How much reality is too much reality.
Well, Fox, which has imbedded reporters in Iraq and an electronic circuit in a hockey puck, set my standard with a special of some years ago along the lines of the 100 biggest, or was it most unusual, things imbedded in the human body.
You know, fence posts, crowbars, that sort of thing.
That was about the time, around the turn of the century, when the network pledged to wean itself from the heroin of reality programming.
Well, since then the genre has become a network designer drug, with more reality than you can shake a torch at, though the quality has generally improved form those quickie, knock-off home-video quality specials with hawked by some host in breathless tones..
Fox may have set the new standard yet again.
OK, maybe the precedent for Fox was set with all those gags and near-wretches on NBC's Fear Factor, where I am told by someone who knows that what goes down frequently must come up after the cameras stop rolling.
Anyway, I was watching Fox's dance-a-thon last night when they asked the judges for their most memorable moments from the show, which for one turned out to be watching a woman almost, almost, almost, there she goes! hurl, heave and puke (sounds like an ambulance-chasing law firm, doesn't it?).
That certainly provides a new standard for gratuitous and unnecessary at the very least.
By John Eggerton
