Unscripted

The winner this year so far in the Obvious Headline contest is this one I saw on AOL's welcome screen a week ago: "Saddam Reported to Be Depressed." The runner-up is one from a TV trade publication I received in the mail: "Agents Concerned about Writers' Jobs." Although I suppose "Writers' Concerned About Their Own Jobs" would be more obvious. Agents can easily reposition themselves as pimps, who are always in demand.

Well, that's reality. Or rather, Reality, probably the most influential and baneful trend infecting the Boob Tube in six decades. It's now more than a fad; it's become establishment, with networks and studios funding Reality Departments and a whole new class of entrepreneurs furiously pitching reality concepts to any networks who will listen, which is pretty much all of them.

If ever a phenomenon suffered from its own success, it's this one. I was as entertained as anyone by the pioneer "Survivor" (though this was not Mark Burnett's original idea, but an adaptation of a European model). Then there was the intriguing but insidious "Big Brother," which even stretched into the cyberworld with its 24-hour cameras before that overreaching novelty faded. But the twin appeal of cheap production and easily attainable, non-professional talent made this genre irresistible to the bean-counters who were looking for quick profits, back-end rerun royalties be damned. And when you consider the cost of such shows as "Friends," which spent 6 million an episode on actors alone, this is understandable.

All right, novelties like the original "Survivor," should merit some credit, and so should the excellent production and educational value of "The Amazing Race." Both are essentially compounds of travelogues and game shows. "Big Brother" quickly degenerated into a Gen-Y version of a coed fraternity party. One would have thought the species would start to die out with repetitious formats and citizen performers all of whose traits started merging together into one composite character in search of Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes. (Rob and Amber are thinking more like fifteen years; they wouldn't know how to get a real job). But cynics like me wildly underestimated the enduring appeal of unscripted TV fare. So a look at this week's viewing schedule includes all these permutations of the original reality formulas, with more than a dash of cinema verite: "Extreme Makeover," "Fear Factor," (TV's worst show ever, something that makes "Queen for a Day" seem like "I, Claudius,") "America's Most Talented Kids," "Trading Spaces," "America's Top Model," "The Scholar," "Hell's Kitchen," "Nanny 911," "Trading Spouses," "The Simple Life," "Fire Me...Please," "Britney and Kevin," "Supernanny," "Dancing with the Stars," "I Want a Famous Face," "Airline," "Beauty and the Geek," "The Cut," "Animal Cops," "The Contender," "Monster House," "Cops," "Iron Chef," and "Bikini Destinations." This is just a sampling, and just of summer fill-in before the Big Boys return.

It's almost enough to make me want to watch reruns of "Joey." Almost, but I'm not a masochist.

Not all these shows lack merit or enterprise. "The Scholar" actually honors intelligence; "Airline" has a minimalist appeal to anyone who's had to negotiate Southwest waiting lines, and "Fire Me...Please," at least as a concept, is an amusing riff on the self-importance of "The Apprentice." But what's intriguing, and pretty disturbing, about such a satire is that it doesn't really reflect the mood of popular exhaustion that was intended. Historically, literary and dramatic genres have gone through cycles of novelty, great popularity, and decline from overexposure, usually marked by self-parodies which wink at the audiences' familiarity and the genre's stale conventions.

But reality progamming has already seen its "Average Joe" and its bogus "Millionaire" spoofs, These self-indulgent parodies, rather than signalling exhaustion, instead spawned a sub-species of their own. The reality concept is glomming like a wayward microphage onto other standard genres to create bizarre hybrids, as though programming departments have been relocated to the Island of Dr. Moreau. A recent example is the new HBO comedy called "The Comeback," starring Lisa Kudrow and written by Michael Patrick King of "Sex and the City." This Chinese box of a concept combines elements of other premium-cable celebrity self-effacing exposes ("Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Fat Actress") with their inside-showbiz mock documentarian traditions ("Entourage," "Project Greenlight"). In this snicker-but-not-laugh-inducing series, Kudrow plays herself as a less-successful actress named Valerie Cherish whose "comeback" on a "Three's Company"-type jiggle sitcom is simultaneously being documented by a klutzy reality camera crew for another program to air as a companion piece on the same fictional network.

This elaborate conceit allows the writers (Kudrow and King + improv) to lampoon both the reality and the sitcom genres at once. Some of the material is dead-on, such as the open contempt displayed by the imperious showrunners for the actors, and the dispiriting compromises older actors have to make in a youth-oriented medium. Kudrow--with King's urging I'm, sure--is brave enough to zero in on her own shallowness and the obtuseness of her fellow players. The satire of the documentary overlay isn't as biting or as convincing; it comes across more as self-flaying. Last night's episode about a press event slathered an extra layer of reality-bashing by airing two fictional promos for new series, one in which padded spouses would win prizes by bashing each other with blunt weapons, and another that would crown America's next great Porno Queen. Well, like the programs Paddy Chayevsky projected in his visionary "Network," you can bet these'll pop up on FX in time for the November sweeps.

Meanwhile back in Reality we have a former sitcom star trying to make a comeback in a quasi-reality HBO sitcom about a sitcom star making a comeback by starring in a reality show about a sitcom star. Fucking glad I never had to pitch this.