REALITY TV Fans-Welcome ABC "TRUE BEAUTY"-and what is with all these REALITY SHOWS?

ABC Television's 'True Beauty'

Ahh, the new year! Time for new hopes, new resolutions and a whole new season of reality TV.

I've already sampled VH-1's "Confessions of a Teen Idol"--wherein former hearthrobs such as "Baywatch's" David Chokachi and "The Blue Lagoon's" Christopher Atkins recapture the fame of their youths and am very anxious for the January 15 premiere of Sober House, a sequel of sorts to "Celebrity Rehab."

But, there's something new in reality-world this season "True Beauty," ABC's attempt to prove it's what's on the inside that counts, even if the package is gorgeous.

Producer Tyra Banks aims to turn "Top Model" on its ear by having ten smoking hot men and women, who assume they are being judged solely on their looks, undergo a series of challenges to determine who is truly the most beautiful...on the inside. You see, the scenarios and situations they will be part of don't require "smiling with the eyes" but ethical discernment.

At the end of eight episode series, the winner will receive a cash prize and a spot in People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People issue. [Insert collective "Awwww!" here.]

What's so new about the format is that while other reality shows have had the morality angle ("All American Girl"), and the it's-what's-on-the-inside-that-counts angle ("Mr. Personality"), and the you've-been-punk'd angle ("Punk'd), this competition offers up all three, but with the added bonus of attractive people potentially being really bitchy to each other ("America's Next Top Model").

This show could be a real beauty, a real beast or a bit of both.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2009/01/abc-televisions-true-beauty.html

Tampa man survives first night on one of the most vapid reality shows in history, True Beauty

Tampa salesman Joel Rush survived the first cut on ABC's unscripted competition True Beauty -- a show in which contestants don't realize they're also being evaluated on outer AND inner beauty until they get kicked off.

But its viewers who will likely find the show the biggest ordeal; faced with a simplistic, hoplelessly contrived contest that may be the most vapid reality show on network TV. And in a television world filled with shows called Wife Swaps and Cheaters, that's truly saying something.

The show's first episode aired Monday night, showing Rush, 27, proclaimed as one of the show's most attractive contestants, tied with 31-year-old vitamin shop owner and Chippendales dancer Billy Jeffrey as the best-looking among the 10 participants, according to a scientific measurement method the show never really explained. But Rush seemed to struggle on the inner beauty part, feuding with 21-year-old Tennessee model Chelsea Bush from the moment they meet.

"Everyday when I work out, I want to look good naked," said Rush in one quote presented at the show's start, where the crowd of beautiful people step out of different sports cars to face fake papparrazzi. "When I put on my birthday suit, I want everybody to be impressed."

Produced in part by stars Ashton Kutcher and Tyra Banks -- neither of whom you saw in Monday's episode -- True Beauty features host/judge Vanessa Minnillo (TRL, Entertainment Tonight), 60-something supermodel and judge Cheryl Tiegs and judge/fashion consultant Nole Marin (America's Next Top Model). The trio evaluates the contestants secretly as they are left in a room with confidential medical files for their rivals (who looks?) and, in a final test, the bottom two contestants are secretly challenged to be nice to a production assistant struggling to carry several coffees through a door. Guess what happens to the woman who opens the door for herself, letting it slam in the guy's face?

Of course, there are loud effects, ham-handed video edits and clumsy narration to make sure you catch every misstep. But the show's producers seem to confuse politeness with inner beauty, and other than granddad Jeffrey, the old man of the house, every other contestant comes off as a spoiled twentysomething club kid way too self-involved to handle this challenge.

In the end, no matter who wins, the viewers may lose most.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/media/2009/01/tampa-man-survi.html

No departures from reality

Though unscripted, these shows follow a recognizable script.

