Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Reality TV Show I'd Like To Judge

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

When you watch a competitive reality show, you might think about how you'd win. But maybe you think about a much more powerful role for yourself: the judge. We discuss which reality tv show we’d like to judge - including Top Chef, American Idol, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Rhythm + Flow.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

When you watch a competitive reality show, maybe you think about how you'd win, or how you'd celebrate your win, or how you'd be celebrated for your win. But maybe you think about a much more powerful role for yourself. Who's more powerful than the contestants? The judges. And we are willing to bet that, like us, you've given some thought to which competitions you would love a chance to judge. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Linda Holmes. And today we're talking about the reality TV shows we'd like to judge on Pop-Colns. Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is our co-host Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn. That was a little pitchy dog. For me. For me. Also with us is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast, Leaving the Theater. Hello, my friend.

Ronald, it is so good to hear your voice as always. See, now I want to do like a Simon Cowell impression, but I don't have a British accent. You set the bar too high, Glenn. I hear you. I hear you. All right. I don't think we have a lot of setup to go through. The question here was just pick a reality show you would like to judge.

So let's get started. Stephen, I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I actually feel like I don't know what you're going to say since Survivor does not have judges. Survivor does not have judges. I feel equipped to judge seasons of Survivor, but not to determine the winner. At first, this was a little bit of a tricky one for me because, you know, I'm not a good cook. I don't know anything about clothes. A lot of the kind of skill-based competition shows that I've watched are in fields where I have absolutely no expertise. I thought briefly about the masked singer, but the job of the judges on that show is mostly to be like, I wonder if it's Lady Gaga when of course it's like the third most talented pussycat doll.

But ultimately, what I am qualified to do by dint of my actual profession is judge whether singers are any good. And Glenn and Ronald alluded to American Idol. I went with American Idol because, you know, I watched pretty intensely the first nine and a half seasons of American Idol. I say a half because I gave up on it in season 10, in part because the judging had gone from atrocious to sort of offensively atrocious. And also, you know, I kind of had permission to stop watching American Idol because American Idol was really kind of winding down its ability to mint pot. superstars to kind of create pop superstars through its own kind of cultural force. And at that point, why would I watch American Idol? Because the judging is so, so, so, so bad. And it always has been. You know, it's long been kind of a basically a cliche or a trope at this

point about American Idol that, like, Simon Cowell is the only good judge. He's the only accurate judge, effective judge, honest judge, whatever. Simon Cowell is just there in the first, you know, bunch of seasons that he was a judge on, he's there to judge commercial potential, which is completely different from judging, you know, the talent or quality of singers. Like, sure, he'll be there to dunk on the people who are placed there to be bad singers, but he's not necessarily there to give any kind of constructive advice. So for me, like, as a viewer of that show, I was constantly just shouting at the screen, like, put less effort into your singing, actually listen to.

the words that you're singing. That's a sad song. Why are you singing it as a happy song? Well, and the other thing I will say that I always noticed, too, was that they always are singing short versions of songs. They're doing like a 90-second performance or whatever it is, and they're trying to get the full build of what would normally be like a four- or five-minute song. So the build always feels incredibly artificial because you haven't really earned it in 90 seconds, like, you know, there's a reason why, you know, and I am telling you I'm not going is not a 60 second song. You have to kind of work up to that, you know. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So to me, what that show was always missing, and Lord knows it had, you know, theoretically the budget to provide this kind of information was any kind of advice that would help kind of steer singers in the direction of what would give them lasting careers, which is like the ability to, you know, to provide. to interpret songs and sing songs in a way that is really emotionally resonant and not just

kind of powering through big notes. And I feel like we're still experiencing the echoes and reverberations of that decision to just kind of encourage people to power through giant notes. You hear it in the music of people like Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims, where it's just they're going from zero to 60 all the time and you're just sitting there like, where is the nuance? So, you know, I would love to have the power to kind of retroactive. direct a generation of singers to think about the words that they're singing. Think about ways to modulate your performance in ways that allow for that build that you

were talking about, Linda. So American Idol is absolutely the answer to that question. Now, would I want to judge American Idol now and does not have kind of the cultural power that it has? You know, maybe, maybe not. But that is the one that when I watch it, I think the most about the judging and think the most about serious shortcomings that I would kill or die to address. Yeah, because if you're judging that show, one of the classic criticisms is off the table.

You can't say, well, that sounds overproduced because it all sounds overproduced. It's all everybody gets equally overproduced. So you have to look for something else. And that's why Pitchie became the cultural cachet that it did, just because that's kind of all you can say. I like that you picked American Idol because they basically created the television show judging format where you have like one mean, one logical, what emotional if you go or one person. You know what I mean? There's like there's like no neutral judge really on the show. They all have a thing they're supposed to be doing.

