A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT REALITY TV: In anticipation of some decade's-end postings from us on the Aughts, and specifically ones we've been tossing around at ALOTT5MA Central on best reality tv of the decade (best shows, most interesting strategic decisions, memorable challenges, etc), I wanted to revisit my 2003 provisional taxonomy of reality tv so we've got some agreement on what, exactly, we're talking about with this genre.

Reality tv, I think, contains two big categories -- competitions and observational shows.

Competition: there's some kind of artificial situation that's been constructed with a set of rules that usually leads to some kind of elimination and the declaration of a winner within a finite period of time. (In that sense, we don't include a show like HBO's Hard Knocks -- it's a documentary about an aspect of real life that happens to function like reality tv, only the same competition would have happened even had no cameras been there.)

And within that, there's the win-a-job shows (Idol, Top Model, Top Chef, ESPN's Dream Job), the win-money-by-playing-the-rules shows (Survivor, Race, the Mole), and the love-seeking shows (Bachelor, Bachelorettes in Alaska, etc.) Every episode usually features some type of merit-testing challenge. For each subgenre, there's a further split in terms of how eliminations are determined -- by the rules/structure of the competition itself (Race, Mole), by the choices of the competitors against each other (Survivor, Big Brother after the first season or two), by judges or some other non-competing decisionmaker (Top Chef, Apprentice, the dating shows) or by the public (Idol). These are the shows which interest me.

Observational: in situations that vary in their level of contrivance and authenticity, we're just watching people in a documentary-like format, with no real goal or end. Ranges from Osbournes/Hills/Real Housewives to Hard Knocks and MTV's sadly-forgotten Sorority Life on the continuum of authenticity, the latter two of which were actual competitions which happened to be filmed.

What's not reality tv: Game shows and talk shows aren't reality tv, because unlike these first two groups they demonstrate no editorial effort to create some narrative about the participants. And American Idol, for what it's worth, is less of a reality show than it was when there was more focus on the competitors' living situation, but there's such an effort by the judges and producers to be selling the people and not just the performances (as well as history) that it still fits.

What makes a great reality tv show: Watching the choices that people make under pressure, and the skill of editors (and competitors-as-narrators -- see Hatch, Richard) to help us understand these choices. The flipside of this is that shows don't work when the editorial manipulation feels excessive -- that the decisions of producers override the merits of the competitors (think: Uchenna and Joyce's magical jetway), or the narrative otherwise makes no sense. The challenges need to seem like some fair test of the competitors' abilities, and hopefully the ending is one that is both justified by what we've seen and is emotionally satisfactory. (The Flo Rule.)

Things you can look forward to: more praise of Richard Hatch; significant disputes over whether Ian on the buoys was dumber than Colby choosing Tina; reminders of the awesomeness (truly) of Joe Millionaire; and someone's going to bring up Paradise Hotel. Be patient -- we've got a lot to write.