Say what you will about Fox, when you’re a TV network willing to try absolutely anything for a buck, you’re bound to hit it big every few months.
Fox’s latest reality show/practical joke, “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance,” debuts Monday night (WFLD-Ch. 32, immediately after the launch of the new “American Idol,” which begins at 7 p.m.) for a six-week run. On the face of it, “Obnoxious Fiance” is one of those “ripped from a sitcom” concepts that seem to hold great potential for hilarity and ratings.
Reaching beyond the primary audience for reality television, “Obnoxious” will likely be a lot funnier to those who’ve been rolling their eyes and gagging at “The Bachelor,” “Average Joe,” “Married by America” and their various wedding spinoffs.
The set-up for “Obnoxious Fiance” is simple enough to explain, but it quickly gets more and more convoluted.
Basically, the lucky bride-to-be, Randi, a 23-year-old grade-school teacher from Scottsdale, Ariz., wins a big cash prize, a half-million bucks, if she can put a huge joke over on her parents. If she can get “Steve,” a beefy pig with worse manners than a frat-house party chairman, to the altar, she wins.
Glamour-girl connivery and overwrought soap opera emotions have absolutely nothing to do with this one. It’s strictly the appeal of a slob grating on an unsuspecting middle-American mom and dad.
But the gag gets more complicated because Randi herself is being scammed by Fox. She thinks Steve is a real “reality” contestant putting the same prank over on his parents. But in real-real-“reality,” fat, obnoxious “Steve” is an actor through and through, and so are all his obnoxious family and friends.
In other words, the bogus bogus fiance (“Steve”) and his bogus family are being paid to sabotage the bogus bride’s bogus wedding … thereby giving a whole new meaning to “reality.”
It sounds funny. But it cuts across a lot of conventional wisdom regarding “reality TV.” Namely, it risks alienating the large audience of viewers, mostly young and female, who invest real emotional interest in the dreams of other young women competing for the prize of a loving relationship.
“In its very short shelf life, reality TV has already become postmodern, in that everything about the newest generation of shows is a variation on the originals, the `Survivors’ and `Bachelors,”‘ says John Rash, director of broadcast negotiations for Campbell Mithun advertising in the Twin Cities.
The brilliance of the original “Joe Millionaire” was the twist of letting the audience in on the joke. But the second “Joe” bombed, because everyone knew what the joke was.
Therein lies the gamble of “Obnoxious Fiance.” How far can producers go essentially ridiculing the often extraordinary emotional investment reality TV’s core audience makes in these programs?