And they like replicated that in every other judging show that you do now. Yeah, the tough one, the nice one and the other one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The tough one, the nice one and the other one. Thank you very much.

Stephen Thompson wants to judge American Idol. I hear you. I'm going to ask you, Ronald, what did you choose as the show that you would like to judge? Well, unfortunately, like, I'm picking something that's probably going to put us right in the same place because I'm picking another music show, but it's a music show that came out in 2019 just before the pandemic and it premiered on Netflix. It is the rap competition show, Rhythm and Flow. This is a show that takes up-and-coming rappers and puts them all in a... a like a reality style competition where, well, it is a real. I don't know why I said reality style. It puts them in a competition with one another where they are judged.

The first season's judges was Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, and T.I., and sometimes Snoop Dogg. Not messing around. They were legitimate artists. I'll say that. I'll tell you my quibble about the judging the minute. Season two judging was DJ Khalid, Lotto, and Ludacris. And also M&M was on there, Royce the Five Nine, Big Sean, Mr. Porter, so many other people. I like this show.

I think it's good. I think the judging was mostly on point. I think the winners were mostly accurate, if not the winners, the top three were all there. But I think this show coming out in 2019 tells the problem of American attention and star making on these reality competition shows that doesn't work the way it used to because the traditional route to music is you sign a contract and then you become a big star and they plug you into all these things and maybe you do a movie and so on and so forth. which is what worked for American Idol in the early days. But now that you could become a star from your Instagram following and do things entirely independent, kind of like what chance the rapper did, was a huge star before he ever did a commercial album. It feels harder to mint good rappers in a reality show or good artists generally in a reality show way,

especially when it comes specifically to music. That being said, some of the decisions that these judges are making on this show, They're just like, I don't really like your energy. I'm like, but he's a good rapper. The other guy's bringing something different. And the winner of season two was much hotly, hotly debated online because it was an artist named Dratiel, who's a fine rapper. And the runner up was a West Coast rapper named Jay Tage, who was just incredible, very poetic, very smart, definitely ready for the big time. I still follow him on Instagram, just like a very, very good rapping dude.

Somehow he didn't win. And just online, everyone's like, what exactly is going on? And I immediately said, well, if Ronald didn't have been a judge, that would have happened, because I would have eliminated that winner like three episodes ago. It does sound like a lot of the things that you're saying are similar to things that I thought about American Idol when it was on at times. And I do think it's fascinating to realize, you know, you made mention of their early seasons. It's like they did a really good job launching Kelly Clarkson and launching Carrie Underwood. Even Jennifer Hudson, who didn't win.

Right, absolutely. But I don't think they can take much credit for that because they didn't really recognize what they had. But in terms of winners, you had Kelly Clarkson, you had Carrie Underwood, and it was kind of downhill from there in terms of, like, popularity. Oh, my God, you were going to get so much mail about Adam Lambert. The Adam Lambert people still do not. Fantasia. He didn't win. He didn't win.

I'm talking about winners. That's the same thing as Jennifer Hudson. And I say that as a converted Adam Lambert Liker, who didn't. not like him on American Idol, later saw him on their tour, and kind of got it and understood what people like. But to go back to Ronald's point, I think, like, the strange thing is that they never really know whether they're supposed to be judging commercial, like, saleability or quality. Yes. Yeah, but one of the interesting things about all these shows you're talking about is that they invite us to be armchair record executives, right? Because there's an element

It's kind of like when people talk about electability around election season, like, yes, but will they play in Peoria? Will they be marketable to middle America, et cetera, where you are invited to thinking along the kind of Simon Cowell thought processes of here's what's going to be a four quadrant hit. And I'm sure some of the people who voted for their favorites were not just voting for their favorites. They were voting for who they think has a shot, which is it's an interesting vibe to those shows. But, but Ronald, you're getting at something, I think, really important about the judging process here, which is, When your critique of a rapper is, I just don't like your energy, you are missing so many elements that you can actually provide useful feedback about. Caden's, lyricism, do you have something to say? What are your songs about? That sort of thing, like, almost never ends up getting addressed in these things. And it's the difference.

It is really hard to find a judge who is a professional musician, who is a successful artist who has kind of gone through some variation on this process and has is not just saying when I did it, it was like this, but able to sort of break down what works and what doesn't work. Those are completely different skill sets. And so finding somebody who has that musical talent has been successful and is able to provide advice based on that that is applicable to other people. That's extremely rare. And so sometimes what you get, and I haven't seen rhythm and flow. So I don't know. Like Cardi B is an extremely talented and successful artist.

