“Do you watch Survivor?” asked the sweet-faced elderly woman flipping through People magazine.
      We were sharing a padded physical-therapy table at the time. She had just emerged from a serious car accident with only a broken ankle; I had dislocated my kneecap trying to learn how to ski about 20 years too late and with no known athletic ability. Now we were both facing at least 6 weeks of two-hour thrice-weekly sessions of treatment. Somehow I would have to fit that around a full-time-plus job, two college classes, a high-maintenance home and an even higher-maintenance family. Three months with nothing to do but eat mealy worms sounded like a Club Med vacation to me.
      “Honey,” I said, “we are Survivor.”
      I’ve never watched a whole episode of any of the new “reality shows.” First, the last thing I need is another weekly commitment. Secondly, what’s so “real” about them? I admit my social circle is a bit limited, but I’ve never known anyone who, by plan or chance, was dropped in the Outback or on a remote tropical island with 15 strangers, a 5-pound bag of rice and no outlet for an 1800-watt hairdryer. If it were me, I’d go for the million dollars by suing my travel agent.
      If real-life edge-of-your-seat excitement is what the viewing public wants, then these shows should be on this fall’s TV lineup:
Supermarket SWAT Team Armed only with a hastily scribbled list, a walletful of about-to-expire manufacturers’ coupons and a nap-deprived toddler, contestants attempt to procure weekly provisions for a family of four for under $100. The tension quickly mounts as it becomes clear that the sale items are understocked, the bananas are underripe and the toddler is underfoot. Just as each shopper nears the checkout, she is faced with one of three “Sanity Challenges”: (1) The octogenarian customer ahead of her needs to write a check but has misplaced her cashing card in a purse the size of a sleeper-sofa. (2) The cashier, having finished her shift, stops to count out her register, which seems to be stocked only with Canadian dimes. Or (3) The 12-year-old “daughter” announces that farm animals have feelings, too, and she will never eat another hamburger again as long as she lives. The winner gets a shopping cart with four good wheels.
Carpool Commando The action begins in a typical office setting. Just as the clock strikes 5, the “boss” throws yet another folder on each contestant’s desk and insists the work must be finished before quitting time. Now running late, workers scramble to their minivans to pick up the youngest at daycare, the middle child at ballet practice and the oldest at juvenile detention. Extra points are earned if each can mix cupcake batter for the fourth-grade bake sale, order takeout and hot-glue a Halloween costume together while stopped at traffic lights. At the finish line waits the junior-high soccer team, who needs a lift to their “away game—in Mexico City. The chaos continues the next day and there are no winners. (This is reality, after all.)
Mortgage Go-Round! Couples spend six months searching for their dream house, each guided by a real-estate agent who doesn’t know the difference between a four-bedroom Colonial and a refrigerator box. As the new school year looms, the final two families frantically bid against each other for the only structure in their price range—a Winnebago with no working toilet. Simultaneously they must find complete sets of their pay stubs, income-tax forms and Lotto tickets from the past 10 years, as interest rates fluctuate by 6 points a minute. The lucky homeowners-to-be not only qualify for a loan that will last longer than the house, but also receive a cellphone with the numbers of every repairperson within a 20-mile radius on speed-dial.
Christmas Rush Department-store shoppers battle to grab the latest must-have electronic game/puppy/Elmo by December 24. Then it’s off to the post office, where a jolly crew of postal workers play Monkey-in-the-Middle with the box of Precious Moments figurines you’re mailing to your great-grandmother; each package that arrives at its destination intact before the holiday counts as a “Christmas Miracle” and a gold star sticker is awarded! Finalists face off at the stove for the Make-or-Break Bake-Off: Each draws a cookie recipe, from amaretti to zwieback, which must be produced and iced in multiple batches at a high altitude (adjust your ovens, girls!) in a weekend. Now, if the children were nestled all snug in their beds before midnight of the 25th, you earn an extra cup of eggnog and a hand-crayoned card that reads: “Mery Crismiss, Mommy!”
This next show is too shocking for network television and would have to be shown on cable:
Delivery Room Formerly fit women undergo nine months of watching every body part, including both earlobes, gradually bloat to twice their normal size. Those not eliminated in the first trimester by nausea, exhaustion and hemorrhoids move on to the Glowing Phase, which lasts approximately 15 minutes. Then, during Sweeps Week, it’s Labor Camp: 47 hours of live televised grunting in an HMO-funded facility where bedpans are just not on your healthplan. Whoever gives birth without screaming for painkillers strong enough to put down a racehorse or threatening to revoke her husband’s conjugal privileges forever will take home the world’s most adorable infant—who will make life a nonstop rollercoaster ride of real thrills and chills for at least the next 18 years.
      Let’s see those wusses on Fear Factor survive that.