"Human kind cannot bear very much reality," wrote T.S. Eliot in "The Wasteland," but as regards the television kind we have apparently not yet reached our limit. This first full week of the 2009 winter TV season brings a riot of new unscripted series, in a variety of fundamentally familiar flavors. We love reality shows because we see ourselves there in a way we don't in, say, "CSI: Wherever" -- at least, one hopes not -- and because it is easier to love or hate or root for or against real people, even when you know you're being manipulated, than it is to love or hate the completely invented kind. "Superstars of Dance," which premiered Sunday night on NBC (Mondays at 8 p.m. is its regular time slot), is the latest in a slew of terpsichorean throw-downs -- we like watching people dance, it seems, even more than we like hearing them sing. Coming on in a flood of hyperbole -- host Michael Flatley, whose name roughly describes his hosting style, is "the most popular dancer in the world" -- it is strictly a battle of professionals, with a nationalist twist: Eight countries (Argentina, Australia, China, India, Ireland, Russia, South Africa and the United States, boo-ya!) put up dance teams, duos and soloists, versed in native and imported styles. At the end of the night, based on cumulative, Olympic-style scores from a panel of judges (one from each country, and enjoined from voting for their own), one whole country goes home. Dances can be ridiculous or relatively sublime, but I like the international flavor.

Last night brought ABC's "True Beauty" (10 p.m.), from the desks of Tyra Banks and Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher has previously given the world "Beauty and the Geek" and "Punk'd," whose themes and methods his new show combines. Here, 10 good-looking people, male and female, are gathered together in what they believe is a contest to be named "America's most beautiful person," their fitness to be determined by the typical trio of relevant experts, including Cheryl Tiegs, and the prizes to include $100,000 cash and a spot in People magazine's "Beautiful People" issue. What they're actually being tested for is character. (Banks and Kutcher are themselves, of course, hot.) From the preview clips I've seen -- this is being written prior to air -- we are in for an orgy of misplaced self-love.

"Homeland Security U.S.A.," which starts at 8 tonight on ABC, follows the agents of various forms of border patrol, including the virtual borders that exist inside every international airport and main post office terminal.

Like "Cops" or "Parking Wars," it pits people in uniform against people who have made bad decisions. These range from the fairly benign -- a Swiss belly dancer who cannot quite understand the concept of a work permit ("She says she's here for a vacation, but something seems amiss with this Swiss miss," intones our narrator) -- to the absolutely criminal.

A lot of drugs are hauled in at the borders, and a "prohibited meat item of unknown origin" (barbecued bat, it is decided) turns up at the post office. The shadow of terrorism fuels the pumped-up narrative, even though no terrorists are encountered. (But drugs, we are told, more than once, fund terrorism.) Illegal immigration from the south is somewhat soft-pedaled by making that segment about a team whose job it is to rescue immigrants from a desert death. The show seems designed to make you feel reassured and threatened at the same time. "It's a cat-and-mouse game," says one officer. "It's like catching a needle in a haystack."

"13: Fear Is Real," which begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday on the CW, is a horror-movie reality competition, "Survivor" dressed as "Friday the 13th" and other such pick-off-the-hot-kids blood feasts. ("The Evil Dead" director Sam Raimi is an executive producer -- real horror cred.) Thirteen handsome young people are carted out to the Louisiana bayou, where an unseen villain called "The Mastermind" sets terrible challenges; we are to consider the losers "dead." (The last one standing receives a satanically appropriate prize of $66,666.)

You might call it "The Real World: Spooky Swamp," with the pleasant dormitory being replaced by a creepy shack. But while it must have been scary to go through -- it's no picnic being buried alive, I would guess -- it is not particularly scary to watch. The structure of the thing keeps reminding you that it's a TV show, and the players -- some of them, anyway -- are too mindful of their place in the fiction. "The ditzy blond is always the one to die first," says the ditzy blond.

The umpteenth variation of "Candid Camera," NBC's "Howie Do It," does not premiere until 8 p.m. Friday, and though I have not seen the show in full, there are enough clips on the NBC website to indicate just the sort of foot it aims to put forward. What seems to primarily distinguish it from all the other shows in which unsuspecting citizens are drawn into a situation in which they are made to look silly is that Howie Mandel is in it.

In one segment, a woman does yoga next to a man who loudly breaks wind. In another, a man who believes he is participating in a magic trick is made to stick his fingers up his nose to retrieve a piece of candy that Howie (in a wig, pretending to be a magician) has persuaded him might be in there. Then another man, a shill, retrieves from his underwear another piece of candy that the first is asked to put in his mouth. Whether he does or not is reserved for broadcast, but having read this far, you already know whether or not this show will be your piece of underwear-extracted candy.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-reality6-2009jan06,0,6656043.story