She's brought on that show for her star power. She didn't go through a casting process to say, like, okay, here is how I listen to this and critique it, totally different skill set. Yeah, yeah. All right, love it. Absolutely love it. Thank you very much, Ronald. Rhythm and Flow.

Still on Netflix, I'm sure. Still on Netflix, two seasons. All right. Let's get a third. Awesome. Thank you very much, buddy. So I hesitated and hesitated. and hesitated for fully eight seconds before I chose Top Chef.

Because, and there are a few reasons for that. Good choice. One of which is I would rather eat food than listen to a bunch of bad singers perform badly and then tell them that, right? But really, the reason is that as that show has evolved, it has become, I think, a more and more. more meaningfully merit-based kind of show. And I think they have tried to correct for some of the early kind of biases against certain kinds of food and the assumption that this kind of food is more elevated than that kind of food. I think they have tried to address those things. I think they have tried to expand their ideas of what fine dining is. I think some of that

was heavily influenced by Padmalakshmi as her creative role kind of step. up in that show over time. If you've seen her Hulu show, Taste the Nation, you know that she's very serious and dedicated to the idea of exploring food from lots of different cultures and the way that food intersects with history. I think that she's done a great job. You know, this is one of the only shows where when she left and there were conversations about who should take over hosting Top Chef, a lot of people said they should get

Kristen Kish, who was a past winner, contestant, who was very charismatic. and super awesome. But it's the kind of thing where, like, you say Kristen Kish and then it's never Kristen Kish. Like everybody agrees it ought to be Kristen Kish and then it isn't. Well, it was. And it is. And she's great, just like everybody knew she was going to be.

So I personally like the idea of working with a show that is trying to be, you know, serious about its mission in that way. Also, I think they make a lot of good food. They do tend to get really talented people. I think they have figured out how to split the difference between, You don't necessarily want it to be people who are already incredibly famous, but you don't want it to be people necessarily. Like they don't put home cooks on there to compete with restaurant chefs anymore. Oh, yeah, you get destroyed.

I think they have a pretty decent kind of judging vibe set up. I do sometimes miss having like the occasional input of a super acidic personality like Tony Bourdain was when he would go on that show and like talk about your terrible. burnt brookulini, but like not as mean as Gordon Ramsey. Do you know what I'm saying? Acidic but constructive and ultimately wants you to be successful, right? The last thing I will say is Top Chef, unlike a lot of other competitive reality shows, actually has a really, really good record of people who excel on Top Chef going on and becoming well-known and well-established restaurant chefs. There are a bunch of them who legitimately are like some of the most. highly respected chefs in the country.

I am a pretty good cook and know a decent amount about identifying what I like and don't like in food. So I think I would be a great judge on Top Chef and they can invite me whenever they want. That's the thing, Linda, though. I consider Top Chef. Ultimately, I figured it was too daunting for me because I do not possess the knowledge base or most importantly, the vocabulary. The vocabulary is all important here because these judges are our only way in.

We cannot taste this food. On Project Wonder, we can see the outfits. On American Idol, we can hear and see the performances. This is all dependent on the judges telling us what they're tasting or not tasting. I knew I couldn't do it. More power to you. Yeah. I mean, I had thought about Top Chef for about eight seconds before I decided, like, unless it was specifically

an episode in which they were cooking for children. Yeah. People with, like, the most... Zino Nuggets, Steven. Like, basically... Exactly. The Dino Nuggets, the Mouthfields. the dino nuggets.

Basically, they say you have, you have five ingredients. They are boiled pasta, chunks of hot dog, shredded cheese. So you want to judge chopped. Yeah, you want to chop. Yes. There we go. Yes. I mean, because that basically is what chopped is.

I just want to point out one thing, though, Linda, about this is I watch a lot of top chef, and I feel like the one thing that I've noticed, and I pay attention to this very closely, is like whenever they have a celebrity judge or a guest judge that's not a chef, they'll be like, somebody will bring out some food and you'll be like, man, this soup is really good. And everyone will be like, that soup was trash. And there'll be like six people basically saying, I don't feel the same way that Michael Sarah does about this soup.

And so I feel like you risk going on there and be like, I thought it was fine. And everyone would be like, no, it's actually garbage. I think that's a useful perspective to add, though, because you're adding the perspective that says when these judges say that they don't think something is good, they mean... It doesn't mean it's inedible. It doesn't mean it's inedible. And it doesn't mean that, like, the chef is not good. It just means that, like, maybe this is not what set them on fire in this particular thing. And, like, most of what these chefs make on a day-to-day basis, including the ones who leave immediately, would be some of the best food you ever tasted in your life, probably.

Probably. So my pick was top chef. We are going to wrap things up with Glenn Weldon, buddy, I feel like I know what you're going to say, but I don't know if I know what you're going to say. No, you do. I don't have a ramp up here. It's drag race. Of course it's drag race. What else would it be? But drag race.

