The Swan: I Want My Face Back with Gabe Dunn and Allison Raskin | 24

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Speaker 1 Under the bright lights of a full auditorium broadcast on national television, three glamorous pageant contestants, Cindy, Beth, and Rachel, stand in sparkly dresses before a panel of high-profile judges.

Speaker 1 The three contestants have worked really hard to get here. Except, instead of years of training and modeling, these women have taken a different path.

Speaker 1 They've spent the last three months isolated from their loved ones, received up to 20 cosmetic procedures, and exposed their innermost trauma to millions of TV viewers.

Speaker 1 This pageant is unlike anything ever tried before. It's the conclusion to the first season of the 2004 reality show, The Swan.

Speaker 1 For months, critics have argued the show has been nothing more than a sadistic and grotesque circus taking reality TV to a new, unimaginable low.

Speaker 1 But in this moment, there's genuine tension as the contestants stand with new bodies and faces in anticipation of the winning announcement: Locello Loops underscore the drama.

Speaker 2 This is it, girls.

Speaker 3 Are you ready?

Speaker 3 Our first runner-up this evening

Speaker 2 is Beth Lay.

Speaker 2 Which means Rachel upright and you're back to swan!

Speaker 1 A swan-shaped tiara is placed upon Rachel's coffed head. Pyrotechnics punctuate the excitement.
Rachel flashes her new set of teeth as she is surrounded by falling sparks, then confetti.

Speaker 1 It really is like a fairy tale. But what kind of fairy tale makes the princess give up her face?

Speaker 4 But that swan show was crazy, I have to tell you.

Speaker 4 I mean, they actually would give plastic surgery to people.

Speaker 1 Her goal is to transform average women into confident beauties.

Speaker 5 It's a brutal regimen over three months.

Speaker 1 Only some will make it.

Speaker 5 But all could be changed forever.

Speaker 1 As soon as the taping of that was over, I screamed and I ran and I demanded my face back.

Speaker 1 We are

Speaker 1 on a

Speaker 1 single ship.

Speaker 1 From Wondery and At Will Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar and no ugly duckling at Don't Cross a Gay Man.

Speaker 1 And today, we're talking about The Swan, a reality show aptly inspired by a traumatic Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.

Speaker 1 On our show today, we have New York Times' best-selling co-authors and co-hosts of the podcast just between us. It's Allison Raskin and Gabe Dunn.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 Oh, thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 7 Yeah, thank you. Allison's a big fan of the show.
Not to blow up her spot, but she loves a big flop.

Speaker 6 I do. Well, because in our podcast, we have a game section.
And so when I started listening to yours and you had some games, I was like, I'm all in, baby.

Speaker 1 So before we jump into the story of the swan, I mean, how do we feel about early 2000s reality TV? Did we love it? Did we hate it?

Speaker 7 My family is all in on that stuff. Like Jerry Springer and Judge Judy.
And, you know, it was always cops. Like, it was always stuff like that.

Speaker 7 And then The Swan, I do remember as being one that, like, we did have on in the background.

Speaker 6 I did watch the show Next.

Speaker 7 I was going to say Next.

Speaker 7 Room Raiders. MTV had some good ones.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Those ones were so fun.
I forgot about those.

Speaker 6 Next was brutal because sometimes you would just walk out of the bus and you immediately got next. next.

Speaker 6 I don't know how you recover from something like that.

Speaker 1 Well, at the turn of the millennium, reality TV was a circus. The more people fell off the trapeze, the better.
Shows varied in topic, but not so much in theme.

Speaker 1 Basically, look at this pathetic person was mainly it.

Speaker 1 So there are tons of TV execs and writers jostling for a piece of the reality craze pie. TV exec Nellie Galan is one of them.
A Cuban immigrant, Galon spends most of her life as a high achiever.

Speaker 1 At 15, she's offered a role as a guest editor at 17 magazine and quickly rises through the entertainment industry. Oh.

Speaker 1 She later becomes the first Latina president of entertainment for Telemundo and goes on to develop La Sencienta, a Spanish-language bachelorette style dating show for Telemundo.

