- by Martini

Reality, someone one said, is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense. Unless, of course, you’re in a David E. Kelley drama, where not only does fiction not make sense, it doesn’t even return sense’s phone calls, deletes coherence from its Palm Pilot address book, and takes out a restraining order against the laws of physics. But for the most part, when you shine the spotlight center stage on the freak show that is entertainment these days, it’s reality that’s standing there, pants around its ankles and festooned with seltzer and just-hurled lemon meringue pie. Nine times out of ten, that spotlight’s coming from the logo of the FOX network. And why shouldn’t it? Regardless of where your personal predilections run in the idiot-box department, you have to admit one thing about Rupert Murdoch. He does not disappoint.

By which we mean, you always know exactly what you’re getting into when you flip on FOX. Never, not once, certainly not with recent memory, has any perceptive individual tuned into The Big Searchlight and thought to himself, "Gee, I didn’t expect them to air THAT show." You see, since the entire world has been cut up like postwar Germany into what Disney owns, what Ted Turner owns, and what Rupert Murdoch owns, it falls to the individual viewer to choose his loyalties, or more accurately, method of execution. And truth be told, there has always been something guiltily compelling about what Rupert Murdoch does that gives him an edge in this three-way global media iceball fight. While Disney tries to establish viewer loyalty through condescension, and while Ted Turner tries to do so through near continuous broadcasts of "Road House," Rupert Murdoch does it through baldfaced outrageousness. On one level, albeit a level few of us would care to admit in open court, this works. Mickey and Ted, to their detriment, have broken ranks from the purely entertainment business and stepped into the ranks of the socially conscientious. With predictable results. Disney has bought up, plowed up, and built up 42nd Street in New York City, evidently with the aim of turning it into the red-light annex of the Magic Kingdom. Ted Turner’s given $1 billion to the United Nations, who will doubtless receive it with the time-honored judiciousness that the UN always exhibits in similar circumstances -- namely, that of eleven kindergarteners trying to divide three candy bars. Rupert Murdoch has done nothing of the sort, and if the programming lineup on FOX is any indication, he won’t be bothering with any comparable displays of superficial ethics in the near or far future. Again, this is strangely fascinating, simply because it goes against the Carnegie-like tradition of large corporations wanting to make some contribution to the larger global social fabric. Rupert Murdoch’s contribution in this regard has mostly centered around publishing full-page photo spreads in his newspapers of comely young women wearing not so much as a single stitch of global social fabric, and he seems to be under the influence of neither personal rectitude nor court injunction to waver from this course. The thought-provoking angle here is, that he still makes money hand over fist -- one dares postulate that he does so precisely because of his total indifference to the self-appointed morals squads of this great nation. You can’t blame him, really. Looking at his track record, Rupert’s always been able to come into a situation, with staggering odds against his chance of success, and come out with his wallet much fatter than when he entered the fray -- and few things get his blood racing more than the opportunity to wave his left middle finger in the face of those morals squads while simultaneously sticking his right thumb clavicle-deep in the competition’s eye. He does it so well, too. Between the grainy video footage of alien autopsies, air show crashes, tanker truck explosions, police chases, customers doing untoward things in department store fitting rooms, multimillionaire nuptials, and The World’s Most Astoundingly Bloodthirsty Stuffed Animals XXVIII, it’s almost too much to hope that his FOX folk could top themselves. Practically every hour of prime time is packed with this caliber of viewing, like a Christmas stocking stuffed by an Australian Santa Claus who somehow got his nice list switched with the Index of Prohibited Books. Lately, however, one wonders whether FOX has lost a couple of inches off its fastball. Recently they gave us The Ultimate Auction, which we’ve gone into at length elsewhere, and to try and make up for it, Rupert’s elves banged away long and hard in the workshop and dropped the most recent offering into our hosiery. Temptation Island.

A show that may have, in fact, accomplished the impossible. A show that actually managed to make us nostalgic for the poise and savoir faire of Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire? ...OK, maybe we won’t go that far. But there are certain things about this show that leave us thinking that FOX is now going to the well of inspiration and finding it rank, stagnant, and with a dead swan floating in the middle of it. To be sure, the usual crop of protesters have upbraided FOX about the immoral profligacy of this undertaking, from NOW to the League of Decency to the Family Research Council to the Viewers for Quality Television (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to the Dammit, Why Didn’t We Think Of This First Political Action Committee. They all would have been better off not bothering, for as we shall soon elaborate, Temptation Island has too much of the bait-and-switch about it to survive. Maybe you saw the promos, or maybe you felt your sinuses burst while the aforementioned protesters kept shouting in your ear about what was on those promos. Four couples get carted off to this tropical paradise, where 26 mind-bogglingly available single people, with libidos as receptive as a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, attempt to seduce them into breaking up. Good, stable, straightforward plot. Gives the family entertainment movement a good shot in the arm, or more likely, head. Boil it down, and it’s basically a meat market with commercials. But, let’s give Rupert and the gang the benefit of the doubt that they know what they’re doing, shall we? The Setting: The tropical paradise in question is off the coast of Belize, named (honest to God) Ambergris Caye. For those of you playing the home version, ambergris is...well, there’s no tactful way to explain this...the stuff that sick whales throw up.1 Which probably makes for better television than calling the place Whale Vomit Caye, Humpback Upchuck Island, or Partially-Digested Plankton Peninsula. This is not what you want, if you’re one of the contestants. Face it, by agreeing to appear on this show in the first place, you’ve already proven incontrovertibly to a sizable percentage of America that you haven’t got the sense God gave a speed bump. What do you think’s going to happen if she actually dumps you? Getting thrown over on national TV is one thing, but getting thrown over at a tropical resort named after Moby Dick driving the porcelain bus takes this whole exercise beyond stupidity and well into shame. The Singles: As per the contract between FOX and the Belize National Ministry of Tourism and Soft-Core Pornography, there were, in fact, 26 single people there. And they were about what you’d expect. All in that early-20s to early-30s age range, all with the appropriately vague occupations: model, aspiring musician, financial consultant, masseuse, and so on. None of them actually said "porn star," but that’s probably because of FCC regulations more than anything else.2 Good looking, too. The men all looked chiseled, the women ranged from cute to pretty to walk-into-an-open-manhole gorgeous. Not one of them looked like they got beat nine kinds of facially equine with the proverbial Medusa autograph-model ugly stick. The Game: Apparently, it’s played like this. The four couples break up into two teams, guys and girls. They then confer among themselves, and are each allowed to declare one of the singles off limits to their partner for the next two weeks. (They are given color-coded bracelets to wear to keep this straight.) The other dozen singles can apparently chat up the partner till Ambergris Caye sinks into the ocean under the sheer weight of pheromones in the place, but the point is that the one most likely to score like Wilt Chamberlain with their partner can’t date them for two weeks. They can talk to them, have a conversation with them, but they can’t officially date them. How might you fare in this game? Since we can’t all jet off to Belize (at least not on this magazine’s expense account, those stingy editorial prudes), we’ll do this here, on the web, which in this day and age, is about what dating’s been reduced to anyway. Take this simple quiz:

1. As an aside, ambergris is used as a central component in the manufacturing of perfume. Notice, ladies, that they don’t exactly advertise that fact at your local Bath & Body Works. 2. One of the women actually said that she was a kindergarten teacher’s aide. We will now pause while you try to keep your ambergris down.

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