Reality Television

Already turned into a national joke by Fox's special "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?," so-called reality television has received another blow, with a contestant on a soon-to-be-televised CBS survival contest being investigated on allegations of child abuse. The avant-garde CBS program, "Survivor," isolated 16 strangers on the remote Malaysian island of Pulau Tiga, near Borneo.

The reality TV show "Bait Car" is supposed to catch car thieves in the act. Undercover cops park a rigged car on the side of the road, conspicuously leaving the keys inside, while a television crew waits nearby for an unsuspecting passerby to take the bait and steal the car. But in one recent sting filmed in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the lead detective on the case ended up getting busted instead....

This country has yet to create a reality television auteur on the scale of Jade Goody, the former dental technician who by the time of her death from cervical cancer in March had become one of England's household names, thanks strictly to her roles on reality shows and the doors they opened for her. Goody's health began to decline last year, after she learned of her condition while appearing on "Bigg Boss," the Indian version of "Big Brother," which...

Hunting for buried treasure - whether it's in the ground, in an abandoned storage locker or at the bottom of the ocean - seems to be a primal urge. But when does digging up your backyard cross the line into sullying the study of history and culture? According to some archaeologists, two cable TV reality shows have done just that. National Geographic's "Diggers" and Spike TV's "American Digger" follow the exploits of the archaeological equivalent of bounty hunters who, with property owners' permission, dig and occasionally blast their way to underground artifacts, which they hope to sell to collectors for profit.

Would state budget negotiations be more fruitful as a reality television show? In a Capitol notorious for secret deals hashed out by powerful leaders, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he would enjoy televising or webcasting some of the talks on the state's fiscal crisis. His counterparts in the Legislature say they are willing to give it a try. So far, their approaches have led to a deficit that has swollen to $26.

Reality television--the death of imagination. KARON AGHOTTE-RICE Calabasas

Even by reality television standards, the showdown in the Season 1 finale of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" was epic: A furious Teresa Giudice screamed at fellow cast member Danielle Staub that she was a "prostitution whore," then yanked a table into the air, sending dishes crashing to the ground. Watching the drama were Staub's noticeably alarmed daughters, then 11 and 15, whose mother had kept them in the room for the exchange. New Jersey prohibits minors from appearing in entertainment productions dangerous to their "life, limb, health or morals."

FX, the basic cable network that is home to three distinguished and controversial dramas, is giving reality television a second chance with an unscripted series by the writer and director of "Super Size Me," the documentary that chronicled his fast-food odyssey. "30 Days," which will premiere next summer, will place an individual in an environment that is antithetical to his or her beliefs, upbringing, religion or profession for one month.

I must be the only person in America who hasn't watched one minute of "Survivor." I didn't even watch the finale. What happened? Did Dr. Richard Kimble find the one-armed man? The fact is, I was afraid to watch the finale for fear that if the Scheming Nudist Richard won, he might celebrate by smooching one of the other survivors the way Al Gore kissed Tipper at the Democratic convention. Speaking of Gore, I'm astounded at his sudden spectacular leap in the polls.

"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" may have been off the air at Bravo for more than five years, but the highly influential series has never completely winked out over there. In fact, you could say they've built their network around a show that no longer exists. "The five genres that ["Queer Eye"] embodied — beauty, fashion, food, design, pop culture — those are the tenets of what we are structuring the network and basing our content on," says network general manager Frances Berwick.

There is little new or notable to say about "Ball Boys," a retail-based reality series that premieres Saturday afternoon on ABC, that hasn't already been said about the earlier retail-based reality series whose shape it apes. (Indeed, it comes from the people who brought you "Pawn Stars," the holy elder of the form.) And I will say it all in the next paragraph. First, it brings a basic-cable genre to a major broadcast network, albeit to a weekend afternoon (in the old neighborhood of that network's "Wide World of Sports")

With all the hype surrounding the opening of "The Hunger Games," it wouldn't be surprising if your 7-year-old was as psyched to see the dystopian sci-fi drama as your mother-in-law. But the "games" of the title here spotlight kid-on-kid homicide, so choosing this PG-13-rated film as a date with your youngster might not be the best parenting move. If your child is approaching puberty though, Suzanne Collins' trilogy of books centered on the futuristic world of Panem, might have already been assigned as required reading by his or her middle-school English teacher.

Chomp: A Novel Carl Hiaasen Alfred A. Knopf: 304 pp., $16.99, ages 10 and up South Florida is known for many things: Alligators, orange groves and the writer who spins the area's most sensational attributes into even more sensational story lines, Carl Hiaasen. In his many bestsellers for adults and kids, Hiaasen has demonstrated a unique gift for wrapping real environmental issues into apocryphal, bust-a-gut books that parody pop culture - a talent he furthers in his most recent middle-school novel, "Chomp.

That's entertainment Re " Beverly Hills reality of 'Shahs' is worlds away from Iran ," March 8 While negative associations should rightfully concern well-behaved Persian Americans, those whose value system is defined by disliking ants and ugly people - perhaps we should be glad the young woman's list is this short - are deplorable, irrespective of their ethnic or cultural background. Congratulations to the producers of"Shahs of Sunset"for further expansion of a successful formula by giving an audience what it claims not to want and will likely watch anyway.

Golnesa Gharachedaghi talks like a real soon-to-be housewife of Beverly Hills. The 30-year-old self-proclaimed Persian princess, who doesn't shy away from confrontation or dropping expletives, explains her simple tastes. "There are two things I don't like. I don't like ants, and I don't like ugly people. " Another time, the young woman who says she is eager to settle down offers a guiding principle of her active night life: "Looking good, and not repeating outfits, is imperative.

It took Brazil's most important television network two days to take action after social networks exploded in disgust at what may have been one of the most shocking moments in reality television's sordid history. According to some interpretations, a suspected sexual assault was broadcast live from the house of Brazil's "Big Brother" Jan. 15. Though it was ignored on the following night's show, the country became obsessed by the case, and police are now investigating 31-year-old model Daniel Echaniz, who was suspended from the show and has been forced to hand over his passport to prevent him from fleeing the country.

For years, David E. Kelley had lived with the fear. The lawyer-turned-writer/producer, known for his evocative fictional legal eagles and his prolific way with words, sensed it was only a matter of time before the booming reality genre he so despised crossed into the television world he had created. "When reality television was proliferating, I was a great champion of the idea -- I so loved it -- that I thought, 'Oh, my God, what's gonna happen next?"

"By selling the amount of cannabis that I've sold, I am now eligible for more than three federal death penalties. " So says Steve DeAngelo, protagonist of the Discovery Channel miniseries "Weed Wars," at the beginning of each episode, immediately alerting viewers that this is not standard reality TV. As founder and executive director of Oakland-based Harborside Health Center — a medical-marijuana collective that DeAngelo claims is "the largest cannabis...

Though at first, er, blush, writer-director Bertrand Bonello's "House of Pleasures" evokes the canon of late-1960s soft-porn chic purveyor Radley Metzger, its gauzy look at an upscale Parisian brothel circa 1900 evolves into something more — and also less. On the one hand, the film plays like an intimate series of beautifully composed paintings depicting daily life at L'Apollonide, a velvety palace of desire, fantasy and dashed dreams, where aristocratic men cavort with alluring women near-classically trained in the oldest profession.