Attack of the Mutant Shows

A live-action feature film derived from a comic book about mutant superheroes, “The X-Men,” collected a sizable box-office bounty over the summer. The year’s most significant mutations, however, could be found stalking the irradiated wasteland known as prime-time television.

If one cultural remnant from 2000 appears destined to endure even longer than the dried-food rations hoarded by Chicken Little-minded Y2K crackpots, it is the perceived viability of programming mutations and hybrids--concepts that resemble what has gone before but deviate in some bizarre way--fueled by two related forces: the ratings success of “Survivor” and the economic benefits so-called “reality” television proffers to cost-conscious network executives.

During the 1950s, the mutations that filled movie theater screens were invariably monsters, often giant insects intent on destroying mankind. They were usually set loose on an unsuspecting public by an earthquake or avalanche or ill-placed nuclear detonation.

The mutations invading television now, and likely to spread across the TV landscape as this year’s dubious legacy to the future, are somewhat less gaudy and overtly destructive; still, as they proliferate, the prospect of creating monstrosities lingers.

Like most programming trends, the roots here are not especially deep. The seeds were firmly planted in 1999, when ABC’s quiz show hit “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” revived a genre that had lain dormant (in prime time, at least) for several decades.

A hastily assembled barrage of quiz-show imitators fizzled, but networks were suddenly emboldened by the notion that untraditional formats (translation: something other than clones of “Friends” or “ER”) could not only cheaply fill time slots, but attract the kind of blockbuster ratings seemingly reserved for top sitcoms and dramas.

Moreover, “Millionaire” drew from various programming wells, providing the play-along aspects of a quiz show with the melodrama of a soap and the lighting and sound effects of a Las Vegas revue. It was a quiz show, sure, but a modern, updated mutation tailored to a generation with short attention spans raised on Industrial Light & Magic effects.

While “Millionaire” could be dismissed as an inexplicable fluke, two programs that yielded unexpected and divergent results--”Survivor” on CBS and Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?”--cemented this trend during 2000.

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Arriving in February with little fanfare beyond the jokey nature of its title, “Multi-Millionaire” was a sort of twisted beauty pageant featuring 50 potential brides vying to win an unidentified groom--presumably one loaded down with megabucks--whom they would marry on the spot.

Perverse as the concept was, the two-hour event proved a stunning hit--right before the special made headlines when it was revealed that the groom, Rick Rockwell, had a restraining order obtained against him by a former girlfriend and might have fudged his finances a bit (with possible help from Fox and the producers).

Embarrassed, Fox officials quickly swore off further “Marry a Multi-Millionaire” specials and sought to distance themselves from the entire “shockumentary” genre. Still, in a teeming television environment where executives desperately search for buzz, Fox had achieved that aim and then some.

The bad-taste aftermath of “Multi-Millionaire” forced so-called “reality” shows into retreat for only a few months, until “Survivor” came along. Here was a true mutation of the highest order--a program featuring real-life characters, a la MTV’s “The Real World,” combined with elements of office intrigue, soap opera, game show and blue-sky action-adventure all in one.

Positioned initially as a cheap summer amusement that various networks had rejected (and CBS only agreed to air after producer Mark Burnett went out and found advertisers to sponsor the program), the show became an instant phenomenon and ratings built week after week. The final installment, amid a deluge of media hype, exceeded Academy Award-level ratings, prompting rival network executives to enviously cast about for their own sensation--something that would be fresh and different and, happily, inexpensive to produce compared with the episodic television on which they had come to rely.

All of a sudden, the limited playbook the major networks had been employing opened up. Networks always prided themselves on the fact that the high-quality, expensive prime-time series they offered were virtually unique, setting them apart from the chintzy game shows, documentaries and sketch comedies that filled time on little-seen cable networks.

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Cable, however, had demonstrated with programs such as HBO’s “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” that it could challenge the networks--indeed, in the eyes of many critics, surpass them--at their own game. And if the schlocky fare that networks once derided on cable--from game shows to cheesy real-life soap operas--could exceed ratings for Emmy-winning sitcoms and dramas, well, it’s not like executives get bonuses for nice reviews or take home those gilded trophies, anyway.

Unfortunately, this impulse to create programming mutations also risks unleashing monstrosities, as CBS discovered with its other summer “reality” show, “Big Brother,” a more disturbing social experiment that turned its 10 contestants--isolated in a Studio City site and monitored around the clock--into maze rats for the amusement of viewers.

