The second episode of Big Break Kaanapali brought more drama (and more rain), lots of it thanks to the producers' well-thought-out roommate/teammate pairings, which were revealed to the contestants the second morning of the competition. As usual, I am bound by my confidentiality agreement to reveal nothing about what's coming down the line this season, but let's just say these are not random pairings. Personalities will mesh and clash like never before based on these couplings.    

As someone who was there for the golf but never in the confessional room or the one-on-one interviews conducted with the contestants every night, I must admit it's fascinating to watch the show and hear what the girls had to say when it was just them and the camera. Many of them are a lot more outspoken -- for good and bad -- than I ever knew while we were filming. (And, sure, Dana calls herself "the Cougar Mama" a little too often.)

Reading some of the message boards this morning, I understand that there were viewers who were disappointed that no one ended up getting sent home in the elimination challenge at the end of last night's episode. While I understand the urge for bloodletting, I can tell you that this elimination was one of the best and most nerve-wracking I've ever seen (and as I've confessed before, I'm a long-time BB watcher). It was brilliant: the two players, Courtney and Tina, had their destiny in their own hands. They could both be saved or both go home, depending on whether or not they could play the two holes on par or better.  And since they were two of our better players, I'm happy they both managed to avoid extinction that early. For any of you who are worried that the same thing will happen over and over, I can assure you that the ax will start dropping swiftly and shortly. And guess what? The weather gets better, too!

Speaking of the weather, I just have to address one more thing I read in some viewer blogs this morning: apparently there are those who doubt the wind-gust numbers put up on the screen during periods of the show. Let me tell you, it was at times windier than anything I've ever experienced on a golf course (if anything, the number I saw last night, 35 mph, seemed way low), but the producers scrambled to put us in places where we wouldn't look like we were about to take off like Mary Poppins under our umbrellas. It's edited television, people. If you were to look at the many hours of film we shot with nine cameras every day, you'd see us spend most of our time those first few days huddling under roofs on random people's verandas adjacent to the course to avoid the buckets of rain that fell every half hour. You'd see us hold on to trees and carts to not fly away. And you'd be damn impressed by how most of that was concealed in the show. Sure, it may have seemed strange that some of the players couldn't put a ball inside a grid in the fairway 200 yards away with a driver, but considering the insane head winds and soggy grass, it was a miracle that anybody reached it at all. An even bigger miracle was the fact that it was the tiny rookie, Susan, who eventually ended up succeeding. A sign of things to come, perhaps? (Oops, did I just say that?)