In reality television, contenders fear nothing more than receiving what's known as a bad edit. Producers understand that villains aren't brought to set; they're made by clip selections and stunts on set designed to provoke a particular kind of footage.

And in the New York Times's very own reality TV spot, Pete Buttigieg got the bad edit.

Mayor Pete is polling fourth nationally and third in critical early states, but you'd hardly know it if you watched this week's episode of The Weekly, an hourlong documentary on the editorial board's process of endorsing a candidate for president.

Buttigieg, Binyamin Appelbaum charges, has been on "the front lines of corporate price-fixing." Most of the mayor's edit is dedicated to the board grilling him for not seeming angry enough and for having committed the sin of serving in the military and working as a consultant for McKinsey. Buttigieg keeps his calm, even as the board displays such obvious contempt for him, but the commentary afterward displays the caricature it wishes to weld of him.

“Success as a politician requires you to convince voters that you feel their problems, and I do not get the sense — maybe it’s because I’m not from the Midwest — but he did not give me the sense that he feels these problems," Appelbaum riffed.

“Even his tone, that’s not what people want right now," Aisha Harris concluded. "Like, I don’t feel excited by him.”

The Weekly cast Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur who's outlasted four senators, three governors, five representatives, and two mayors in his remarkably powerful presidential bid, as nothing more than a cheap joke. Rather than include one of Yang's dozens of expert answers about the economy or his detailed plans, the editorial board is shown patronizingly asking Yang what government secrets he would be most excited to discover as president.

When Jim Dao noted that Yang seemed deeply in touch with millennial concerns, Appelbaum all but wrote off Yang as the bimbo who only survives on The Bachelor for laughs.

“But it’s just hard to get around the sense that this guy should be running for, like, New York City Council," Appelbaum said. "I just kept on wanting to ask him, like, ‘Are you the guy who should be in charge of our national security?’”

You only have to watch the first half hour of the episode to learn that Elizabeth Warren earns one-half of the endorsement, if you didn't already gather that from the softballs lobbed at her in the interview transcript. The board can't help but ogle her as she trash talks Mitch McConnell and lectures the room.

"I like the fighting spirit, and I like the sense that I'm gonna shoot for the moon," Jesse Wegman gushed after the Massachusetts senator departed. "I know I won't hit it, but you gotta start there."

"Do you know who doesn't like to be lectured by powerful women?" Michelle Cottle asked with the coy smile reserved for America's Next Top Commander. "Male voters."

No such allowance is made for Joe Biden, the dominant front-runner of the race and the only candidate clearly capable of winning the Electoral College over President Trump. The board spends most of its Biden interview grilling him on his electability because of his age. The former vice president is indignant in response. He mentions that in head-to-head polling, he has led Trump in Georgia, Texas, and Florida. The board seems unconvinced. When it then tries to bait Biden into endorsing the pie-in-the-sky proposals of his left-wing challengers, he pushes back hard. Despite the New York Times's refusal to see it, Biden is obviously still sharp and evidently the most commanding candidate in the race.

After a few members of the board conceded that Biden presented a strong showing, the calvacade of haters began their roast.

"This is such an uninspiring argument, just in general, that, like, there's this moment that feels very urgent and necessary, and it's just like, 'Let's just like, you know, put a warm body that a lot of people can agree on there,'" said Charlie Warzel. "We had a lot of people come in that chair with really interesting ideas."

"There is a real question to be had about whether this safe person is the one that will turn people out to the polls or if someone who really excites you and gives you something to vote for is who will turn people out to the polls," Lauren Kelley lamented.

While the elites disdain Uncle Joe, the working class evidently does not. The elevator operator in the New York Times building boasted to Biden that she's voting for him. To her, he was not a mere "warm body."

Predictably, Biden doesn't even make the final four because he's not ambitious enough. But neither do Bernie Sanders nor Yang, because they're too ambitious. In fact, the board grants more credence to the absurd notion that it would endorse Michael Bloomberg over the candidates who actually participated in the endorsement process. (Bloomberg actually gets a vote from an editorial board member, whereas Yang does not.)

Mayor Pete makes the cut of the final four, but only barely, as the board complains that he doesn't emote enough. Rounding out the finalists are Cory Booker, who has since dropped out of the race, and eventual endorsement winners Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

Of course, and as anyone who read the eventual 3,452-word editorial explaining the endorsement, Warren was the real winner all along. She got the good edit. And the spineless co-endorsement of Klobuchar, who is repeatedly denounced for not appearing charismatic enough to the editors, only bolsters Warren's chances by giving Klobuchar a boost against early state front-runners Biden and Buttigieg.

Ultimately, the board gives out two roses, never seriously grappling with where the Democratic Party ought to go. The editors never have an ideological conversation or any meaningful reflections on the successes and failures of the Obama era. The end result is an hour of back-slapping and self-indulgence, with very little thought given to the actual voters who eventually must pick one candidate.

The board may claim that the publicity around its endorsement process is designed to be straightforward with readers, but it's clear that this is an exercise in the exact sort of fame-seeking that catapulted its enemy into the White House.