By Frazier Moore
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 Posted: 11:35 AM EST (1635 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) — Everybody’s talking about reality TV. To understand why, it might help to consider what nobody’s talking about.
The season’s new arrivals nobody’s talking about include sitcoms like “Good Morning Miami” and “Hidden Hills,” hit dramas like “CSI: Miami” and “Without a Trace,” family faves like “8 Simple Rules …” and “American Dreams.”
So far, the only buzz from viewers about the broadcast networks’ scripted fare has focused on the big bucks NBC will pay for “Friends” next year and how “The West Wing” isn’t as good as it used to be.
At the same time, the audience has glommed onto so-called reality TV and its real-people characters, whether found in the wilds competing for a million dollars or in cushy surroundings choosing a soul mate.
And not only do viewers watch, they talk — about “Joe Millionaire,” “The Bachelorette” and soon enough, the next “Survivor.”
President Bartlet can eat his heart out. With fellow imaginary heroes, he’s upstaged by living, breathing personalities as they make love or make war, but mostly make a spectacle of themselves. No fictional leader of the free world can rival a character like Evan Marriott or Trista Rehn.
Or so the current craze suggests, as viewers cling to a misconception that “reality” automatically trumps scripted programs for truth and immediacy.
Generating headlines
But as often as not, reality TV is missing both.
• Truth? Yeah, right. A reality show typically sets its participants into a narrative mostly plotted out before the tape ever rolls. Not that anything is rigged, just tightly structured in formula and execution. This is a big-time network series! There’s way too much at stake to leave anything of consequence to chance.
• Immediate? Warmed-over is more like it. Weeks or months after the events transpired, they are revealed, episode by episode, to eager viewers — and to the dutiful media, which endorses the show by reporting each deferred plot twist as if it were breaking news:
Rehn of ABC’s “The Bachelorette” (Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. EST) trims her dance card to eight suitors, and, boy, is Brook, the ousted Texas cowboy, ticked off!
No way a scripted series can generate headlines like that, week after week.
Meanwhile, veteran on-air talent is getting beat at its own game by reality shows’ new faces as they practice the first rule of TV circularity: Whoever you happen to be, when on television act like people on TV always act, not like yourself.
There is a protocol for being a TV personality, and people who land roles on reality shows know what it is (especially since many of them are bucking for celebrity anyway, and want nothing more than to shed their “real person” past).
Reality TV can boast of being unrehearsed, but its participants (who, like everyone, watch TV and picture themselves on it) have been rehearsing all their lives. They are ready for their close-up and their wireless mike.
Upfront with dishonesty
In short, reality TV is no more “real” than any other oft-repeated public ceremony. For it to pretend otherwise is a lie — and that’s a lie refreshingly mocked by “Joe Millionaire.”
The most talked-about of the latest reality crop, this Fox hit (Mondays at 9 p.m., rerun Thursday at 8 p.m.) spotlights Evan Marriott, a strapping young bachelor, as he goes through the process of selecting his dream woman from, originally, 20 contenders (only Melissa M., Mojo, Sarah and Zora remain as of this week’s broadcast). The wicked punch line: None of these dishy dupes had any clue that Marriott is a low-paid construction worker rather than the fabulously wealthy heir he masqueraded as.
The perverse charm of “Joe Millionaire” is that it’s so upfront with viewers about its dishonesty — which makes it among the most honest of the reality-TV genre.
Granted, the show is less straight when it calls Marriott “the dashing ditch digger” while neglecting to mention “former underwear model” and “pro-wrestling school dropout.”
But the real truth about him, whatever it may be, must conform to the needs of the show, which has stereotyped him as an “average Joe” who “made a humble living by simply moving dirt” and now is seeking “the woman who will love him for who he really is” — not his phantom fortune.
Marriott has played along with this romantic premise on “Joe Millionaire.” But at a Fox news conference last week, he sounded more practical. “A lot of the reason I did the show,” he said, “is I had such a bad year financially.”
That was then. Now, like any other star of reality TV, he has a crack at cashing in on his overnight fame. And never mind the lies.