The best television this year was the two-hour finale of “The Amazing Race,” which aired on Sept. 21.
As the three final couples on the round-the-world race endured surprising setbacks and lucky breaks in their quests to win a $1 million prize, I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat.
Why? Because I had no idea what would happen next. What’s more, I deeply cared about who would win, and when the likable, middle-age couple Chip and Kim beat the snotty youngsters Colin and Christie, I leapt off my couch and cheered.
So you can see why I’m sick of defending my favorite reality shows from those who think unscripted television is a sign of the imminent apocalypse.
Quality reality shows such as “The Amazing Race,” “The Apprentice” and “Survivor” don’t deserve to be thought of as the best of a bad breed. They don’t deserve to be called “good reality TV.”
They deserve to be called good TV, plain and simple.
At their best, they’re as good as any episode of “The West Wing” or “ER” or even “The Sopranos” (and “The Apprentice” at its worst this fall has been miles better than the most recent season of “Six Feet Under”). They deserve to take their place with pride on the small-screen schedule, because the best ones have provided some of the most entertaining moments in recent TV history.
Reasons for success
The two overworked TiVos in my house hold proof that there are a lot of scripted shows I wouldn’t miss for the world. But there also are a lot of good reasons that the best reality shows are doing well: “The Amazing Race,” which returns with a new edition later this fall, dwelled in the Nielsen top 10 for much of the summer, and four of the top 10 shows of the 2003-2004 season were unscripted.
They’re providing things that many scripted network programs have abandoned: Surprises. Compelling — at times compellingly awful — characters. Unpredictable plots. Fun. Some episodes of “The Apprentice” have been subpar this season, but I’ve still watched every one. Why? Not just because I can identify with having an arbitrary buffoon for a boss (present bosses excepted, of course), but because I must know what the vengeful hyenas on the women’s team will do next.
And when the men’s team won a challenge on a recent episode and their reward was hitting a few tennis balls with Anna Kournikova, it was quite entertaining when the tennis star got the guys to start lobbing balls at Raj, a contestant who, on a dare, ran around the tennis stadium in his boxer shorts.
Try finding that kind of loony non sequitur on “CSI: Miami.”
Or, to be serious for a moment, name the last time a scripted show on a major network, in a nitty-gritty and surprising way, examined racism, sexism, scapegoating, class differences or America’s obsession with physical appearance.
Say what you want about “Wife Swap” or “Extreme Makeover”: People watch these shows because they lay wide open subjects that are rarely discussed in any real way on TV. Why does mom do all (or none) of the work around the house? Why does the guy with big ears hate himself ? Do the rich have it better than the lowermiddle class?
The firing of Stacie J., the only African-American woman on “Apprentice,” was deeply ugly, and if not motivated by racism on the part of her teammates, it was certainly a classic case of unpleasant women ganging up on one victim to harass and eject her because she was different.
And conversely, when the African-American couple Chip and Kim won “The Amazing Race,” it provided a refreshing antidote to the endless parade of black drug dealers and street hustlers on scripted TV.
Still, though Stacie J.’s firing was detestable, it made for riveting television. At some point, TV producers decided they wanted us to like their characters, except for perhaps one obvious villain on every show. Isn’t it more real to show, as many unscripted shows do, that all of us have potentially detestable sides to our personalities (see Rob Mariano on “Survivor: All Stars”)?
The good win out
Reality TV also shows the tremendous struggles of people who are basically good — the women on “Extreme Makeover” whose faces were disfigured by cleft palate, or any of the deserving families on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
Lack of virtue, virtue mixed with vice and virtue under duress are classic themes in drama, but too many recent scripted shows have deprived these ideas of any hard edges or complexity. What we end up seeing on a lot of scripted dramas are upper-middle class white people reveling in their neuroses.Or dissecting dead people. Fun!
Speaking of emotional complexity, the premiere of “America’s Next Top Model” supplied a moment of true feeling you’d be hard-pressed to find on, say, “LAX.” One contestant, Amanda, revealed to the others that she was going blind and would be sightless by age 30.
But it didn’t matter, she said: She’d gotten to see her baby son smile.
Was that manipulative? Heck, yeah. But the teary response her admission evoked in the other contestants was absolutely real. For those who say the manipulative editing on reality TV shows makes people appear either sympathetic or evil, I say, so what? Isn’t it manipulative when “ER” kills off a baby and cues the violins?
And if casting directors have stacked some of these shows with lunatics or if editors have worked overtime making some participants look psycho (i.e. “Amazing Race’s” Colin), again, so what? Colin’s rage issues seemed awfully real, but who cares if there are forces at work that make some of these people seem more interesting than they actually may be in real life?
If the people on TV weren’t more interesting than we are, we wouldn’t watch it. Let’s face it, people in extreme — or fabricated — situations often do and say interesting things.
If even PBS has gotten into the unscripted act with its stellar “Frontier House” and “Colonial House” shows, there must be something to the idea of taking people outside their comfort zones.
Still convinced that unscripted TV is killing Western culture? Well, the good news is that reality TV is not going to take over the airwaves anytime soon. “The Apprentice” isn’t getting the blockbuster ratings it did last year, and this fall’s edition of “Survivor” is holding its own on a tough night, but the cast hasn’t been all that watchable yet. Fox’s fall lineup of reality shows mostly crashed and burned; its most highly hyped show, “The Next Great Champ,” was offloaded to Fox’s sports channel before it even finished its run.
And there’s also reason to believe that some top producers have gotten the message and have upped their games: On David E. Kelley’s “Boston Legal,” lawyers Denny Crane and Alan Shore display quirks aplenty; “Desperate Housewives” tweaks as plenty of unpleasant and even uncomfortable cliches; and J.J. Abrams’ “Lost” proves that the castaways-on-a-desert-island can be improved upon by excellent writing, a big budget and a top-notch cast.
What does the future hold?
So the much-feared reality avalanche on network TV could slow to a steady trickle. But even if there isn’t another “Apprentice”-size monster in the wings, I hope unscripted TV remains a part of the entertainment landscape. And no, that doesn’t mean I ever want to see “Renovate My Family,” “The Benefactor” or MTV’s “Laguna Beach” again (and please, ABC, you have my permission to kill off “The Bachelor,” with or without violins).
But maybe what makes the good shows compelling, when you come right down to it, is that some of the people on these shows are a little like us.
They’re not paid (or overpaid) to be pretty, thin and perfect.
Though the situations they’re in may be setups and the skilled editing may tweak the depictions of what the participants have gone through, we know that these nose jobs and immunity challenges really did happen. These real people will go back, in most cases, to their real jobs at Wal-Mart or driving trucks. And we can wonder what we would have done in their shoes.
