This goes for Hell's Kitchen as well, as far as I can tell -- the show makes clear that the action is happening more or less in real time, over the course of 15 weeks or so. In in-show interviews everybody talks about "last week's task", etc. But each task takes only two days. What do they do the rest of the time? They're clearly not allowed to talk to their family, given how thrilled they are when they are allowed to call them for five minutes.

• They're lying.,Estee, 06:20 PM, 11-03-10

LAST EDITED ON 11-03-10 AT 06:23 PM (EST)

They might get a day off between tasks if they're extremely lucky -- but for the most part, the events in the episodes take place right on top of each other: swing from one assignment to the next, over and over until exhaustion sets in. (One thing that really has been a problem for the cast: sleep deprivation.) The contestants are instructed to say 'week' at every opportunity and Donald has his script, although the show has had to dub over his mistakes every so often.

We've had several proofs of this over the seasons, starting from minicorps being spotted at various assignments and comparing them to the airdates later and going on through Lee's time, which gave us some of the dates on the air: he took the Judaic High Holy Days off -- and once we knew that, we just grabbed calendars.