A body without cartilage and other reality show surrealism

AS I LEARNED from the reaction I got to the first column I wrote for this newspaper, no one cares that reality shows are fake. Or that I’m writing a column.

In fact, people care so little about the scripting of reality shows that the writers felt comfortable outing themselves in order to sue to get Writers Guild residuals and DVD money.

To see what reality stars are like when there are no writers around, I went to hang out with them off-camera. They were gathered at Pepperdine University for Bravo’s “Battle of the Network Reality Stars,” which airs Wednesday and is a tribute to the greatest show ever aired: the 1970s ABC sports special, “Battle of the Network Stars.” In that masterpiece of programming, TV stars tug-o-warred and kayaked for the honor of their networks, and both Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Suzanne Somers sat in a dunk tank.

As soon as I got there, I realized that the reason people don’t mind that reality shows are fake is because they are amazingly accurate in portraying real personalities. Reality didn’t displace scripted shows because people longed for facts, but because they wanted lies that were better at getting at truths.

Each of the reality stars I met was exactly like the person I saw on TV.

The show’s co-host, Trishelle Cannatella, the flirt from “The Real World” and “The Surreal Life,” was explaining how easy it is for her to meet other reality show stars. “Whereas if I see you in a bar, I might think you’re cute, but I wouldn’t walk up to you,” she said. Then she gave me her e-mail address. In case the point of that example isn’t clear: I am an incredibly attractive man.

Richard Hatch, the wily champion from the first season of “Survivor,” easily won Bravo’s game of “Simon Says.” Richard Kennedy Gould, the earnest, eerily normal guy who on “The Joe Schmo Show” was tricked into thinking he was on a reality show that was actually filled with paid actors, had moved back to Pittsburgh after working as a host for Spike TV in L.A.: “I’d rather be in Pittsburgh doing a job I hate than be here in L.A. I got homesick.”

Gould told me how Evan Marriott, the hulking, eternally frustrated, nice-guy idiot from “Joe Millionaire,” was actually really smart.

Then I met him. After the swimming competition, Marriott turned to me and complained about some bogus controversy that was brewing. I told him he should have learned from “Joe Millionaire” not to get sucked into that. He got upset that I was making fun of him. I told him I wasn’t. It worked like a charm.

Ten minutes later, he came back to talk about it some more, as if we were on a reality show in which we had some kind of insta-relationship in disrepair. “Dude, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that people are starving in Africa and dying in Iraq and someone on my team wants to have a swim-off and start stuff up.” I told him I understood. I did not.

To make things more surreal, during all of this, Sue Hawk, the foul-mouthed tough chick from “Survivor,” and Nikki McKibbin, the foul-mouthed tough chick from “American Idol,” were smoking cigarettes and arguing loudly about whether the word “ass” was a curse word you can’t say on TV.

Meanwhile, Rachel Love-Fraser, who had the world’s most extreme makeover on “The Swan,” was as casual and self-effacing as she was on her show. “When we were playing dodgeball today, I said please don’t hit me in the face,” she said. “That would hurt so much.” Her body, she explained, has no cartilage anywhere.

Omarosa, who was egotistical on “The Apprentice” and had brought along her agent and mother, whom she called Momarosa, walked up to us. She told the Swan to go persuade her teammates, who had to vote someone off the team after losing the swim race, to keep the Swan onboard.

“Fight tonight. Fight with everything you’ve got,” she advised.

Then the Swan walked away and Omarosa turned to me. “I guess,” she said, shaking her head, “I wouldn’t have been on the losing team.”

Those writers don’t deserve residuals.