I mean, I am not a chef. I'm not a designer. I'm not a baker. Again, I consider British baking show, but like, those desserts are so fancy and French and mystifying. Like, I could not tell you the difference between a good vollevon and a bad vollevon, because what the hell's a vollevon, right? No idea. I have the skill set for drag race. Not a chef at a designer, not a baker.

I'm also not a drag queen. I feel like I should point that out. But I am a middle-aged gay man, so tick, tick, tick. What I am, though, is an audience member. And at the end of the day, drag race is a show about being performed at, right? Being entertained. And mostly all that a judge needs to bring to drag race is cringeworthy, sweaty puns. Because at one point in the show, the queen stomped down the runway in their looks,

and the judges sit there and make terrible, gay, adjacent dad puns, you know, attempts at wordplay. That, it's my vocation. It is my abocation. It is my matiae. It is my calling. I feel called to service. Ronald, you're not on the Slack channel when we need to come up with headlines for the episode. When that happens, I'm in my element.

I feel like I actually have a skill. I can't dance. I can't act. I can't sing. I can do that. I could be on that show and say something like, well, she really put the verse. and Versaacic, like, rolling off a lot, I could do that. I could bring, like, something that, you know, past judges haven't.

I could go literary with, like, that wig is drier than a Muriel Spark novel. Easy. I would not even think about it. I could make drag race puns that only comic book nerds would get. Like, I'd bring my Stan Lee, and I'd say, lace front, true believers. Now, the Venn diagram of people who would get that joke is a cheerio, right? It's a dot. But my fellow queer nerds would feel seen.

I could go filthy. I wouldn't feel proud about it, but I could be like, well, Is she retiring my bathroom? Because she is we're serving cock, right? I could do that. It's like low-hanging fruit. Wow. Oh, my goodness.

It's too much a phrase. Where I would run into trouble, and I'm clear-eyed enough to know that it would be a kind of disqualifying trouble. I would not get her keep the gig. Is when the judges are called upon, as they are more frequently nowadays, to bring a kind of wet-eyed, earnest sincerity. That is not my strength, not my tempo. That's often the role of the celebrity guest. right? That's what I'm saying. And that's who I, not that I'm a celebrity, but I wouldn't presume to replace Michelle Vassage or the hilarious Ross Matthews. I would think of myself as like the guest judge. And in my defense, being sincere didn't used to be a thing. Seasons 1 through 6, there was no crying in gay baseball. Judges could be jerks. Santina Rice, an early judge seemed to make his entire being about being a jerk. And nowadays, though, they have to go back to the workroom and meet the queens and tell them they're wonderful. And that's not my issue. Of course, they're wonderful. Of course, they're incredible. be talented, but they don't need to hear that from me.

They don't need me to listen to their little stories. God forbid. One of them starts crying because that's what I'd cut my losses. That's when I'd Batman out of there, smoke bomb, grapple gun, out the skylight, because I couldn't handle it. And one thing we haven't talked about is that

the game of this episode, the premise of this episode is that we would be judges on these shows, maybe celebrity judges on these shows, but, you know, the problem with that is the word celebrity, because folks, we are, are podcasters and writers. We do not count. I know this show, and I cannot read a room to save my life. But I would walk into that workroom and the tsunami of disappointment that would crash over me from those queens as they realize that past seasons, other queens got Gaga and Ariana and Christina and Miley and Nikki and Padma and Leslie Freakin Jones. And they get me. There is not enough therapy in the world. I think if I were a judge on anything, they would have to introduce me by saying I want a contest.

You know what I mean? You'd have to tell them, like, we drew straws. You know, she threw her name in the hat and this is who you got. And let's give it up for her because she's going to try her best. Yeah. I just want to point out the Venn diagram of people who watch drag race that saw y'all as judges would be very, very excited to be like, Glendwell is judging trackways. They would be super serving a tiny sliver of audience.

There exists a subgroup. No, there exists a subgroup. No, no. It's bigger than a dot. It's bigger than a dot, buddy. All right. Well, I mean, what can I say? I think that we've made the point that we all have shows that we would like to judge the plausibility of that.

Who knows, you know? Somebody's listening, Linda. Top Chef, call me. You know what I mean? We want to know. what TV show you would like to judge. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH. That brings us to the end of our show. Ronald Young Jr., Glenn Weldon, Stephen Thompson. Thank you so much for being here. I judge all of you. Winners, winners, winners. Thank you, buddy. Taste 10 cents. Thanks for the board.

All right. This episode is produced by Carly Rubin and Huff Safathamah and edited by Mike Katzen. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.