• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 9, 2025

On one of the many spinoffs of “90-Day Fiancé,” the one that is subtitled “Pillow Talk,” we watch other people in their sweatpants and jammies as they watch TV right back at us -- literally mirroring the way we are watching them.

Thus, as far as this show is concerned, entertainment has now come down to watching others sit around.

This also characterizes a new reality-competition show coming to Hulu on Thursday.

Titled “Got To Get Out,” this show has 20 contestants (by all appearances all under 40, except one of them) confined inside a palatial mansion for 10 days who scheme to escape the house before any of the others can push an alarm button.

At stake is a grand, cash prize that could total $1 million, but judging from Episode One, the money will take its time adding up to that amount -- if it gets there at all.

In Episode One, the contestants talk and talk and talk. The photo above basically tells you all you need to know about this show.

In fact, action on this show is apparently in such short supply that no photos other than pictures of people standing or sitting around were provided for the press on the Hulu media site.

The photo above was typical. No one in the picture is yawning, but just take a moment to look at this group of people. 

Here’s a pun I just thought of: The first phrase of a preamble for this show should be “Ennui the people.” If this joke doesn’t work for you, please know that I’m still workshopping it.

Another thing wrong with the show is its title “Got To Get Out.” This kind of title is the bread and butter of cheeky reporters, columnists and headline writers.

“I got to get out of here!” a critic might write of the show, although writers worth their salt know that “I got to …” is grammatically incorrect.

Not that anyone reading this was planning to watch “Got To Get Out,” but be forewarned that one of the contestants is Omarosa. 

If she had only been from Taiwan, her name could have been Omarosa from Formosa (the long-ago former name of Taiwan). But again, I digress.

Whatever one chooses to call her, she is certainly one of the most notorious contestants in the whole history of reality TV -- the only one who rose to the level of advisor to the president in the first Trump administration.

The rumors were that when she was let go from her White House job, she had to be carried out bodily.

The good news is that she has long had the fallback option of reality TV. Her credits in that arena include “The Apprentice,” “The Surreal Life,” “The Celebrity Apprentice,” “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice” and “House of Villains.”

In “Got To Get Out,” she is positioned in Episode One as practiced in the art of reality-show villainy and thus is one to watch.

Other reality veterans are also on hand, including Spencer Pratt from “The Hills,” Kim Zolciak-Biermann from “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” Val Chmerkovskiy from “Dancing With the Stars,” Susan Noles from “The Golden Bachelor” and Demi Burnett from “The Bachelor” and “Bachelor in Paradise.”

At one point in Episode One, when one of the contestants is trying to do some calculations in his head as he makes an escape plan, host Simu Liu makes a pointed remark about the man’s intelligence in particular and all reality-TV contestants in general.

“In hindsight,” says Liu in an off-screen voiceover, “making reality contestants do this amount of math is probably the most messed up part of this game.”

Having nothing to add to that, I will end this TV Blog here because my job, with the help of Samu Liu, is now done.