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In a war of bad taste, there are no winners

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Times Staff Writer

Psychological maiming, or at least the convincing approximation of it, remains the holy grail of reality TV. Monday night, in what I considered a small victory in the campaign to stage a televised human sacrifice or perhaps just an entertaining Amber alert, Fox aired “Who’s Your Daddy?,” in which a woman who had been given up for adoption at birth was taken, like Tom Cruise in “Eyes Wide Shut,” to a very large house and, dressed in evening wear, presented to eight men, one of whom is her birth father.

Despite these incestuous, orgiastic undertones, “Who’s Your Daddy?” didn’t do well, neither as a controversy (despite an organized protest campaign it was pulled off the air by only one Fox affiliate, in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.) nor as a ratings stunt (Fox finished fourth in the time period). The only conclusion one can draw from this is that the show was horrible. Or, put another way, not horrible enough.

“Who’s Your Daddy?” was selling a heartwarming reunion; it somehow didn’t understand how gross it was. The woman, named T.J., was told that she would win $100,000 if she could guess which guy was her dad (she did). Curiously, the show took place at night, at the aforementioned large, strange house, as T.J. mingled with the men at a cocktail party and later watched four of them disco dance. For much of the 90 minutes she wore various plunging necklines as soft-core porn music played in the background, and steadily I grew confused -- was she being sold into sexual slavery or reuniting with her birth father?

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She’s reuniting with her birth father, it turned out, as the other men -- mid-level professional types who looked like they’d probably hit on her if this were a Friday night at Bennigan’s -- talked after they were eliminated of what an honor it had been to be a part of T.J.’s “journey.”

But as prurient as they have gotten, concepts like “Who’s Your Daddy?” remain essentially unrealized because reality TV lacks an auteur like John Waters -- someone who understands how low we want to go and can take us there, artfully and by the hand, so that we feel something other than outrage or an abiding need to shower.

This week, CBS offers up two new ideas -- one tame, the other trashy -- that reinforce how stuck in neutral the genre is. The first, “Wickedly Perfect,” airs at 8 p.m. Thursday. Not to give away the entire plot of “Wickedly Perfect,” but it’s about 12 people, style-maker wannabes, who go to a very large Connecticut estate hoping to meet Martha Stewart, only to discover that she’s not only not home, she’s still doing time in a West Virginia prison. To add insult to injury, they’ve got the wrong house, because Joan Lunden answers the door.

Joan, it turns out, is the host of “Wickedly Perfect,” not Martha, who is slated to have a reality show of her own on rival NBC after she finishes her time.

In the meantime, “Wickedly Perfect” makes do with Martha’s ghost. Here 12 people with typically vague job titles (Mitch -- product designer; Margo -- purchasing supervisor) vie for the nebulous crown of “the country’s new authority on at-home living,” which CBS has the gall to suggest will be delivered to the winner via a book deal, six appearances on “The Early Show” and a “TV deal,” which means at least one meeting and/or lunch at Campanile.

As host Lunden announces this grand prize, standing in a field and doing the ceremonial explaining of the rules, I kept hoping one of the contestants would raise a hand and ask when they were going to meet Martha’s broker already. For this reality show desperately needs a breakout character, preferably someone deliciously annoying. So far they’re mostly dullards, though the judges, who include Candace Bushnell, the writer whose “Sex and the City” column became the basis of the hit show, help turn up the snob quotient. In the pilot, there’s some backbiting over the rejection of a Waldorf salad as too unsophisticated, but otherwise the contestants are all rather civil with each other.

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Where “Wickedly Perfect” can’t deliver any incivility, “The Will,” which debuts at 8 p.m. Saturday, is lousy with feral, white-trash types who apparently exist as real people in Arizona. Here, the setup is that 10 would-be heirs compete and connive to inherit a 560-acre ranch in Kansas, which has the approximate street value, I think, of six appearances on “The Early Show.”

Watching them grovel is Bill Long, the patriarch of the family. Bill’s extended clan includes a series of women with DD-cup-sized breast implants, none as entertaining as Penny, Bill’s “current wife.” She’s the show’s uber-schemer, out to divide and conquer the family and get the ranch, though you have to wonder how long a woman who keeps two handbag-sized dogs on a leash would function in Kansas.

There’s plenty to be offended by here, although it would help if Bill were dead, because then they’d be fighting over a dead guy’s money. Then, like “Who’s Your Daddy?,” it would be really offensive.

It might even be in a position to comment on itself, or on the topic it simply uses as a contrivance. Instead, like most of reality TV, “The Will” opts for coaching the inmates on how to run the asylum.

“It’s like rodeo, the smartest guy wins,” says contestant Mickey, one of Bill’s friends. He’s the first one eliminated.

*

‘The Will’

Where: CBS

When: 8-9:30 p.m. Saturday

Host: Tony Noakes

Executive producer Mike Fleiss.

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