After Shain Gandee, one of the people who appeared on MTV reality show Buckwild, died of carbon monoxide poisoning along with his uncle and a friend after leaving a bar at three in the morning and getting their car stuck in a mud pit that appeared to have blocked the tail pipe, MTV has made the decision to cancel the show rather than continue it with a replacement for Gandee. Per the Associated Press:

MTV said Wednesday it is canceling its West Virginia-based reality TV show “BUCKWILD” a week after the accidental death of 21-year-old star Shain Gandee. Network spokesman Jake Urbanski confirmed the news, saying it was “not an easy decision.” “But given Shain’s tragic passing and essential presence on the show, we felt it was not appropriate to continue without him,” the network said. “Instead, we are working on a meaningful way to pay tribute to his memory on our air and privately.”

This comes after Koh Lanta, a French reality competition show, cancelled its upcoming season after a participant died of a heart attack while filming in Cambodia. A doctor working on the show later committed suicide.

To a certain extent, these cancellations represent progress. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills marched on even after Russell Armstrong, the husband of one of the core castmembers, committed suicide, an act reportedly motivated in part by his distress at the way he was portrayed on the show. The season of Tropika Island of Treasure that featured Oscar Pistorius’ late girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp went on air two days after he killed her. There’s something ghostly about the decision to air footage of someone who’s dead in a way that it isn’t upsetting to watch a fictional film with a performer who has died: reality television is life on a time delay, a pretense that the person who is dead is still out there, somewhere, competing in challenges on a tropical island, fighting with their wife, partying in Appalachia.

And the conundrum of whether or not to air footage of someone who has died, whether their death is related to things they did for the show, gets at one of the major problems of reality television. It’s a format that provides disincentives to taking care of castmembers. It’s one thing to prop up the mental health of an actor or actress who is struggling with the demands of portraying someone who is not at all like them. It’s another to manage the mental health of someone who is offering up their life, and more specifically, the parts of their life that are also risk factors, for consumption. If what you’ve decided you need for a show to be good is fights between friends, arguments—or even allegations of abuse—between spouses, high levels of alcohol or even drug consumption, and overconsumption, how do you manage those behaviors so they produce marketable amounts of drama without causing the people engaging in them harm? To what extent is marketable drama dependent on viewers being convinced that there is a real risk of harm to the people who are acting as characters on these shows?

I’ve written before that the diminishing rewards of reality television reflect the diminished opportunities in the American economy. But when death comes to reality television, it’s a reminder that not only is the money a step down for participants on competition and slice-of-life reality shows in comparison to their scripted peers, but the care of their persons are as well. Vulnerability is a very dangerous commodity to ask people to offer up for sale, no matter the remunerative possibilities.

I wrote earlier this year that The Hour, the BBC’s period drama about the producers, reporters, and anchor on a show of the same title trying to break through the BBC’s strictures and the stifling social environment of the late 1950s, was the show that Aaron Sorkin wanted his HBO drama The Newsroom to be. It was attuned to the actual rhythms and difficulties of reporting, the stories are legitimately revealing rather than pontificating, and the characters face genuine obstacles to getting those stories on the air. And in the second season of the show, which began its run on BBC America last night, I think that’s become even more true, particularly in the way that The Hour is handling the rise of a phenomenon that The Newsroom tried to critique decades later: the rise of commercial television programming aimed at women.

I talked to Abi Morgan, The Hour‘s creator, about the show’s approach to gender in general, and about the kind of programming aimed at women like Marnie (Oona Chaplin), the upper-class wife of The Hour anchor Hector (Dominic West), who begins exploring a career as the host of a cooking show. She explained:

I think if you look at the women, the on-screen talent at that time, on the whole they were either singing along to a puppet, or they were presenting the kind of soft magazine programs that were just starting to come up through the ’50s. I liked the idea of Marnie almost becoming quite literally this professional housewife. She’s this Fanny Cradock-esque character. It also felt like a kind of brilliant, brittle metaphor for this kind of life Marnie finds herself encased in. You’ll see that marriage really is tested through the course of the series….

The mainstay of commercials of that time was the great British housewife. Marnie is very much the consumer of her time. On the wider level, the show is about the birth of capitalism in the ’50s and into the ’60s. The warmongers were finding a way of making money out of nuclear paranoia, [and there was a] global desire to be part of the arms and space race. This parallels what’s going on with Marnie. She’s someone who aspires to a bigger life. When you write a drama set in this era, you have a whole period where if your characters have any gumption or charisma, they have to break away from this suppressive ’50s world.

