‘Talk Soup’ Stirs Up Comedy and Reality : Television: Using clips from 25 or more shows, the E! Entertainment series goofs on the talk-show format and puts a comic spin on topics those programs treat so seriously.

As a recent installment of “Talk Soup” came to a close, stagehands pushed aside the blue backdrop behind the show’s host to reveal two technicians discussing the merits of digital over-sampling with the kind of passion generally reserved for TV talk-show debates on whether transvestites should be allowed to compete in bikini contests.

Though “Tech Talk” was a whimsical improvisation, it revealed in just a few seconds the barely hidden Zeitgeist of E! Entertainment’s most popular program.

Part joke, part public service, part spoof of the runaway explosion of TV talk shows, and undoubtedly an exploitation of that very explosion, “Talk Soup” appeals because it allows its viewers to stand above the often ridiculous freak show that is the talk-show world, while enjoying a savory taste of it at the same time.

“Talk Soup,” airing Mondays through Thursdays on the cable channel at 6 p.m. (with repeats at 9 and 11 p.m.), is a half-hour compilation of clips from the previous day’s TV talk shows. There is also an hourlong version that runs Fridays at 6 p.m. and then is repeated throughout the weekends, showing highlights of the past week.

“I would never watch any of those talk shows. They are so irritating; the people are annoying. I can’t stand them,” said Shannon Willis, 25, a devoted “Talk Soup” viewer. “But when you take just little snippets of the best part of each show, it’s amusing, especially when (“Talk Soup” host Greg Kinnear) follows up with something really sarcastic that pokes fun at the people or puts them in their place. If you watch just the talk show, it is always going to be frustrating and dumb, but with ‘Talk Soup,’ it’s like watching with a friend and you get to sit back and ridicule and mock it in a very clever, witty way.”

“Yes, to a certain extent we have a bit of that holier-than-talk-show air because, frankly, I personally would like to stand above everything in show business,” said Kinnear, “Talk Soup’s” 30-year-old host and chief prankster and eyebrow-raiser. “I think with this show the attitude is, if it’s something goofy, if it’s big-breasted women or a woman who is going to beat the heck out of her husband’s mistress, we try to treat it in a silly or fun way. If someone comes on and talks about some human tragedy, I don’t treat that with any irreverence. But I’m not going to lie to you. If it comes down to a choice between a light, crazy clip or a dark, serious one, we’ll go for the goof.”

When “The Jane Whitney Show” debated whether an erotic movie for women that features simulated sex was stimulating enough, “Talk Soup” showed a clip of a buxom, hard-core porno star declaring that the movie was so boring she got up to dust her furniture. When “Joan Rivers” had Ben & Jerry on to discuss their ice cream business, “Talk Soup” showed a clip of Rivers smearing the ice cream all over her face.

And when “Vicki!” did a show on Hell’s Angels makeovers, turning bikers into GQ models, “Talk Soup” razzed the show by doing a makeover on its own stage manager. In the before picture, the stage manager stood forlorn in his T-shirt and baggy pants. For the after shot, he strolled on camera whooping it up in exactly the same outfit, except for having added a baseball cap.

“We do try to entertain on our own, and I think that part of the appeal is our campy attitude,” Kinnear said.

“But the true star of this show is not what we add, but the clips of the people on stage ranting and raving about their delinquent son or whatever. That’s what works for us, because a lot of people who have found this show are just amazed at what’s happening during this whole daytime subculture while they are away at work or at school. Finally there is a show they can tune into at night that can give them a good representation of what’s out there on TV every day, because who can watch it all?”

Well, the “Talk Soup” staff, that’s who. A team of screeners sits each day watching talk shows at the E! headquarters in Los Angeles, gleaning the one or two best moments from the 25 or so shows that have given them permission to use clips, in exchange for getting a free plug about the next day’s show--everything from “Good Morning America” to “Donahue” and “The Richard Bey Show.” The only major holdout is “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

The staff then meets to decide on the eight or nine best moments, they write a bunch of intros and kickers, and the cameras roll by early afternoon.

When “Talk Soup” began in January, 1992, that was the whole deal.

“It started out as just a cheap way to put on an original show,” Kinnear said. “ ‘Hey, we got some free clips here and here’s a way to get rid of them.’ E! called me and when I asked what the show was, they said, ‘We don’t know. We’re going to string together some clips and tell what’s on tomorrow.’ The idea of adding our own sense of levity wasn’t even in the mix. I was just supposed to sit there and say, ‘Here’s what happened on ‘Geraldo’ today.’ ”

About nine months ago, after a year of slaving away on E! fairly anonymously, Kinnear started to yuk it up a bit. And audiences started to notice.

Fran Shea, E!’s vice president of programming, said the show has helped to make television viewers aware of E!’s existence. Fans of the show are vocal and loyal. And ever since Kinnear started making wisecracks and poking fun, they write in with ideas for gags and jokes or to scream at him for missing a perfect one-liner, Shea said.

While Kinnear doesn’t exactly downplay the impact of his quips and mischief--they’ve helped gain him enough notoriety to be bandied about as a possible candidate to succeed Chevy Chase on Fox’s late-night schedule--he links his success primarily to the sheer popularity of the talk genre. “We don’t have to work to find the humor,” he said. “But if viewers didn’t somehow like and appreciate these programs in and of themselves, mocking them would get old fast. It’s true that people like the freak-show aspect, and you do get a lot of outrageous material every day. But what works for them is the variety. You never know what you’re going to get from day to day.

“On Monday on any one of these things, you will see big-breasted women who want to be smaller, and the next day you will get a father who is dating his stepson’s girlfriend, and the next night you will see a man who can hammer a nail through his tongue. That diversity is the allure, and in a sense we give you that kind of variety on a daily basis.”