FCC never actually responded to her complaint. But, like Liz just said, Liz and Nicole were, like, they were very young during Manhunt, in their early 20s. On the show, they say that JK was 36 by then and had four kids already. I can totally understand-
Adrianne: Mm-hmm. Right.
John: … how there could be a completely different mindset about this, right, and why JK would have been more intense about winning and competing. It sounds like Liz and Nicole, this was like a vacation with the bonus of maybe getting some money out of it.
Adrianne: Right, right.
John: And the way the numbers shook out, the more laid-back people wound up still in the game at the end. And that’s why they won and that’s why they redistributed all the money.
Adrianne: Yeah, I’m kinda surprised that they actually went through with redistributing the money.
John: Me too, and I think they got pretty lucky that someone like Nicole won, who was going to redistribute the money. A- and like you said, Billy, it’s kind of a shame that, like, this story is so much more interesting and so much more real than what was presented on the show. Like Liz told me, her time on the show felt very real and was a very important part of her life.
Liz Forsythe-Donaldson: What we experienced was legit and challenging and hard, and I wish that existed in the TV show form, because I would love to go back and revisit that. Because I made these friends, and so these people were really important to me, and that experience was extremely important to me, ‘cause I think it showed me that I was capable of doing hard things. And it’s too bad that that got lost in the post-editing stuff.
John: There’s a funny thing about this deal. On one hand, colluding with each other at the beginning kind of let all the steam out of the competition.
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: On the other hand, it sounds like none of the contestants were thrilled about doing fake pickups. They all were gearing up to contribute, uh, like, their perspectives to, in this FCC complaint about how the show was kind of fake, how it was presented as not really what happened to them. But they all did go do the reshoots because there was a clause in their contract that said that if the show didn’t air, then none of the prize money would be paid out.
Adrianne: Hmm. Okay.
Billy: Whoa.
John: By the way, this same stipulation is in the Survivor rules too.
Billy: What? Really?
John: So they’ve got this, uh, the, the group pot of challenge money on, on Manhunt that is up in the air. Plus, all of the players know that they have at least $4,000 on the line each from Nicole if the show doesn’t air. So they’re all incentivized to come back and do these interviews-
Adrianne: Mm-hmm.
John: … because the prize money is being distributed to all of them.
Adrianne: Right.
Billy: Right. But normally, they wouldn’t have that incentive.
John: I, this is what I’m getting at.
Billy: So how did-
John: The show might not have happened at all if they hadn’t made- … the agreement to split the money, because no one would have been s- incentivized to come back and give them, like, this connective tissue that made the show happen.
Billy: That’s funny.
John: Underunderstood is Billy Disney, Adrienne Jeffreys, Regina DeLay, and me, Jon Lagomarsino. Our editor is Ryan Manning. Research help this week from Adam Million. If you have a question the internet can’t answer, we wanna hear about it, email us at hello@underunderstood.com or leave us a voicemail. The number is 212-994-4882. It’s also in the show notes. If you like the show and you wanna support it and get access to some extra bonus stuff, you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com/underunderstood. We just did a live stream the other night where Billy and I played, um, some Pizza Hut CD-ROM games from the early 2000s, um, and it was, it was something. You can watch it. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll be back in a week.