Where The Newsroom could be viciously dismissive of mass culture aimed at women—Will McAvoy ran himself into trouble in part by insulting a gossip columnist for covering the Real Housewives, and declaring that he’d fix another woman whose primary flaw included consuming that kind of show—The Hour doesn’t try to make judgements about whether it’s bad or not that programming aimed by women exists. Instead, it tries to reckon with what it means that this kind of programming speaks powerfully to the ennui of post-war women like Marnie, who aren’t working, and how their power as consumers affects the entire media landscape. When Bel debates whether or not to run a segment about Christian Dior, she’s also trying to figure out where fashion fits in the hierarchy of news and human interest.

And the show never presents Marnie as stupid for being entranced by a commercial, or seeking out a career using the skills that she has, even if they’re feminine ones. Of course she’s bored! She was bred for a specific role, to be a good wife to a man like Hector, who was expected to play a corresponding part, but instead cheats on her, pursues entertainment in nightclubs where she is not invited, and treats her as if she couldn’t possibly be interested in his career. Marnie is an intelligent, capable woman, but no one asks anything of her, not even that she be available for sex and housekeeping. Even if she’s only valuable to television as a consumer, at least it’s a form of being valued.

The thing that Will McAvoy, and that by extension The Newsroom, never seemed to get, is that consuming frivolous things doesn’t make you a frivolous person. Everyone I know who watches Real Housewives does so because they recognize the show as a social critique folded into a trainwreck like a pill into applesauce. It’s possible to even consume things that you know are bad for you, or that have no redeeming social value whatsoever, to recognize them as such, and to enjoy them anyway. The question is not whether or not someone is a good person for watching certain things. It’s what need they speak to, what itch they scratch.

It’s not as if Issa Rae doesn’t have a lot on her plate, in between her web-based sitcom, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and the show she recently sold to ABC with Shonda Rhimes’ help, about a female cohost on an internet talk radio show. But in the midst of all this activity, she’s launched a new series, The Michelle Obama Diaries, which features Michelle Obama translating her own thoughts and throwing the kind of shade Luther offers up for President Obama in Key & Peele‘s Anger Translator skits:

The Anger Translator sketch works because it suggests something sort of naughty and delicious about the president that we’d like to be true rather than that we actually believe to be true. It’s fun for the same reason seeing President Obama punch back in a debate is fun: it makes us feel like he’s as angry and as frustrated as we are, that he’s as disgusted by the volume of crazy and lies lofted in his direction.

The Michelle Obama Diaries, on the other hand, plays into an idea we believe to be true of FLOTUS, that she’s tart and awesome and sexy. And instead of providing a wishful sense of escape from the limitations of the man and the role, the series gives us a sense of access to that side of her. This first episode isn’t as sharp as the Anger Translator schtick yet, in part because the idea that Michelle and Barack have sex, for example, doesn’t actually feel like much of a slap back at a stupid or vicious misperception of the couple, or a confirmation of something we’d wish to be true but don’t really believe to be the case. I would, on the other hand, watch the hell out of a First Ladies of Washington, DC show from Rae along the lines of the brilliant Real Housewives of Civil Rights parody from a while back:

I bet the brunches between Hillary and Michelle would make an epic arc to the first season.

If you still aren’t watching Raising Hope, Fox’s charming comedy about a working-class family raising Hope, the baby who represents the fourth generation in the same house, together, I’d encourage you to check out last week’s episode and reconsider. In that installment, Jimmy Chance, Hope’s young father, decides to try to go back and get his GED, prompting his parents, Burt and Virginia, to confront their fears about falling behind their son in education. While the way Jimmy finally gets his degree is very funny, the episode is really about teaching people who have never had much in the way of education that learning can be tremendously fun and rewarding. Watching Burt, for example, embrace Shakespeare after Jimmy’s coworker Frank tells him to try to picture the action as it unfolds rather than focusing on individual words is lovely: he ends up transfixed by the fight that opens Romeo and Juliet, and he and Frank fence through the supermarket in made-up weapons and armor. It helps that Garrett Dillahunt is wonderful at selling Burt: as he said at the Television Critics Association press tour, “I love playing the fools. I never understand actors who never want to appear weak. I think that’s where we learn so much about people. I enjoy falling down. I enjoy making mistakes. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t let too much get him down.” It’s Burt’s resilience that makes it particularly rewarding when he gets a win.

