News flash: Date dogs roam Net

ABC’s news division, deployed on such recent operations as the attempted takedown of “American Idol” through an investigation of “Idol” judge Paula Abdul, is the source of a five-part, five-hour documentary series airing over the next couple of weeks on Internet dating, called “Hooking Up.”

It’s a documentary in the sense that there’s no Ken doll host, no single red rose given scepter-like symbolic powers, and the dozen New York City women profiled don’t move into a loft together. It’s competently done, emerging with its dignity intact. But there is a catchy theme song (think Matchbox 20: acoustic guitar over lyrics like, “What’s a girl to do to change her life...”) and enough reality TV machinations to prompt one to wonder what kind of news division does five hours of prime time on sex-via-the-Internet while Iraq burns, London recovers from transit bombings and the White House is tap-dancing away from Karl Rove’s connection to the unmasking of an undercover CIA operative whose former-ambassador husband had publicly questioned intelligence the White House had used in making the case for war against Iraq.

As you can see, it’s hard to put a “gate” on that story. And meanwhile ABC News was apparently handed a bulletin: Men who post on Internet dating sites lie about their age and their height. And some might even be ... just interested in sex.

“What’s a girl to do to change her life...la la la...”

There’s nothing particularly wrong with a news division doing probing and revealing lifestyle stories, except that “Hooking Up” is on the all-too-familiar end of a sociological trend. It’s about the bait-and-switch of online romance, how our computer screens encourage us to project fantasies onto total strangers. As the show’s subjects demonstrate, the Internet has turned love into a kind of job, where the checking of IMs, e-mails, voicemails, et al becomes all-consuming, and the word “chemistry” is code for the sexual attraction the women don’t want to concede is as high on their list as it is on the men’s.

ABC sent out only the first two hours for review, and they revealed nothing I haven’t already read or heard from friends dabbling in the worlds of Nerve.com, Friendster.com, Match.com or JDate.com. Oh, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Sunday afternoon duds, the JDate miracles that might have been. I like my friends’ stories, they’re a consistent source of entertainment and occasional insight into the human heart, but I might stop short of offering them a TV series.

“Hooking Up” boldly goes nowhere, except into the pants of its female protagonists (get your mind out of the gutter -- it’s a reference to the wireless contraptions you can see Manhattanites Amy or Cynthia or Lisa wearing as they meet their dates). It’s absorbing in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I (and a camera crew) way. The show makes a properly convincing case that while women control the flow of men they download into their lives, the men turn out to be mostly bad matches for them, and the ones who aren’t are flight risks after Operation Coitus has been completed.

Amy, 28, a real estate agent who says, unabashedly, that she’s looking for a husband, hooks up with Chris, 34, a professional poker player. He wears a vest and a white turtleneck shirt on their first date (run, Amy!) but she’s evidently an open-minded gal, even after he declares, “If you’re on Paxil or Xanax, I’m going to have a hard time marrying you” (she is, but she also has large breasts, which may explain why he sticks around anyway). Cynthia, 33, manager of a hair salon, takes a chance on a musician who describes himself as “like a slim Fabio,” but who turns out to be 43 and admits the picture he posts is 15 years old. Claire, 26, an ad executive peddling Viagra, meets Nick, a photographer. He brings her a plant (did he know they were filming, or does he always bring plants?). Nick’s nice but there’s no chemistry; the goodnight kiss is awkward enough without the loud thud of two bodies meeting a wireless mike. Claire really likes the next boy, Josh, 27, a music producer with creative facial hair who’s looking for a like-minded music nerd, but one who is “hot.” She’s disappointed that he’s never heard of Tom Ridge, but he does tell Claire later, in a bar: “I like your eyes -- they’re really light brown, they’re not boring brown.” In other words: chemistry.

“Hooking Up,” starting Thursday at 9 p.m., is from a man who goes by the name of Mr. Wrong -- Terence Wrong, whose “24/7” series has examined the inner life of a hospital, a police department and a city government. “Hooking Up” means to reveal how the urgent female search for a soul mate meets first the promise of the Internet, then the often crushing reality that dating is dating, no matter how much the Internet might seem to streamline things. But it does this with subjects whose apparent ease with a camera joining them on a first date (or, after a bad first date, being with them in the car as they text their consolation “booty call”) demonstrates how much reality TV has been internalized by the culture. These people are all too ready to expose -- or appear to expose -- their private lives for public consumption. It’s a sober documentarian’s predicament these days, and at times it completely overshadows this piece and saps its verite potential.

When Josh dumps Claire, via e-mail, she’s crestfallen. “I think one of the reasons I’m also disappointed about this is that I am blaming myself,” she says, tearing up. But she doesn’t break her pose, sitting there in profile, the picture of cinematic heartbreak.

It’s possible that the final three hours take “Hooking Up” into unexpected territory. The subjects aren’t cartoons, and the show isn’t a craven act of reality TV make-believe. But it’s still uncomfortably close for something appearing under the rubric of news.