– Check out Fox.com’s “Reunion” home page for a four-minute recap of the show, which returns Thursday with a new episode. The recap should get you up to speed on the show, which revisits 20 years in the lives of six friends — one of whom ends up dead.
– “House” also returns from Fox’s baseball break (hooray); on Tuesday’s episode, guest star Ron Livingston (“Sex and the City”) plays a noble doc who clashes with Dr. Gregory House.
– If you need evidence of why reality “stars” rarely get real acting jobs, scare yourself silly on Halloween by checking out the E! premiere of “The Scorned” (8 p.m.). A warning: Watch this film only if you have two hours in your life that you really, really do not need back. “The Scorned” is an alleged horror film that allows dozens of unscripted “stars” such as Bob Guiney and Jenna Lewis a chance to strut their D-grade acting skills. If the reality personalities involved in this movie were looking for any kind of acting legitimacy from “The Scorned,” they can pretty much kiss that goodbye.
– A recent Radar magazine article has kicked up yet another controversy about “Frankenbyting,” the process by which reality TV producers and editors cook up scenes that didn’t actually take place in reality, by splicing together bits and pieces of audio tracks and video footage. Every time this topic has come up, it’s usually the really tacky unscripted shows that seem to be the alleged offenders — “Joe Millionaire,” “The Swan,” “Big Brother,” etc.
Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I’d be very surprised if big-time, quality reality shows had to resort to such low techniques. I don’t buy that generally good shows such as “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race” and “Project Runway” need to resort to faking drama so blatantly.
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moryan@tribune.com
