REALITY
UPN (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET)
It doesn't seem like reality," said one participant on the season premiere of this modeling competition. "Dramality" is the preferred term in UPN's press releases, so don't be surprised that the conflicts on the show appear to be, shall we say, heightened for television.
The second season began Jan. 13 with 12 aspirants sharing a Manhattan loft and vying for a prize package that includes a cover shot on a beauty-products catalog and a contract with the modeling agency that handles Tyra Banks, the series' chief judge and coexecutive producer. Shedding bitter tears, Jenascia called her housemates "bitches" for failing to wake her for an early photo shoot. Yoanna ripped the self-involved Camille, dubbing her Cruella de Vil. And Anna had a weepy crisis of conscience when asked to pose in nothing but jewels and body paint. "It's not so much [based on] religion," she explained. "I'm just trying to be Christ-like."
It wouldn't be a crime if the contestants were consciously showing their dramatic side, but there ought to be a law against some tricks of the reality trade. A tease at the end of the second episode showed gawky Shandi on the floor, apparently unconscious. She "can't handle the pressure," Banks told us. We heard a cry of "Oh, no!" In the next episode we learned that Shandi had a fainting spell but felt lots better after a quick, sugary snack.
Frankly, I couldn't handle the pressure of a Fear Factor-ish segment in which the lovelies were taken to an abandoned building and forced to pose while suspended from a ledge. The real torture was hearing the photographer's inane instructions: "Hold the intensity!... Talk to me with your eyes!" Shut up, okay?
DRAMA
CBS (Wed., Feb. 4, 9 p.m. ET)
You'll be disappointed in this Hallmark Hall of Fame film, well-acted though it is, if you expect one big revelation to explain why three generations of Irish women can't simply get along. The Blackwater Lightship, based on a novel by Colm Toibin, is intelligent enough to recognize that family bitterness can build over the years until the reasons for it become obscured.
Elderly grandmother Dora (an unabashedly dowdy Angela Lansbury), her widowed daughter Lily (Dianne Wiest) and Lily's married daughter Helen (Gina McKee) all find themselves in Dora's modest seaside home when Helen's brother Declan (Keith McErlean) comes there for a final visit as he enters the late stages of AIDS. Moved by Declan's condition—and perhaps shamed by the way his loyal friends (Sam Robards and Brian F. O'Byrne) serve as his surrogate family—the women move haltingly toward reconciliation. We see that mistakes and misunderstandings gradually led to habitual estrangement, but there's no easy answer to why they let the situation fester so long. As sometimes happens in life, it just went on.
COMEDY
FOX (Sundays, 7:30 p.m. ET)
Noting that a classmate is nicknamed Nickname, a seventh grader in the early 1960s remarks, "It's so...not modern, but whatever it is that will come after modern."
I admit I didn't appreciate Oliver Beene's postmodernism when it premiered last year. Because it presents a kid's misadventures as narrated by his grown-up self, I thought it was little more than a Wonder Years ripoff. Now I realize that the characters are sort of standing outside their time period—standing outside themselves, really—and sharing the irony with us.
Unfortunately, none of this makes the show much funnier in its second season. A Feb. 4 preview (9:30 p.m.) earns laughs with one storyline—Oliver's parents (Grant Shaud and Wendy Makkena) experience reefer madness—but Oliver (Grant Rosenmeyer) a gets into a stock situation when he goes gaga for an older Swedish exchange student. And though the official season opener (Feb. 8) offers a good joke or two at the funeral of a half-forgotten relative, most of the comedy is labored.
THEY'RE BAAAACK
Survivor: All-Stars (CBS, Feb. 1, after Super Bowl XXXVIII) Expect stormy weather in the Pearl Islands. Cunning Richard Hatch, crusty Rudy Boesch and 16 other former castaways return for the pioneering reality series' eighth go-round.
DEVITO IN DA BUFF?
Friends (NBC, Feb. 5, 8 p.m. ET) Sight unseen, Rachel and Monica hire an unlikely stripper (guest star Danny DeVito) for Phoebe's bachelorette party, while Joey displays his limited knowledge on Donny Osmond's game show Pyramid.
PRENUPTIAL NIP 'N TUCK
Extreme Makeover (ABC, Feb. 5, 9 p.m. ET) Dearly beloved, how you've changed! Two lucky people get their bodies redesigned, then reveal the results on their wedding day.
OH, REEGE!
Hope & Faith (ABC, Feb. 6, 9 p.m. ET) Kathie Lee Gifford appears as a surly waitress on Kelly Ripa's sitcom, with a rerun of Regis Philbin's guest shot as the 8:30 lead-in.
- Contributors:
- Terry Kelleher.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