Speaker 1 Basically, Cinderella Cinderella follows a mother looking for a second chance at love, but per her roots, she has her family and priest weigh in on her romantic choices.

Speaker 1 I would watch it. That one sounds fun.

Speaker 6 Honestly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I eat that shit up.

Speaker 7 I'm still a reality fan. I'm a drag race girly.
And I use girly in the most gender-neutral sense of the word because I am a trans guy, but love is blind, the perfect match. Are you the one?

Speaker 7 And I write for television. And I still, I'm like, gimme, gimme, gimme, put it in my veins.

Speaker 1 So Galan, she says that she likes to create shows based around her own life. So question,

Speaker 1 what reality show would you create around your own life?

Speaker 7 Well, they already made the gaze of West Hollywood. They already made, my friend just texted me asking if I wanted to recap a show called Coupled a Thruple that I guess is going to be on Peacock.

Speaker 7 Oh, that's sort of an element of my life.

Speaker 6 I I actually pitched a reality show and everyone turned it down.

Speaker 6 But what was interesting was that I pitched it like two years ago and one of the networks was like, yeah, you know, our viewers really like shows where they can feel better about themselves because of the people in the shows.

Speaker 6 And I was like, oh, that's horrifying.

Speaker 6 So I don't know how much the reality landscape has actually changed from the early on.

Speaker 1 Well, Galan's big aha moment comes while she's reading a bedtime story to her son. One night, she's paging through the fairy tale, The Ugly Duckling.

Speaker 1 Now, Nellie thinks that maybe, just maybe, certain women are basically the swans. They just think that they're the ugly ducklings, a metaphor for Galan's personal rags to riches journey.

Speaker 1 So what's your take on the ugly duckling? as a children's story to begin with.

Speaker 6 I mean, what is it that the duckling just like, once it transforms, it becomes a swan? Like, what, what triggers the transformation in the story? I can't remember.

Speaker 1 So the baby swan thinks it's a duck and the other ducks make fun of him and then he grows up sad and lonely, but one day he sees his reflection in the pond and realizes he's developed into the most beautiful swan of them all.

Speaker 6 Well, I don't know if I like that.

Speaker 7 Wait. Why does he think he's a duck?

Speaker 6 I think he's adopted.

Speaker 7 So he thought that he was just an ugly duck, but it turned out he was actually very pretty.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 This seems like sort of a gay story, doesn't it? Like you're in a town, you're like, I'm the ugliest. And then you like realize, oh, never mind, I'm just like fabulous and effeminate.

Speaker 7 And then you're suddenly a swan in New York City dancing at pieces or whatever.

Speaker 1 So Galan starts conceptualizing a show about women who have hit a wall or ceiling, who are in a rut and want to instigate a big change. And she calls it the swan.
But a glow-up isn't enough.

Speaker 1 This is the era of I want a famous face and are you hot, what not to wear, even queer eye for the straight guy.

Speaker 1 All of these shows crowd the reality makeover space, so the swan needs to have something extra, something more extreme than extreme makeover. Are we ready to hear the format?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm so scared, but yes.

Speaker 1 Each episode of the show features two, quote, ugly ducklings. These women come from all walks of life.
For example, there was a former Marine, a single mom, a belly dancer from Ecuador.

Speaker 1 In fact, an overwhelming number of the women are young moms.

Speaker 6 I thought you were going to say from Ecuador.

Speaker 1 We mostly just plucked people from other countries. No, well, it's just a lot of moms feeling insecure about their, you know, their bodies post-pregnancy.

Speaker 1 So is this a good topic or demo for juicy reality TV?

Speaker 6 They just need to give the moms more child care.

Speaker 6 That is how they would help these women.

Speaker 1 Just some more me time.

Speaker 1 So, a panel of experts then prescribe operations and procedures to help the women feel better about their appearance.

Speaker 1 The women undergo huge, life-altering physical alterations for three months, secluded from friends and family without access to mirrors. What?

Speaker 6 They can't see their kids for three months?

Speaker 1 Can't see their kids, can't see their spouses, can't see their friends, can't see themselves for three months. Wow.

