| brucekluger.com |
Arrive Magazine, November-December 2003 Final Stop: Get Real! Enough already with all this alternate-reality programming. It's time for a show that really tells it like it is. By Bruce Kluger
reality. During my childhood especially, there was nothing like tossing off the weighty affairs of the day (school, my latest crush, completing my Batman card collection) and settling in at the tube to watch a shapely genie zap in and out of her bottle, or a secret agent talk into his shoe. But that was then and this is now.
people playing Robinson (and Roberta) Crusoe on a real live island. At the end of the day, the contestants’ victories—whether in the art of endurance or the craft of craftiness—were somehow ours. Over time, however, viewer fascination in reality programming has dimmed, as the shows grow more absurd and less, well, real. I mean, who can relate to Fear Factor's eating segments, in which a contestant can actually win $100,000 for ingesting reindeer testicles? For the past 46 years, I’ve been forced to swallow my aunt’s Christmas soup (ingredients unknown) and, so far, no one’s forked over so much as a dime. Yet Donald Trump may have saved the day. For his new show, The Apprentice, rather than gathering a bunch of beautiful people to duke it out in paradise, he’s taken a more realistic tack, hiring a pack of MBA-laden wannabes, putting them through the corporate wringer, then firing one of them every week. Only one contestant walks away with a six-figure salary. Now that’s what I call reality. Keeping this in mind, maybe we’ll see some more cutting-edge reality programming on TV this season. Happy viewing. Who Wants to Marry a Loser? Good looks and big bucks count for nothing in this edge-of-your-seat matchmaking game for “the least desirable dude on the planet.” First-week contestant, Rowena Mittleman of Baltimore, Maryland, couldn’t ask for anything more—uh, less—when she selects as her life-partner an unemployed toupee model who still lives with his mom. The couple’s honeymoon destination? A pot-luck dinner in the parking lot of Chuckie Cheese. Trading Trailers: Goodbye Ethan Allen, hello Walmart. This blue-collar knockoff of the popular Trading Places series—in which neighboring homeowners swap abodes, then redecorate—is an instant hit in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where thousands of trailer-dwellers catch the show each week via satellite dish. The fifth episode, however, ends in dispute, when trailer-trader Doris Fagan is so enraged that her neighbor, Selma, threw out her Chia Pet collection, she retaliates by barbecuing Selma’s mudflaps. Although the show is immediately cancelled, the two women go on to appear on Judge Judy, Celebrity Boxing and The Jerry Springer Show. Smear Factor: Dubbed “the first TV show in history to celebrate dissing your loved ones behind their back!” this wacky free-for-all allows contestants to secretly listen in as family and friends dish the dirt about them. In the first episode, Carl Jacoby of Wilmington, Delaware, nearly walks off with the grand prize when he overhears his golfing partner critique his game (“The guy putts like a putz”). But New Yorker Julie Bettman is pronounced the big champ when she’s shown a clip of her wedding video, which reveals her Maid of Honor whispering to a fellow bridesmaid: “She calls that a wedding dress? It looks more like a drop cloth.” The Weakest Shrink: Combining all the excitement of American Gladiator with the smarts of a Discovery channel documentary on Sigmund Freud, this “mind-bending elimination game” pits the nation’s leading psychoanalysts against one another in a thrilling battery of athletic competitions. The season’s first winner—Dr. Elias Spitsburg of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania—successfully dispatches his scrawnier rivals in the final episode by lifting his 600-pound analyst’s couch over his head— with the patient still on it. The season ends in scandal, however, when Spitsburg’s million-dollar winner’s check bounces. Turns out the network’s HMO doesn’t cover psychotherapy. Three Supermodels, Two Gay Men and Bill O'Reilly: This creative attempt to borrow from three popular hits—the E! Channel’s Wild On series, Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the Fox News Network’s The O’Reilly Factor —gathers together a disparate group of cultural icons in the hopes of watching sparks fly. No such luck. The show is abruptly cancelled in the middle of the first episode when programmers discover that the contestants really don’t have anything to say to one another. |
