The reasons why Reality TV Is Great for Us all

For eight single professional women gathered in Dallas, it's holy Wednesday - the evening each week which they gather in one of their houses for the Traveling Bachelorette Party. Munching snacks and passing a wine bottle, they cheer, cry and cackle as their spiritual leader, Trista Rehn, braves heartache, indecision as well as the occasional recitation of bad poetry to select from among her 25 swains. Yet something is unsettling Leah Hudson's stomach, and it's not merely the wine. "I hate that we've been sucked in to the Hoover vac of reality TV," says Hudson, 30. "Do we not have anything better to complete rather than to reside vicariously via a bunch of 15-minute-fame seekers?"

There you will find the substance of reality TV's good results: it's the one mass-entertainment category that thrives because of its audience's contempt for it. It makes us really feel tawdry, dirty, cheap - if it did not, we possibly wouldn't bother tuning in. As well as in this, for once, the audience and critics agree. Just listen to the raves for America's hottest TV genre:

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"The nation is gripped by misanthropy!"--New York Observer

"Ridiculous and pernicious! Many sorts of cruelty are passed off as entertainment!"--Washington Post

"So-called reality tv just may be killing the medium!"--San Francisco Chronicle

O.K., we included the exclamation points, however , you get the idea. Yes, viewers are tuning straight into Joe Millionaire, The Bachelorette and American Idol by the tens of millions. Yet, to explain Winston Churchill, in no way have so many viewed so significantly TV with so little wonderful to say of it.

Properly, that ends here. Perhaps it will ruin reality producers' marketing ideas for a TV critic to speak about it, but reality TV is, in fact, the very best factor to occur to tv in many years. It's granted the networks water-cooler buzz again; it's reminded audiences jaded by sitcoms and dramas why TV could be thrilling; and also at its best, it's teaching TV a new way to inform including human stories.

A couple of concessions in advance. Initial, yes, it's well known that there is little reality in reality TV: those "intimate" dates, as an example, are staged in front of banks of cameras and sweltering floodlights. But it's the only phrase we have got, and i am staying with it. Secondly, I don't pretend to defend the indefensible: Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest Persons is not finding any help from me. And ultimately, I recognize that comparing a good well-made reality show with, say, The Simpsons isn't quite frankly comparing apples with oranges; it's comparing onions with washing machines - no reality show can match the intelligence and layers of well-constructed fiction.

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On the utter ratings level, the latest influx of reality hits has worked a sea change for the networks. And has now put them back within the pop-cultural map after losing the buzz showdown to cable for ages. Reality shows don't merely reach millions of people but leave them feeling part of a communal expertise - what network TV does best, but sitcoms and dramas haven't done because Seinfeld and Twin Peaks. (Just when was the last time CSI made you call your best friend or holler back at your TV?) "Reality has verified that network tv is still relevant," says Mike Fleiss, creator of the Bachelor franchise.

This has sitcom and drama authors praying for the reality bust. "The networks have only so significantly time and resources," says Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of Gilmore Girls. "Rather than entirely centering on persuading the Olsen twins to permit themselves to be consumed by bears in prime time, I wish they would concentrate on developing something that could really last." TV really does seem to be in overkill mode, because networks have enrolled a large number of dating shows, talent searches and other voyeurfests. And just like an overheated nasdaq, the reality market is bound to correct. But compared with earlier TV reality booms, this one is maintained by an excessive, young audience that grew up on mtv's The Real World and views reality as genuine as dramas and sitcoms - and that, in the meantime, prefers it.

And why not? It would be simpler to bemoan reality shows' crowding out sitcoms and dramas when the latter just weren't in such a rut. However new network shows of fall 2002 had been a creatively timid mass of remakes, bland family comedies and derivative cop dramas. Network executives dubbed them "comfort"--i.e., familiar and boring - TV. Whereas reality TV - call it "discomfort TV"--lives to rattle viewers' cages. It provokes. It offends. But at least it's wanting to do something besides help you get to sleep. Some upcoming reality concepts are idealistic, like FX's American Candidate, which aims to field a "people's candidate" for President in 2004. Others are lowbrow, like ABC's The Will (relatives battle for an inheritance), FOX's Married by America (viewers vote to help pair up a bride and groom) and NBC's Around the World in 80 Dates (American bachelor seeks mates around the planet; after all, how better to boost America's image than to send a stud to other countries to defile their women?). But all of them make you sit up and pay attention. "I like to make a show where men and women say, 'You can't put that on TV,'" says Fleiss. "Then I put it on TV."

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