Speaker 7 Having top surgery and having someone help me, the fact that you have to go through surgery and all of this stuff without your loved ones

Speaker 7 is torturous. Yeah.

Speaker 1 At the end of each hour-long episode, they are glammed up, whisked away to the creepy mansion set, and stand in front of the experts who have altered them.

Speaker 1 Here, in front of a giant decorated mirror, the swans will see their own new faces and bodies for the first time since the start of the program.

Speaker 1 How does the mirror reveal compared to something like the bachelor's rose ceremony?

Speaker 6 Oh, I think it's way more intense, right? To like not even know what you look like is horrifying.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I have nightmares about facial reconstructive surgery and like not recognizing myself in the mirror.

Speaker 6 Okay, so this is the part of the show where I say I've had a nose job.

Speaker 6 What was so funny about getting the nose job is that I like got it over summer and then I came back for senior year of college and nobody noticed.

Speaker 1 And I was so mad.

Speaker 6 I was like, what are you talking about? I went through so much pain and everyone was just like, oh, did you get bangs?

Speaker 1 And I was like, I had bangs. I've had bangs this whole time.

Speaker 7 I think looking at pictures from that time, Allison, the nose job definitely changed your face. I think it looks very different.

Speaker 6 Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 7 Listen, I was going to say, like, oh yeah, imagine looking in the mirror and being so unfamiliar with what you're seeing there. Almost like a trans person.

Speaker 7 Can you believe what you just did was like one of those movies where they're like, imagine if love was illegal and gay people are like, yeah, imagine.

Speaker 1 Imagine that.

Speaker 7 I, you know, I've completely changed. Like me in 2020 and me now, it looks like maybe, maybe we're siblings, maybe we're cousins.
maybe we dated. I don't know.
It is weird.

Speaker 7 It is weird to look because I think some you get to a point where you're like, who even was that? Was that even me? It's, you feel so disconnected from this other physical form.

Speaker 7 But also, um, I didn't have the, the absolute scare of going through my entire transition and then seeing myself in the mirror.

Speaker 7 Like imagine if in 2020, you just like didn't let me see myself for three years and then plopped me now in front of a mirror, I would probably have a mental breakdown.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a lot, right?

Speaker 1 So, at the end of an episode of The Swan, since everything about our culture is who did it better, the women are judged against each other. What? No.

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Speaker 1 So, even though it's pretty much up to the doctors on what they can do, and their procedures are very similar across all contestants, this is somehow a competition show, and the women are somehow responsible.

Speaker 7 I forgot about that.

Speaker 6 You win money if you're more beautiful.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 So, the winners, we'll quote the winners, i.e., the people whose procedures came out better according to the panel, they move on to the pageant. Oh no.

Speaker 7 Yes, I forgot. I blocked this out.

Speaker 1 Yes, the pageant. So you forgot about the pageant.
The women, they didn't even know about it.

Speaker 6 So they sign up and they're like, okay, I'm just gonna, like, people are gonna just like help me, make me feel better, go through all this turmoil and pain, and then suddenly it's, oh, you have to compete against another woman.

Speaker 1 Yes, it is absolutely sprung on them once they start the 12-week program.

Speaker 1 So at the end of the season, nine women compete in classic categories. We're talking evening gowns, swimsuits, lingerie, and of course, the Q ⁇ A.
How do you think you'd fare in a beauty pageant?

Speaker 1 I would do great. I loved toddlers and tiaras.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you have, you have a presence for sure. I think I would do pretty well in the personality driven parts and not so well in the like walk gracefully in high heels parts.

Speaker 7 I feel like I would end up going viral as like answering the QA in an unhinged manner.

Speaker 6 You would somehow become the villain of the pageant.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and I love that for me.

Speaker 1 Well, the person who places first will be crowned the swan and supposedly she will win prizes quote worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and a modeling contract with the Champagne Trot Agency.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, the Champagne Trot? That sounds like a horse.

Speaker 1 So guiding these women on their way to Swanhood are Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Randall Hayworth, known for his work on celebrities like actress slash reality star Lisa Renna and America's next top model winner Carrie D.

