Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [43]
“You’re going to get cut,” Katie says. “You don’t have production experience.”
You tell her you can guard a clue box in Brisbane or Cotopaxi as well as anybody. The entire point of this boondoggle in LA is getting a trip around the world. You have actually reported from abroad, which is way harder than dealing with a clue box! Katie shrugs and downs her taco. “Look, I’d quit if I were you,” she says. “Don’t let these tools fire you. Keep your fucking dignity.”
Except that you have no income, no prospects. You don’t even have your own apartment, anywhere. You have been crashing on the friend of your friend’s floor. Quitting would mean free fall. Then Katie tells you a secret: She got into grad school, Columbia’s International Something Studies program. As soon as the race ends, she’s going to quit and move to Manhattan. The ridiculous television money she will make during production will cover her ridiculous tuition. You are happy for her, but you also resent the coherence of her life. She’s smart, beautiful, she has grad school and will be spending the next three months transiting the globe on CBS’s dime.
Then you realize that Katie’s dates don’t work. Production is going to spill into her semester—she’s going to ditch the race halfway for school. Make as much money as she can and then bolt. Which, if you were in her situation, is precisely what you’d do. Except you know that if she quits, it’s a huge pain for the rest of the production team, trying to hire somebody from the road.
And so you scheme. All that training, in game theory, comes down to self-interest. This is what the professor and Richard Hatch have taught you: Self-interest and knowing exactly, if not more than, what your competitors know. The Nash Equilibrium proposes that a game will remain stable, with a neutral outcome, if all players choose for their own benefit and know the same amount. But you figure that if the producers knew Katie’s plans, they might fire her before production starts…and a plane ticket to travel the world will open up. You’d be next in line. And so you stand on the blade of a choice: Do you choose to maximize your life? Or do you, by quitting, concede?
It doesn’t take much to decide. One night, over drinks with the friend of a friend, you let Katie’s plans slip. He is shocked. Katie is just the kind of steady, practical presence you want on the road. He was counting on her. He says he has to tell the executive producer. You had no idea things would move this fast. By the next day, Katie gets called into the main office. When she returns to her desk, she stares you cold in the eye.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she says.
You head outside, to that curb in the parking lot, behind her truck, where you ate all those tacos together, under that full-bore SoCal sun. She sits down. She fingers a rip in the elbow of her cardigan, where the knit is fraying. You stare at the back wheel hubs of her truck, surrendering to rust. Like all good reveals, what you now understand changes the outcome. You haven’t just gamed her. You’ve undermined her escape. Columbia, the trip—they were her way out. She’s as poor and lost as you are.
“Why?” she asks. “Why did you do it?”
You don’t have an answer. You float a bunch of excuses—what’s best for the show, some false loyalty to the friend of a friend—and she just shakes her head. You will never forget her shaking her head.
The next night, over drinks with the friend of a friend (all you ever seem to do together), you broach the subject of the trip. Now that Katie’s getting fired, you wonder aloud if you they’ll need somebody to fill in, someone with gaming experience and fresh eyes, who—
“Oh,