Unscripted, Uninspired, Unfortunate

Hear the pain, hear the suffering: “I’m alone, I’m cold, I’m scared and I don’t know where the hell I am.”

A disoriented survivor of that recent grenade attack wounding dozens in Burundi? Someone who made it through wildfires in Weaverville, Calif., or another bombing of Israelis or Palestinians in the Middle East?

Much worse, this horrific dread is expressed during tonight’s premiere of NBC’s “Lost” by a player whose heart is pounding while facing challenges and risks too terrifying to mention here. Suffice to say he’s out there somewhere, an endangered solitary figure in alien terrain with night pressing in, completely by himself in this threatening environment except for his equally scared and isolated teammate.

And oh, yes, a network producer, director and cameraperson.

It gets worse for these poor babies as they courageously and selflessly pursue a pair of $100,000 payoffs and new cars. Just ahead, a voice-over warns ominously, are “dehydration and fear.”

Oh, brother.

When it comes to creativity, TV is the one dehydrated. That’s affirmed also by tonight’s arrival on CBS of “The Amazing Race,” whose 11 teams of two encounter one pre-erected barrier after another while dashing toward a Holy Grail of a million bucks. And by CBS creating Dueling Deja Vus in deploying against NBC’s “Lost” an episode of if its very own “Big Brother 2.”

With limited resources, the six “Lost” players are plopped blindfolded into a foreign locale unknown to them and split into teams of two. They have to discover where they are and then scoot, the first team of patriots finding its way back to the U.S. and the Statue of Liberty winning that pot and new wheels.

At least “Lost” has a little worldliness, tonight offering America’s ethnocentric couch blobs a smattering of factoids and snippet of the local culture in which the participants find themselves immersed.

In contrast, the 22 “Amazing Race” players sprint, motor and bungee jump through Zambia tonight with all the interest and awareness of an air-conditioned tour bus roaring by Nantucket.

The last “Amazing Race” teams to arrive at various checkpoints are eliminated, the competition is cutthroat and inevitably setting in are the now-familiar whining and other traits of “Survivor” progeny. Host Phil Keoghan: “Some teams become allies, others become rivals and the pressures of the race cause tensions in their relationships.” Yada yada yada, as if anyone not a cave-dweller has to be told.

A tip: Although they appear to be blissfully tiptoeing through the tulips in their matching wide-brimmed safari hats, “life partners” Joe and Bill are not to be underestimated. Yet how can viewers not root for New Yorkers Drew and Kevin, a pair of bungling Quasimodos with shaved heads so much like bowling balls that you find yourself searching for the fingerholes?

As always with these shows, skepticism is advised about the “reality” of “Amazing Race,” from camera positioning to participants hamming it up for the lens while embarking on what Keoghan, in an upchuck of host hype, calls “the most daring competition ever attempted.”

With so many genuine miseries facing the multitudes (including in Zambia, where the United Nations says about one-fifth of the population has AIDS), it’s a bit troubling that viewers somehow get into a lather over TV’s “Survivor”-driven dabblers in adventure. They’re volunteers, after all, seeking money, fame, Larry King, morning shows galore and three-picture deals ahead when queuing up for the kind of manufactured mild adversity you see tonight.

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Nearly as grating are those periodic Keoghanisms, the CBS host’s voice resonating like God’s from the heavens when declaring, “This is a race like no other in history.” What, no thunderclap?

Actually, the pigment of “Amazing Race” and its siblings, spreading across TV like runny watercolors, comes from good old Phileas Fogg. He’s the Jules Verne hero of “Around the World in 80 Days” who wins a bet in gentlemanly 1872 by traveling the globe by train, ship, hot-air balloon and elephant.

These 21st century spinoffs hardly live up to that grand travelogue. But they do feel like 80 days.

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“Lost” premieres tonight at 8 on NBC; “The Amazing Race” premieres tonight at 9 on CBS. Both have been rated TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).