Speaker 1 English. Okay.

Speaker 1 Terry Dubrow, another plastic surgeon, is famous at this point for his marriage to TV actress and future Orange County housewife, Heather Dubrow.

Speaker 1 Also helping these women are Sherry Wirth, who is a dentist to the stars and boasts a client roster that includes Anna Kendrick and Motley Cruise Tommy Lee. Great teeth.

Speaker 1 They also have therapist Lynn Iani, who is tasked with getting the contestants to talk about their deepest insecurities. on camera.
Oh, no.

Speaker 7 Right. I forgot about that.
The therapist, I remember this now.

Speaker 6 Somebody needs to report them to the licensing board.

Speaker 7 Allison, this could be you. You could do this job.

Speaker 6 I'm not licensed.

Speaker 7 But you like, you learned psychology.

Speaker 6 And what I learned is that doing things like this is deeply damaging to the human psyche, and we shouldn't do it.

Speaker 7 Allison got a master's in psychology just to tell us, hey, this is bad.

Speaker 1 Finally, the life coach is none other than Nellie Galon. Yes, the creator of the show herself.

Speaker 7 Suspicious.

Speaker 6 Oh, I see what you're up to.

Speaker 1 Nellie has accomplished a lot in her 40 years of life, so she expects a lot out of the Swan participants.

Speaker 1 In the context of this show, life coaching seems to mean shaming contestants on camera to extract maximum TV exploitation.

Speaker 1 So let's listen to a clip of Galan's excellent motivational techniques, shall we? One contestant, Christina Tyree, isn't hitting her weight goal.

Speaker 1 So, Galan has decided to rummage through her refrigerator.

Speaker 3 Let's see what you've got in here. It's time to be really tough.
You've ordered strawberry ice cream and full-fat yogurts 18 in one week.

Speaker 14 Adams care that I will now make it to the pageant.

Speaker 3 Ice cream on a diet? Come on, clearly, this is her weakness.

Speaker 3 To make it to the pageant, you can't be over the weight you came in with. I mean, it's not gonna happen.

Speaker 6 Okay, so I fundamentally misunderstood this show and didn't understand that, like, they had to do anything other than be operated on.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 6 dieting and all these things. Like, that's so much work.

Speaker 7 Also, strawberry ice cream. I was like, strawberry ice cream's basically fruit.

Speaker 7 If it was like chocolate ice cream, I'd be like, okay, but like, strawberry ice cream, that's healthy. That's that's on the pyramid.

Speaker 6 Also, I think you're supposed to eat whole fat yogurt. Yeah.
I think that's better for you.

Speaker 1 So, as mentioned, the women on the show endure a barrage of procedures. Sometimes, the suggestions from the experts align with what the women want or need.

Speaker 1 For instance, some women need extensive dental work because of neglect since news flash, dental work isn't covered by most medical plans.

Speaker 1 However, many of the women are convinced to get things like brow lifts and other painful procedures they might not fully understand the context of or the extent of.

Speaker 1 Even veneers, which are offered to many of the contestants, aren't all they're cracked up to be. See what we did there.

Speaker 1 They chip, need follow-up care, and only last 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 1 And while they look nice, people who have veneers can't eat hard foods or big pieces for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 7 What? Underneath their teeth is little nubbins. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I recently learned that veneers don't last forever. So that's like when they like leave these people with these houses that were built in a day and then they fall apart.

Speaker 1 People were in like extreme makeover home addition. They were down on their luck.
They didn't have the means to upkeep their homes or have cars and they were given these mansions.

Speaker 1 So I feel that's the same thing with veneers. If it's not something that you're going to be able to take care of, then what are you left with underneath?

Speaker 7 Nubbins.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So how do we feel about what the women are about to undergo? I feel horrible.

Speaker 7 This is like worse psychological torture than a lot of shows. You know what? I'm like, oh, the Love is Blind people had a tough time.
You should see the people on the swan.

Speaker 7 They had to walk 20 miles in the snow to be on reality TV.

Speaker 1 Oh, boo-hoo.

Speaker 7 They only had grapes at Crafty. Love is Blind.

