Surviving summer

The season's more than a desert isle

by Robert David Sullivan

The vacancy rate for desert islands seems pretty low these days, so let's say that you'd have to be trapped on a Carnival Cruise not to have heard of Survivor (Wednesdays at 8 p.m.), the CBS game show that combines the wit of Gilligan's Island and the logic of the presidential primary system. In the premiere, two teams of eight people each were "marooned" on a rat-infested island and told to find food and shelter. At the end of each episode, one team must vote one of its own off the island. (Maybe someone isn't catching enough fish, or he or she keeps humming tunes from Sweeney Todd.) The process of elimination will continue until one person is left to collect a million dollars. If the winner has any intelligence (we're still talking about Survivor, not the presidential election), he or she will flee the country. After all, there will be 15 potential stalkers scattered across America, all of them with intimate knowledge of the new millionaire's fears, weaknesses, and bathroom habits. The producers are already planning another round, and if the series lasts long enough, some Survivor champion is going to be killed by a sore loser -- or maybe all 15 losers, à la Murder on the Orient Express. If there's ever an unattractive winner on the series, an unlikely prospect, we might witness the happier ending of a marriage between that winner and an attractive Survivor loser. I can almost smell the rat satay at the wedding reception.

Each contestant is allowed to bring one personal possession (a Bible, a guitar, etc.) to the island. I'd be toting a cell phone with O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran on the speed dial. He must have figured out the winner as soon as he saw the contestants, since Survivor's "tribal councils" are nothing more than trial juries in swimwear. It all comes down to demographics, and it was no surprise that the 13 contestants under 40 quickly ganged up on two of the contestants over 60. Last week the islanders got rid of Ramona, an African-American chemist from New Jersey who had told the home audience, in an aside to one of the ubiquitous cameras, that she wasn't used to making friends with white people. Maybe there will be a champion who's gay, a born-again Christian, or an intellectual showoff, but I'm betting that the last person left standing on Survivor will be about as interesting as a cockroach.

The phoniest aspect of the series is that we never see anyone mention the million-dollar prize, as if the contestants had any other reason to be on the island. (I don't think they're emulating Henry David Thoreau.) But it seems only fair to make the contestants prove that they deserve the money. I suggest an elimination round in which each person, armed with a laptop, orders a million dollars worth of crap from the Internet. In keeping with the spirit of the series, the person with the most embarrassing shopping list would win.

Despite its flaws, I've seen every installment of Survivor so far, partly because it's so cleverly manipulative and partly because I haven't had much else to do. I've been in the process of moving to a new apartment, so all my books, CDs, and kitchen utensils have been spending the month in sealed boxes. The television set is a survivor in its own way, still doing its job as everything else in the apartment gets sucked into a cardboard black hole. Even my computer is going to be packed away before I unplug the TV, and the TV will probably be the first item put in its proper place at my new apartment. I don't like what this says about my priorities, but I just don't feel connected to the world unless I can turn on the Weather Channel and see the message NO REPORT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

Since I have few other distractions, my television viewing has become alarmingly indiscriminate. I recently watched all three hours of the American Film Institute's "100 Funniest Films" special. This extravaganza featured 10-second film clips that made no sense out of context, plus people like Jack Lemmon and Mel Brooks gushing about each other and offering insightful comments along the lines of: "Mae West was [pause] one of the [longer pause while the speaker gropes for the right word] funniest performers ever to appear on film." The top-ranked film, by the way, was Some Like It Hot; the most shocking omission was Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise.

After that, how could I consider Survivor a waste of time? Besides, I'm happy that such an unusual series is a hit. On the weeks when Survivor was up against Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, the big ratings loser was Dateline NBC, and anything that hurts newsmagazines is helping American television. The success of Millionaire and Survivor, which has violated all the rules of prime-time TV, may find the networks turning to mad experimentation and putting all kinds of bizarre programs on the air -- sort of like hurling wet spaghetti against the wall to see whether it will stick. (I think Jack Lemmon did that in The Apartment, which deserved its place in the AFI Top 100, but I can't remember where I packed the video.)

