Coming off a week where a new game show like NBC's "Weakest Link" and a new voyeuristic dating show like UPN's "Chains of Love" are both lumped together under the banner of "reality TV," some re-evaluation is in order.
     As this so-called genre keeps burgeoning, so does the need to make sense of its diversity.
    Take the genre's flagship, CBS's "Survivor," for example. Has it struck anyone as strange that we refer to a series in which a group of people voluntarily strand themselves on a deserted island as a "reality" series?
    Same goes for Fox's "Boot Camp," which trains contestants on a military base, though they will never be drafted.
   "Surreal TV" would be a better label for these shows.
    If anyone could lay claim to approximating true reality, it's the genre's music-themed offshoots. In shows like the WB's "Popstars," a group of performers get groomed for actual stardom. Their careers don't end when the series does.
    That's also true of "Making the Band" (Fridays, 8-8:30 p.m. ET), which ABC brought back for a second season on April 13, and VH1's "Bands on the Run" (Sundays, 10-11 p.m.), which premiered April 1.
    But the appeal of these shows isn't just about being firmly rooted in reality. There's something endlessly fascinating about exploring the group dynamic of a musical band, which any viewer of VH1's "Behind the Music" can confirm.
     But even at their inception, bands are fascinating as they deal with the clashing concerns of art and commerce, not to mention groupie-stoked egos.
    VH1's "Run" and ABC's "Making" may seem like totally different shows, but they cover the same ground, only coming from different directions.
   "Run" funds four up-and-coming rock bands as they travel from city to city seeking publicity and getting gigs. Each week they compete to see who can earn the most money from merchandise and ticket sales; the winning band will get its big break on VH1.
    But as intense as the pressure is to win, there's still plenty of time for sloth and decadence, which rockers can't help but indulge in. 
    Each episode seems to feature somebody getting drunk and acting like a moron, which is a welcome contrast to the ridiculously hyper-competitive and humorless likes of "Boot" and "Survivor."
    My favorite band of the four to watch is Flickerstick, five guys who can't seem to dislike one another more. Cory the guitarist is an egomaniac who resents Brandon, the lead singer, for his artistic pretensions. Rex, the other guitarist, resents Brandon because "I'm the guy they added on to make Brandon a rock star so he doesn't have to play guitar anymore." Everyone in the band resents Dominic the drummer because he's a boozy skirt-chaser who can be downright annoying.
    And yet for all their incredible dysfunctionality, they have a passion for their craft that makes them worth rooting for. They're certainly more interesting to watch than the all-girl goth group Harlow, whose chumminess with each other turns out to be a liability because none of them want to step up and boss each other around.
   They're slow to learn what the other bands seem to know intuitively: bands cannot operate as democracies. Usually one not-so-benevolent dictator has to take the reins and crack the whip.
    Pressed to put money on the group to win, my dollar would go to Soulcracker, a genial group of guys who are quite bland but totally committed to spreading the word about their band. 
    Their tireless efforts to promote and perform whenever possible also point up the paradox of rock stardom: a lot of drudgery goes into generating glamour.
    But no such paradox exists for the apple-cheeked quintet called O-Town on "Making." They were hand-picked by Lou Pearlman, the mind behind the Backstreet Boys and *NSync. Whereas "Run" depicts bands scrambling to achieve fame, on "Making," "We were famous before we even had a band," one of them says.
    Still, even instant fame has its burdens, namely, the impetus to display the talent that makes them deserving of their status. While season one focused on putting the band together, season two follows their search for respect after some minor success (their album reached the Billboard charts after they signed a record deal with J Records).
    What's most compelling about "Making" is a different kind of paradox than the one on display in "Run": How you can make a warts-and-all reality show about a boy band, a teenage fantasy marketed with the precision of a presidential campaign? Even a 10-year-old can see "Making" is impossibly squeaky clean, presenting the pinups offstage just as endearingly as they are in music videos or concerts.
    Still, "Making" is a great opportunity to watch manufactured hype from the inside out, kind of like taking in a hurricane while calmly floating in its eye. The legions of screeching girls who turn up everywhere O-Town makes a public appearance can't be faked, which makes even a prepackaged product more "real" than a million-dollar-winning castaway.

April 23, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for Media Life.

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