Speaker 1 So the experts who are avatars of the patriarchy are brutal in their criticism, prescribing ways to make the women more enticing.

Speaker 1 happier and feminine, at least according to 2004 CIS White American Standards. An average of 10 procedures is recommended to the participants.

Speaker 1 One contestant shocks the experts when she pushes back against some procedures. Let's watch Terry Dubrow, the plastic surgeon, suggesting a facelift to her.

Speaker 15 To take those years off of her and transform her, she needs liposuction on her thighs and hips, a tummy tuck, take the bump off her nose, and a mini facelift.

Speaker 6 This woman is like 40.

Speaker 15 You might consider consider doing a little mini lift.

Speaker 14 I don't think so, because I kind of like my cheekbones.

Speaker 15 Tanya's the oldest swan we have, but she doesn't want a facelift, which is what I really think she needs. And that makes it challenging to rejuvenate her face.

Speaker 2 Tanya is reluctant to follow the doctor's advice, but Cindy is eager to begin her transformation.

Speaker 7 Okay, okay. This woman looks fine, also, like she's beautiful.
And two, imagine if they were doing this today, and it was the cat eye and the full lips and all of that, right?

Speaker 7 And then it goes out of style. Kylie Jenner dissolves her lips.

Speaker 7 There's something to this one woman saying, no, I don't want to like do this procedure or that procedure in an effort to sort of maintain herself in some way rather than like going into trends.

Speaker 1 She literally said, no, because I like my cheekbones. And then there was a horrifying SFX sound.
Yes.

Speaker 7 You know, she wants to keep a feature that it's like, it doesn't matter what the trends are. She just wants to keep a feature of herself that she likes.

Speaker 1 So, of course, since Tanya's surgical results are more subtle than her competitors, she does not move on to the pageant.

Speaker 1 Life as a contestant is even harder than it appears on camera. The women have no privacy as they go through the SWAN program.

Speaker 1 For three to four months, the subjects have to live in an apartment complex in Marina Del Rey, California.

Speaker 1 That's where I live. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 They have to be chaperoned and submit to having their lives filmed while they recover. Daily workouts are required almost immediately after certain surgeries, along with the locale diets.
Wow.

Speaker 7 You're losing your mind. You're absolutely, you're like a castaway.

Speaker 1 Well, in that one clip where Galan was going through her refrigerator, I mean, Christina just said, I'm not going to make it to the pageant.

Speaker 1 It was almost like robotic and it's like the only thing that's going in their minds, you know, for those few months.

Speaker 6 It's like mind control.

Speaker 7 Okay, hear me out. This is not a reality show.
It's actually a MKUltra-type CIA situation where they're building super soldiers.

Speaker 7 That's the level of intensity.

Speaker 1 So the program isolates the women from anyone. they trust.
Competitors are not allowed to see or talk to their friends and family except for a weekly 10-minute phone call.

Speaker 1 Some of the contestants admit they sneak into each other's rooms just to have someone to talk to.

Speaker 7 How awkward would it be when you come back? You're like, hey, I don't look like myself at all. I haven't spoken to you guys in four months.
Like, I would just be in my house like, anyway, so, um.

Speaker 7 Do you guys, do you guys like bread? Or like, I would forget how to like be a person. Like, I would be so awkward.

Speaker 1 I remember watching it and being like, oh my gosh, which one of these women is going to go home and be like, well, I'm hot now. So

Speaker 1 bye.

Speaker 6 Up until the veneers need to be redone. And then you get remarried.

Speaker 1 Well, at the end of the three months, at least the way it's presented, the women seem excited for their new looks. So let's watch a typical end of episode reveal.

Speaker 1 This one is of Christina Tyree from season one, episode two, the woman who Nelly berates earlier for having ice ice cream. Take a look.

Speaker 1 This is so dramatic.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 My mouth is hanging open.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was just like mouths again.

Speaker 6 I mean, like, you have to have that sort of reaction because otherwise, you have to question what you just did with the last three months of your life.

Speaker 7 Sunk cost fallacy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, and here's the thing.
The women are in full makeup with yards of fake hair and wispy bangs and to hide the scarring under the glamorous TV lighting and free from those apartment prisons.

Speaker 1 I'm sure just the high of seeing people outside of the gym or the doctor's office must be glorious.

Speaker 6 Like your brain is like, your brain is conditioned to think that what you went through was worth it.

Speaker 6 And so I'm sure that, like, regardless of what the mirror showed, they would have had that reaction.

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Speaker 1 Well, it's pageant time.

Speaker 1 A full audience of friends, family, and whoever else production can cram into the auditorium cheers on the nine finalists as they prance around in gowns and swimsuits.

Speaker 1 Based on the prizes, high-profile judges, and even the fancy clothes the women are given to wear, the budget for The Swan appears to be astronomical.

Speaker 1 Rachel Love Frazier, who's featured in the first aired episode, becomes the first ever Swan. Sorry for the spoilers.

Speaker 1 So finally, production wraps and the first season of The Swan hits the airwaves, taking off in a floofy, feathery mess. before being shot down by the critics.
The show starts off with great ratings.

Speaker 1 Over 9 million people tune in.

Speaker 1 For comparison, The Amazing Race, one of the biggest reality shows of all time, only beats it by a couple of million viewers.

Speaker 7 Allison wouldn't let us go on The Amazing Race.

Speaker 1 Well, it was so funny.

Speaker 6 We had this phone call with them because, like, they were, I think they wanted to do like a YouTuber season or something. This was years ago.

Speaker 6 And they were like, don't you want to bungee jump from the Eiffel Tower?

Speaker 1 And I was like, Absolutely not. That sounds horrible to me.

Speaker 6 I was like, I don't want to introduce America to my worst self because that's what I would be the entire season.

Speaker 1 Well, after only four episodes air, The Swan is picked up incredibly quickly for a second season. Oh, Golan has done it again.
The Swan is a golden goose.

Speaker 1 But the show, while popular with viewers, gets horrible critical reception. Even other professional plastic surgeons and beauty experts are appalled by the pageant.

Speaker 1 TV experts and feminist advocates are disgusted by the whole idea. The show is called ghastly, misogynistic, and abomination, and the contestants are referred to as brides of Frankenstein.

Speaker 7 Okay, but that's a sick read. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Allison, could you please read the intro to this USA Today review?

Speaker 6 The swan is proof that the genre's hucksters have no built-in boundaries. They will plumb ever lower depths until the market or the courts stop them.

Speaker 6 We convince these women their self-worth is wrapped up in their physical appearance, alter them, and then tell all but one, sorry, you're still not worthy enough.

Speaker 6 That was good. That was a good review.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's very interesting that they mentioned the courts.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 This is so bad. It should be illegal.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I'm curious, like, are these people watching it to hate watch it to like be like, these people are so ugly?

Speaker 6 Or are they watching because it's like inspirational and they think it's like nice to see women transform?

Speaker 7 Or are they watching because like, look at these women being so shallow in sort of a proto-Kardashian way? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I am forever an optimist. And in my personal opinion, I do think people were mostly cheering them on, thinking that this was a feel-good show.

Speaker 1 And now, you know, we just have thought about things a little more thoroughly and realized that while it might feel good for us, what was the effect on the people who were participating in it?

Speaker 1 And how does it make people who feel who are watching who don't get to have that experience?

Speaker 1 Should they still feel bad about themselves because they don't have 10 rounds of plastic surgery done on them?

Speaker 6 You know, how the people who were rejected from the show feel.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, according to Galan, even her own therapist thinks the swan is saying to women, if they don't have plastic surgery, they're no good.

Speaker 1 Galan continues to defend it. Watching the swan, she claims, is more inspiring than watching Miss USA, because not everybody can be Miss USA, but...
anybody can be a swan.

Speaker 1 She does acknowledge issues with the premise, but claims that it was Fox at the last minute that changed the show into something less holistic than she wanted.

Speaker 1 She also pushes back against criticism by noting that, according to her, half a million women wanted to sign up for season two of the show.

Speaker 1 Half a million?

Speaker 7 I think that is, one, there's no streaming.

