There is broad consensus among Reality TV scholars and critics that the genre relies on producing scandals, controversies and moral panics to create dramatic spectacles (Biltereyst 2004). In particular, there are many works that discuss Reality TV's reproduction of racial, gender and class stereotypes as part of portraying ‘the real’ (Wood and Skeggs 2008). So how does a Reality TV production in an illiberal state like Singapore court and manage controversy? This was the question that I brought with me when I started my ethnography of the reality show discussed in this chapter. I initially imagined that I would be observing a production team cleverly manipulating social discourse while skilfully avoiding censorship. These expectations were quickly side railed as my days – and my fieldwork diary – became consumed by the daily chaos that ensued on set.

In many ways, this was the hardest ethnography for me to write up. This was in part due to the fact that this ethnography was exceptional in many aspects. Unlike the more routinized production processes I experienced in the other case studies, this production involved a larger than usual number of producers working together on a new ‘live’ reality programme format with little established work structure. As a result, a large portion of the daily grind on set involved constant, sometimes confrontational, arguments among producers about how best to do things. The general atmosphere of this production was very different from and much more affectively charged compared to the rest of the productions I would work on.