And Greg Garcia, the show’s creator, has set up an environment where even when the Chances are doing things that most television characters take for granted, like trying to learn basic math, science, and history, they’re never objects of contempt or ridicule. In a world of aspirational television, where schoolteachers like Jess on New Girl live in vast apartments and even goofy characters like Phil Dunphy on Modern Family are wildly successful, that makes the Chances different, and refreshing, even when it’s not easy to pull off. When we spoke at press tour, Garcia acknowledged that he’s been told that not being aspirational might turn viewers off.

“Those are the shows I like so that’s what I’m going to write. Some people are like, when we first started developing this show, they were like ‘Oh, well, I don’t know maybe the house is too dirty and maybe people don’t want to watch,’” he said. “And I was like ‘They’re not in the house, they’re in their house. They’re just watching.’…I like to go to the zoo and watch the lions. I don’t want to be in there with them…I certainly can’t say that’s not true because maybe it is. But I like the show that I write.”

That’s not an entirely comfortable sentiment. But to a certain extent, it’s what we do when we look upwards, too. We judge the Real Housewives in their plastic, manicured homes just as much as we’re amused and a little shocked when Burt and Virginia refuse to act like functional adults. But while we root for the ludicrously rich to fall, we’re cheering for the Chances to win.

Iranian state television has apparently just handed down a ban on shows where men appear shirtless, and is looking with disapproval on shows about men and women who work together. If True Blood and The Office are out, here in no particular order are five shows we (and the U.K.) could try exporting to or remaking for our favorite wacky-leadered Middle Eastern nation:

1. Entourage: It’s not like any of the show’s romantic relationships (other than Ari and his wife) are remotely compelling, so edit out ever scene of Vince having anonymous sex with a groupie, every scene of Domenick Lombardozzi (can’t. unsee.) and other characters having sex with hookers, and you’ll have a tight little Hollywood business drama. Ari’s Judaism might be a challenge for the Iranian market, though.

2. The League: What more comforting national stereotype can we export than the idea that America’s top doctors, lawyers, etc. become absolutely helpless between September and March in the face of the football season? The League is the perfect tool to explain to international audiences why we’re moving towards a multi-polar planet rather than a uni-polar one, while also expanding our soft power through the unifying awesomeness of football. The sight of Ochocinco rapping is enough to mollify all enemies.

3. Men of a Certain Age: Aches, sexual anxiety, and getting treated badly by your domineering father are all universal emotions. Plus, now that it’s canceled, I bet TNT is hungry for a syndication deal to keep the profits coming from it.

4. Spooks: See what happens when those decadent westerners let men and women work together in charged circumstances? Someone has an unfortunate encounter with a deep-fryer.

5. Real Housewives of…: Hey, if you want women to stay out of the office to avoid tension and can’t stand the sight of passionate romances, it’s hard to do better than the passionless marriages and substance-free lives of Bravo’s Real Housewives. As long as there’s not a ban on wig-snatching or table-flipping, the ladies should do just fine by Iranian state television censors. Or just shoot Real Housewives of Tehran already.

No matter how silly you think the Real Housewives franchise is, this is incredibly sad: Russell Armstrong, the soon-to-be-ex-husband of one of the Beverly Hills housewives, has apparently committed suicide. The Beverly Hills installment of the show was notable for both its financial excesses and its rawness: Taylor Armstrong spent $60,000 on a birthday party for her daughter with Russell, while two of the sisters on the show fought bitterly about one of their struggles with alcoholism. The Armstrongs’ were the unlucky couple who, according to the format of the show, saw their marriage dissolve during filming. Taylor accused Russell of spousal abuse in her petition for divorce.

Being reality-television famous can be modestly lucrative, but even if you think you might end up a mini-mogul like Bethenny Frankel, the price you can pay seem awfully high. The contract you have to sign if you’re going to appear on The Real World says you have to absolve MTV of responsibility if you’re raped or sexually assaulted. If your wife decides she wants to humiliate you on national television for the sake of juicing her nascent Q score, you can’t really prevent her from doing it once you’ve stepped over the line and agreed to be on the show. The incentives here are for perpetual disaster: there’s no reward for self-protection here. People have the right to do whatever they like with their lives, of course, but we’re an awfully risk-averse country except when it comes to fame. Then, we’re willing to stake everything in pursuit of it.

-This would be better news if it was an announcement of a show about how Sam Malone turned Cheers into a detective agency. Norm and Cliff as partners, Carla as the tough interrogator who prefers to work alone, Diane as a brilliant but annoying lab tech…

-USA Network execs discuss their show-design jujitsu.

-A first-hand account of what it was like to work at News of the World.

-How to fix the All-Star game.

-Table-flipping and weave-pulling for Jesus: