There was one episode that was a killjoy that always stuck with me: they test the 'Chinese water torture' on Carrie she crashes out after a few mins(iirc) of it and is clearly genuinely upset and crying, I can't believe they decided to air that and wonder if she had the ability to veto it being shown

Adam's sister's allegations against him were also troubling, but idk the truth of them since his other siblings supported him and it was setteled

Firing Carrie, Toni and Grant because of contract negotiations was also fucked

Loved it as a kid, and the experiments themselves are still fun and entertaining but knowing some of the behind the scenes stuff, like what I just listed and finding out Jaime and Adam don't like each other makes you view the on-screen interactions between hosts in a different light and pick up-on the 'fakeness'

I was going to recommend the British show Brainiac as a good alternative that focuses more on experiments and less on reality tv style stuff, but I haven't seen it for over a decade so not sure if holds up, and seems they've had their own controversies with faking experiments

And not really the same type of show closer to Robot Wars but Scrapheap challenge always scratched my 'people wielding things together to make cool shit' itch as a kid