For now, the experimental shows are largely in the voyeurism genre. On July 5, CBS will premiere the brazenly titled Big Brother, which features 10 strangers living in a house filled with TV cameras. Every week, viewers will vote to evict one of the residents, and the last person left will win a wad of cash. If it catches on, this series may answer a major existential question: if a fleeing criminal on Cops tries to duck into the Big Brother house, would the universe collapse?

Maybe we'd all be thrown back in time, like the family on The 1900 House, public television's stab at the reality genre. (The final installment airs this Monday at 9 p.m. on Channel 2.) On this British import, an ordinary family live in a house that's been restored to the way it was in 1900 (except for the hidden cameras). It's a bigger challenge than Survivor, even if a few authentic touches -- such as lead paint and arsenic-tainted wallpaper -- have been eliminated in the interest of safety. Camping on a beach is what a lot of people do for fun, but no one lives for three months in a cold, gaslit townhouse with outdoor plumbing unless there's a million dollars at stake. Except this is a British family, so there's no prize money involved here, just the opportunity to bore acquaintances with tales about bad food and body odor. Sounds like a suitable replacement for Are You Being Served?

BEFORE THE BROADCAST NETWORKS figured out that fresh programming could attract big audiences, summertime was ruled by cable TV. It's still true that most of the interesting shows in June and July are on HBO, Comedy Central, and the like. HBO's Sex and the City is in the middle of a great third season, with characters that get more sharply drawn with each episode. In an episode titled "Politically Erect," the quartet of single women in Manhattan mused about the parallels between running for office and trying to get someone into bed. ("They're both about recycling tired ideas and making them seem fresh and exciting.") As if that weren't enough, there was an inspired subplot about a "used date" party, where the guests tried to palm off partners who no longer interested them. New episodes of Sex premiere on Sundays at 9 p.m., making it the perfect summer replacement for The Sopranos and The X-Files, but you can also catch it on Tuesdays at 11 p.m. and Wednesdays at 9 p.m.

Comedy Central's summer season includes new episodes of Strangers with Candy (Mondays at 10 p.m.), which often goes for the obvious in its attempts at bad taste. The show is always watchable, however, for Amy Sedaris's demented turn as an ex-junkie in her 40s who goes back to high school.

The most ambitious slate of summer programming is on Showtime, which airs original series every weeknight at 10 p.m. Of the three returning shows, Beggars and Choosers (Tuesdays), is a mildly funny comedy about a failing television network; Rude Awakening (Thursdays) is a painfully labored comedy about a woman struggling with alcoholism; and Stargate SG-1, presumably based on the 1994 film, is a sci-fi series that I've never seen about an "ancient gate" that sends explorers to "fascinating but sometimes dangerous cultures."

Both the network's new series reach out to minority viewers. Soul Food (Wednesdays) is based on the 1997 film about a multi-generational black family in Chicago. But the most publicized series seems to be Resurrection Boulevard (Mondays), a high-gloss soap opera about the Santiagos, a Mexican-American family in East Los Angeles whose male members are almost all involved with professional boxing. The two-hour premiere feels padded, but it's a good set-up for a drama series, with strong characters and promising story lines. The cast includes Elizabeth Peña (Lone Star) and Tony Plana (who played a district attorney in the Steven Bochco drama Murder One), with recurring roles for Cheech Marin and Paul Rodriguez. But the standout performance is by sad-eyed Michael DeLorenzo (who starred in the Fox police series New York Undercover) as middle son Carlos, the best hope for a boxing champion in the family. In the premiere episode, his career hits a bump, with repercussions that will presumably continue for the rest of the series. Resurrection Boulevard doesn't begin with the dramatic punch of The Sopranos or Oz (though there's ample violence in the premiere), but its tight writing and the chemistry among the cast bode well for a long run.