PTC Insider Article
February 2003

Mid-Season Replacements Awash in Raunch

This year's crop of mid-season replacements is threatening to push the limits of TV decency further than ever before.  New reality series debuting this spring have added new and disturbing twists to the reality TV relationship genre, and one new drama series promises horrific scenes of intense and graphic violence.

Fox combined elements of The Bachelor with Who Wants to Marry a Multi Millionaire to create Joe Millionaire.  The setting: a construction worker earning $19,000 a year is set up in lavishly decorated chateau in the French countryside.  The female contestants vying for his affection are told that he recently inherited $50 million, and Joe is left to figure out which women are interested in him and which ones are only interested in his money. 

Overlook, if you can, the morally repugnant premise (a relationship built on a lie), and you're still likely to be offended by what this series has to offer.   

WB has already rolled out two raunchy new reality series for the spring: High School Reunion (from the creator of The Bachelor) and The Surreal Life.  High School Reunion brings together former high-school classmates ten years after graduation.  Participants are given the opportunity to get revenge and act on old crushes on national television. 

The Surreal Life puts several former celebrities in a house where they learn to live together for ten days.  It's telling that production credits for the series are given to "Mindless Entertainment" and "Go Sick Productions." The show's first episode aimed for shock value from the start with 16 obscenities (many of which were mercifully bleeped), several references to pornography, and a discussion of one housemate's bizarre open relationship with his fiancée (he claimed that his fiancée and he often include other women in their sex life, and that he is allowed to be with other women as long as his fiancée brings them home and is present while he has sex with them).

The shows' producers also engineered some racy scenes.  Dinner on day two consisted of sushi served off the body of a naked young woman.

But NBC has the dubious distinction of introducing what may very well turn out to be the most outrageously offensive new series of the season – maybe even of all time.  Kingpin is a gritty drama series about a Mexican drug cartel and has already earned comparisons to HBO's intensely violent The Sopranos.  Hollywood Reporter critic Scott Collins reports that the series pilot includes a scene in which a pet tiger is fed the severed leg of a drug enforcement agent.

Mid-Season Highlights

On the positive side, Fox's uncharacteristically family-friendly reality series, American Idol returns this spring, giving American viewers another chance to select a future pop-music superstar. 

Although judge Simon Cowell's caustic comments have been known to reduce contestants to tears, after the initial -- sometimes painful -- screening process is over, viewers get to sit back and enjoy pure, unadulterated talent. 

Other possible bright-spots on the spring schedule include CBS's reincarnation of Star Search, featuring Arsenio Hall as host, and PTC Advisory Board Member Naomi Judd as permanent host.  The Amazing Race 4 will debut February 26.  The previous three editions of Race managed to combine elements of competition and adventure with a  minimum of offensive content.

In March, CBS plans to roll out My Big Fat Greek Life, a sitcom based on the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  If the weekly series is true to the original movie, we may have another family-friendly hit on our hands.