Speaker 7 So everyone on there is like... being talked about weekly.
It's water cooler culture that we don't have now. And two, you get to be on TV and all of these things are quote unquote free.

Speaker 7 Like this is a time period in television where it does not shock me that half a million people wanted to sign up for this. Women.

Speaker 6 I can't get over that her own therapist told her it was bad. Because then it's like, how do we know that? Did she say that her own therapist?

Speaker 6 She's like, look, I hear you. I hear you.

Speaker 6 My mental health professional as well is saying I'm harming the world, but you know, like.

Speaker 1 Well, despite good season one ratings, the shocking nature of a program like this can't sustain audiences forever. The second season, which airs in the fall of 2004, doesn't do nearly as well.

Speaker 1 The critical outrage is overwhelming. As ratings drop, the swan is plucked from Fox's lineup before it has a chance for a season three.

Speaker 1 Now, if the ratings had still been high, do you think Fox would have just like ran with this show forever? Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 6 Absolutely. It would still be happening.

Speaker 7 Wait, it only had two seasons?

Speaker 1 Two seasons, and now it's like impossible to find. Wow.

Speaker 1 So let's do a little, where are they now?

Speaker 1 By the end of the show, many of the women undergo unnecessary and painful procedures, and their mental and physical health are wagered for the sake of cringe television.

Speaker 1 But many of the contestants are thankful for what they see as life-changing procedures. The winner of the first season, Rachel Love Frazier, is a huge proponent of the show.

Speaker 1 Defending the pageant, she says, quote, when I went out there in my bikini, this was a way for me to say, hey, if I can get in front of all of you in a little itsy bitsy bikini, I can do anything.

Speaker 1 Do you think any part of her positive experience is chalked up to her being the winner? Yeah.

Speaker 6 When you win something, it's hard to be like, yeah, that's not a good thing. People love to win.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So not all of the contestants feel as warm and fuzzy about the experience. One of the loudest adversaries of the show is former contestant Lori Arias.

Speaker 1 In 2013, eight years after the show aired, Arias claimed a long list of physical and mental health issues as a result of the show, including lupus. Arias says she received inadequate follow-up care.

Speaker 1 Rachel Love Frazier agrees that there should have been more follow-up, but in general isn't sympathetic to the women who complained about being on the show. She calls them crybabies.

Speaker 6 Oh, so she seems like a nice lady. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 She's like, I got my face done. I have my veneers.
I'm going to be a mean girl now. Exactly.

Speaker 1 As far as the expert panelists are concerned, they were so quick to judge the contestants, but they themselves are far from perfect.

Speaker 1 And since you are my panel of experts, tell me what's wrong with them in the following game. Yay! Yay!

Speaker 1 So I'll give you some multiple choice options of some ugly details about these folks, and you tell me which are true and need correcting.

Speaker 1 Let's start off easy. Nellie Galon, the show's creator and on-air life coach, has no experience in A, reality showcasting, B, talent contract agreements, or C, life coaching.

Speaker 6 C, life coaching.

Speaker 1 Yes, it is life coaching. And it gets worse.
She barely takes it seriously. In a 2004 variety interview, she says, quote, I don't even know if there's such a thing as professional life coaching.

Speaker 1 All right, next one. In 2017, dentist Sherry Worth lost her license following years of patient complaints for what? Uh-oh.
A, misdiagnoses, B, overcharging, C, berating patients, or D, both A and B.

Speaker 7 A and B.

Speaker 1 Sure. A and B.
Ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 1 Misdiagnoses and overcharging. How fun.

Speaker 7 Because they go together.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Here's another question.
In 2018, Dr. Hayworth got into some hot water for A, drunk driving, B, cheating on his spouse, or C, alleged malpractice? Drunk driving.

Speaker 1 No, it's C, alleged malpractice.

Speaker 7 Oh, no.

Speaker 1 In 2018, a malpractice suit alleged he abused Percocet and ecstasy during surgeries while also watching graphic porn and possibly snuff films.

Speaker 6 During surgery? During surgery. Can you imagine like the nurses that are there while a snuff film plays?

