Combining the premises of “Fear Factor” and “The Weakest Link” sounds like a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
But, no, network executives actually believe that “Dog Eat Dog,” a show that reaches somewhere into the dark ages of cliche for its title, is indeed reality masochism meeting the nighttime quiz show. No matter that “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and “Link” are already in retreat.
“Dog,” an NBC summer series (8 p.m. Monday on WMAQ-Ch. 5), puts six contestants together, at first for a “training day” where they get a sense of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, they reunite for a studio session where they alternately answer questions and go through ludicrous physical obstacle tests, largely centered on a 300,000-gallon swimming pool that dominates the show’s high-tech set.
As if determined to come up with every variation of “Survivor” and “Millionaire” conceivable, the show, with Matt Kunitz (“Fear Factor”) and Stuart Krasnow (“Link”) serving as executive producers, lets the contestants vote before each question or challenge as to who gets to meet it. In other words, it’s the “Survivor” elimination game played to pick the next quiz contestant up.
If the contestant answers correctly, or survives such challenges as falling 30 feet or so while attached to a bungee cord to retrieve a certain number of giant horseshoe contraptions, he or she gets to send another contestant to the dog pound. If he or she fails, the dog pound awaits the loser.
One by one the contestants are reduced to two, who then square off. The five losers in the pound, however, get one last chance through a series of questions to knock out the winner, who gets the rather paltry sum these days of $25,000.
The sad thing about it all, of course, is what it tells us about the vacuity of television programming in the early 21st Century. The desperate copycat setup of this program is reason enough to turn the dial.
That said, the execution, judging from Monday’s opener, is handled pleasantly enough. The opening scenes, brief shots at the training camp, establish the kind of quick-take rivalries and tensions between these twentysomething contestants familiar by now to “The Real World” aficionados.
That means the various votes take on a personal edge: The first contestant chosen, a would-be comedian, is on everybody’s hit list. Much to their chagrin, he proves a capable athlete.
But like “Millionaire,” the so-called trivia pursuit element only proves again that the intelligence quotient of American pop culture is hovering near zero. “What is the largest planet in our solar system?” goes one daunting query. “The sun,” replies a would-be rock star, caked in Kiss-like makeup and calling himself Widow.
The sun is a planet?
The physical challenges, meanwhile, are tame and watery, no more horrifying than an unexpected plunge into cold water. Vats of snakes and rats it ain’t.
The tie-breaking question asks which Ivy League school is located in New Haven, Conn. No matter that the contestant’s answer is Harvard, not Yale. These six contestants won’t be going anywhere near either.
