What’s the point of a reality television show if you have to use fake footage to get your point across? That’s a question that was brought up on Monday night’s episode of Bachelor in Paradise when the show tried to explain the mysterious exit of cast member Michelle K., who was secretly doing something with a crew member, sans actual footage of her hijinks.
Michelle K. presumably left the show last week because she just wasn’t feeling any of the dudes hanging around. But in actuality, she was super feeling one of the dudes hanging around – he just wasn’t a cast member. The producers did have available to them some footage of host Chris Harrison trying to approach Michelle about the dalliance/flirtation/talkfest/whatever she had started up crew member Ryan Putz. But they were missing the best stuff: that of Ryan jumping off a 25 foot balcony when he thought he was going to get caught with Michelle.
Missing this key link in the story, the eyewitness account of a producer was used instead, who was forced to reenact the ridiculous experience of finding Michelle in flagrante delicto with Ryan. They also had the poor injured-footed soul explain what happened from his perspective while he was still lying in a hospital bed.
“You can only imagine where it went from there,” Harrison said of the start of his explanation about Michelle’s “flirtation,” right before ABC aired the stunning footage with the word REENACTMENT stamped in red letters across it. Now we don’t have to!