Speaker 1 Like, what? These allegations were never proven as the lawsuit was dismissed when an expert witness could no longer testify. Dr.
Hayworth denies all charges. Okay, one more.
Dr.

Speaker 1 Dubrow is now famous for co-hosting another plastic surgery show with a pretty shoddy premise. It's called A.
Ruined, B. Botched, or C.
Flubbed.

Speaker 7 Botched, it's botched.

Speaker 1 It's botched.

Speaker 1 A series about corrective cosmetic surgery. In addition to being the co-host of botched, plastic surgeon Dr.

Speaker 1 Dubrow has, ironically, hosted a couple of episodes of License to Kill, a documentary about deadly doctors. Maybe, I don't know, he should do an episode on his co-star, Dr.
Hayward. Wow!

Speaker 7 The swan reunion we've all been waiting for.

Speaker 1 Nellie Galon saw the show as a magical experience and tried to spin off the swan multiple times, first with men and then with celebrities.

Speaker 7 Do the swan for men. Do the swan for men.

Speaker 1 Do the swan for men.

Speaker 6 Equality is punishing everyone.

Speaker 1 Exactly. These days, she's an author, motivational speaker, and podcaster.

Speaker 7 Who isn't?

Speaker 1 Oh, no. In 2008, she went on to compete on the celebrity apprentice with Donald Trump.
She got fired. Okay.

Speaker 1 And she now apparently has a doctorate in clinical psychology. No.

Speaker 6 I can't believe that this woman went and got a PhD. Yeah.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Just so wild.

Speaker 1 So here on the big flop, we do like to be positive people. So are there any silver linings that you can think of that came from the swan?

Speaker 7 I think it started maybe a conversation about the downfall of this type of TV and media.

Speaker 7 Like it didn't trigger it right away, but the fact that we're talking about it right now in a critical sense, all those years later, I think it was kind of a canary in the coal mine.

Speaker 7 Again, pun intended. Of like, hey, this is starting to get exploitative.
This is like actually not something that has no ceiling.

Speaker 7 And I think it gives us like a touch point of like something to talk about or something to say, okay, we found a place where it was like too much. Yeah.
Did it stop us?

Speaker 1 We still had dance moms. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I know.

Speaker 7 But it gives us a little bit of a, hey, not this.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I guess the silver lining for me is that I think if you brought pretty much anybody onto a podcast to talk about this show now they would find it disgusting yeah and so that sort of shows that society has shifted in the better direction yeah the overton window in the last 20 years yeah hopefully we should find clips and just like throw them onto tick tock for all of the you know the younger generation to see how upset they are

Speaker 1 they would hate it be like you don't know what trauma is kid

Speaker 7 they would hate it

Speaker 1 This is a really, really tough one because obviously the network, the experts, and certainly the winner of the pageants made money, but that doesn't really feel like a satisfying silver lining.

Speaker 1 But many of the women were happy to receive thousands of dollars in reconstructive surgery, something reserved normally for the rich and well-connected.

Speaker 1 But, you know, it doesn't feel great. There's not a lot of silver linings to this one, to be honest.
It's a very thin, thin, thin, thin line.

Speaker 1 Well, now that you both know about the swan, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop?

Speaker 6 I'll say big flop

Speaker 6 because I think it probably had like huge repercussions for both the contestants and a lot of the audience watching it and how they thought about themselves and female beauty.

Speaker 6 But I think because it ended so quickly, it didn't make it into mega flop territory.

Speaker 7 I say baby flop because it still got a second season. They could have pulled the plug on that second season at any time.

Speaker 7 And they went forward. They doubled down.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks so much to our fabulous guests, Alison Raskin and Gabe Dunn, for joining us here on The Big Flop. And thanks to all of you for listening.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week with an Oscars spectacular, reliving the absolute cringe and terrible chemistry of a host parenting no one asked for. Ann Hathaway and James Franco.
Bye.

Speaker 7 Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1 The Big Flop is a production of Wondering and At Will Media, hosted by me, Misha Brown. Produced by Sequoia Thomas, Harry Huggins, and Tina Turner.
Written by Anna Rubinova.

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