As one contestant’s marriage essentially dissolved on the air--forcing her uncomfortable husband to publicly address the problem--and another underwent what some suspected was a near-nervous breakdown, it brought to mind “An American Family,” the much-debated 1973 PBS documentary that depicted the deterioration of the Loud family and seemed to contribute to the central couple’s divorce.

Yet that, at least, was a serious documentary. When such shows are put in the hands of producers with MTV values and the self-restraint of Elvis impersonators, more cynical observers couldn’t help but wonder if allowing willing participants to play Russian roulette for cash could be far behind.

Of course, it didn’t come as news to anyone that sensationalism in prime time can garner big ratings, especially when tinged with a taste of reality. Geraldo Rivera set records when he pried open Al Capone’s vaults in 1986 and generated a vast audience on NBC two years later with the special “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” which included discussion of torture, sexually abusing children and skinning human babies.

The critical reaction was such that the late Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s then-president of entertainment, felt compelled to apologize--on a stack of Bibles, no less--pledging to the press that he wouldn’t commission any more satanic specials.

“I would not say it was our finest hour,” Tartikoff told reporters almost 11 years ago. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing more programs like that from NBC, with Geraldo or anybody else. We’ll leave that to the world of syndication.”

What appears to have been lost in the mutation frenzy of 2000 is any sense that certain programs are somehow “beneath” network television as opposed to all other venues--including the distinction between the networks and syndication, or shows sold individually to stations, which fill the late-night, daytime and early-evening hours.

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Indeed, today network executives every bit as press-conscious as Tartikoff are willing to endure critical brickbats if they think an audience is just around the corner--finding it difficult to draw a line in the sand, even briefly, as Tartikoff did after the Geraldo hysteria.

In the short term, this particular fire is also being stoked by the threat of strikes next year by the guilds representing writers and actors, making any form of unscripted programming especially attractive. Rather like a character in the classic film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” you can almost hear executives savoring the chance to tell those opposite them at the bargaining table, “Writers? We don’t need no stinking writers.”

That said, creating viable mutations is no simple task. The trick is to manipulate familiar genres and somehow make them feel new again, a form of alchemy “Survivor” stumbled upon that can’t be easily replicated.

In terms of the inherent danger in these mutations, then, it’s not an absurd leap to contemplate that they will lead to foreseeable tragedies in the not-too-distant future, under increasing pressure to find more fabulous means of titillation with no clear template of how to proceed.

Death, in fact, has already been a handmaiden of “reality” in several of its incarnations. The day after “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” was broadcast on Fox, stunt man Brady Michaels, 36, lost his life while performing a dangerous feat for the UPN series “I Dare You.” In July, a guest on the syndicated talk show “Jerry Springer” was allegedly slain by another guest, as happened previously on the “Jenny Jones” show. And what interest would there be, really, in daredevil Robbie Knievel’s live, death-defying motorcycle jumps on Fox without the possibility of seeing him plummet to his doom?

In the months and years ahead, people who aren’t professionally trained to undertake such challenges will increasingly do so on television in pursuit of fame and fortune, usually in that order. The producers of “Big Brother,” for example, are developing an NBC series in which people “face their fears” in pursuit of prize money. Perhaps appropriately, Jerry Springer hosted an earlier special using this concept at Fox.

The expectation has long been that a real catastrophe--one that turns out messier than Rockwell’s annulled marriage to would-be bride Darva Conger--would spell the end for this latest onslaught of mutations. People would lament that nightmare visions of the future, from “Network” to “The Running Man” to “The Truman Show,” have become reality and shame programmers back to safer terrain.

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Yet as 2000 comes to a close, there is little indication that even death or dismemberment will be enough to halt this process, to convince people television has gone too far. Rather, the genre will simply mutate into a new form, at least for the few months it takes until the latest fiasco--whatever it may be--has been forgotten.

Thanks to what has transpired in the last year, there is little reason to believe the mutations will end in the face of so many incentives to keep mining unexplored territory for the next inexpensive nugget. The monster will just lay dormant for a time, but only until that next tremor or explosion comes along, freeing another wave of mutations.

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HOWARD ROSENBERG: Highs and lows. Page 77