Time for a ‘reality’ check

How much “reality” can America take? A heap of it, we were reminded in 2002 as television went on another of its copycat binges, pouring forth entertainment programs erroneously titled “reality.” From “Survivor” progeny on CBS to “The Osbournes” on MTV, at least the glut is real.

Excess is one of TV’s most cherished traditions, with programmers’ zest for sending in the clones as an alternative to creativity extending back to the 1950s. That era’s prime time teemed with westerns, 31 in the 1958-59 season alone. Quiz-show herds also stampeded across the airwaves en masse during that decade, delivering theater not unlike today’s “reality” snake oil.

Then, as now, many viewers embraced and thought of as extended families the ordinary people who became celebrities while trying to earn big bucks on TV. But just as some quiz shows turned out to be rigged, today’s “reality” programs are also not as authentic as they’re cracked up to be.

“Unscripted,” perhaps, but nothing more. That goes even for “The Osbournes,” whom devotees point to as providing the purest viewing experience of the lot. Yet how much so? You try being real with cameras in your face, TV cable at your feet and production crews crowding your space.

The ordinary can be extraordinary, however.

That was affirmed decades ago by such documentary filmmakers as the Maysles brothers (Albert and David) and Frederick Wiseman when they pioneered a variation on cinema verite that shunned voice-overs and supplementary visuals while entrusting the narrative entirely to the camera and its subjects. Although every close-up camera alters reality, theirs never seemed to trespass, and their films were acclaimed as honest and straightforward.

Compare that with today’s gotcha, caught-on-tape, self-consciously voyeuristic programs, and with newscasters being deployed as tawdry peddlers on their behalf. To say nothing of footage molded into entertainment under the pretense that its selective “reality” yields sociological heft and insight into human behaviors. What a crock.

Will all of this faux “reality” vanish in 2003? Sure, when the Osbournes turn into the Osmonds.

Howard Rosenberg can be reached at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.

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Howard Rosenberg’s highs and lows of 2002

From cable to consolidation, television has changed dramatically through the years. Yet in some ways, it hasn’t changed at all. It was as bipolar as ever in 2002, for instance. Lots to praise, lots to disparage, as the following balance sheet affirms:

High -- “Monk.” Terrified by germs, he avoids crowds and all physical contact, showers three times a day, sterilizes his toothbrush in boiling water and stores his socks in plastic bags. He’s also a neatness freak, unable to pass a crooked picture on a wall without straightening it. Nothing on TV in 2002 generated more fun than this witty, inspired sleeper of a USA Network series (rerun on ABC) starring Tony Shalhoub as a severely obsessive-compulsive detective, and Bitty Schram as his minder and source of moist towelettes that he requires when halted in his tracks by bacteria-driven panic attacks.

Low -- “The Anna Nicole Show” on E! Entertainment. Was this former stripper and Playboy Playmate really an imbecile or just playing one on TV? A half-hour of her “reality” series passed like a half day. The camera captured past-her-prime Anna Nicole looking like Moby-Dick in drag while slurring her words and appearing as high (on something) as her IQ was low. Moment to cherish? When someone mentioned suicide bombers in Israel, a perplexed Anna Nicole wondered aloud: “Who’s killing Jews?” Although her show was never able to define itself, “stupid” seemed to apply.

High -- Actor-comedian Shelly Berman, still funny after all these years, as Larry David’s befuddled father in a wickedly brilliant episode of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” that found him keeping from Larry (with the best of intentions) the death of his mother. Son: “Tell me, how’s Mom doin’?” Father: “Well ... you know how people do.”

Low -- “A Season on the Brink” was an utterly numbing account of volcanic basketball coach Bobby Knight’s 1985-86 championship season with the University of Indiana Hoosiers. Even with Brian Dennehy glowering and seething, this ESPN movie somehow managed to make Knight tedious. There was anger. There was raging. There was chair-throwing. All of it from viewers.

High -- Ryan Gosling’s striking work in “The Believer,” a Henry Bean film on Showtime. The script sagged in key spots, but never Gosling’s complex, chillingly persuasive portrait of a neo-Nazi skinhead and Jewish anti-Semite whose soaring IQ and silver tongue made him the most dangerous kind of twisted fanatic.

Low -- “Monica in Black and White.” There surely were reasons beyond titillation that HBO’s documentary unit decided to commission and pay Monica Lewinsky for this tawdry number, which had her answering questions from an adoring college audience in New York. But can you think of one? The highlight of this one-hour-and-40-minute video memoir -- which Lewinsky initiated -- was seeing her fight back tears while claiming, “I would do anything to have my anonymity back.” Everything but remove herself from the camera.

High -- “The Sopranos” finale. Although HBO could claim two other stratospheric dramas in 2002 in “Six Feet Under” and “The Wire,” this season’s “The Sopranos” season-ender was especially amazing. The 75-minute episode was a fitting, in-your-face reply to naysayers who’d been insisting this year that the planet’s most scintillating TV series had lost its grip. On the contrary, here was mob melodrama supreme, mingling dark humor with moral ambiguity in a climax that had Tony and Carmela separating tumultuously, and James Gandolfini and Edie Falco playing them perhaps more memorably than ever.

Low -- Dead people talking. They would be the ones chatting up James Van Praagh in “Living With the Dead,” his self-glorifying memoir that had Ted Danson getting upstaged by ghouls. This CBS two-parter was so excruciatingly corny that it was almost good. When Danson/Van Praagh encountered a crowd of walking cadavers in a forest, for example, it was to die for.

High -- The “Farm Boys” episode of “The Chris Isaak Show” on Showtime. This horror flick send-up, with country rocker Isaak and his crew trapped a couple of nights in a creepy old farmhouse full of secrets, was hysterically, wheezingly hilarious. That included a terrifying discovery by Chris’ manager, Yola (Kristin Datillo), that one of the farm family had been sneaking up to the attic in the dead of night and making ... designer shoes. Cobbler, shmobbler, this remains one of the funniest, most undervalued series on television.

Low -- “The Crocodile Hunter: Graham’s Revenge.” Graham the croc ended the hour in a state of relative passivity. Bummer. A more appropriate ending to this unsavory NBC special would have had Graham feast on Aussie buffoon Steve Irwin. In a sense, isn’t that what Irwin does to the animals he exploits and profits from while promoting himself as their savior? Here he was again wearing the mantle and mortarboard of Mr. Chips in the wild. His educational message: Torment animals -- as Irwin does -- and they get mad.

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Disappointment

My biggest disappointment of 2002 came when I learned I had been deprived of a prime candidate for next year’s “worst” list. That happened this month when HBO pulled from its January 2003 schedule “Animal Passions,” its already postponed, long-awaited (by me) documentary about zoophilia. You know, sex between us and those other animals. As the promo says, it’s not TV, it’s HBO.