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reality most steamy
WB may have found secret to school days genre
By Heidi Vogt
Oh, high school. How it separates us, with some never wanting to leave and others never wanting to look back.
But there is one thing about high school that binds us all. Love it or hate it, the experience lives within us forever, along with the heap of tangled emotions accumulated those four years.
How true all this is, we learn, while watching the WB’s newest reality show, "High School Reunion."
“Reunion,” which reconnects 17 classmates 10 years after graduation, premiered Sunday at 9 p.m. with impressive ratings. The show pulled in 5.2 million viewers, making it WB’s highest-rated premiere ever in that time slot.
An encore presentation of the premiere will air tonight at 8 p.m.
Seventeen alumni of a Chicago high school all agreed to attend a two-week reunion in Maui for the show. “Reunion’s” producers selected the cast members according to their high school stereotypes: “The Nerd,” “The Shy Girl,” “The Bully,” “The Jock” and “The Chubby Cheerleader” are all represented. The producers were also careful to include members of the class of ‘92 who had something to prove or an old score to settle.
None of the participants knew which of their classmates had been invited until they arrived at the taping site. Then the producers just let the cameras roll, upping the intensity a bit by promising to give out one “hall pass” an episode to give two people a chance to get reacquainted one-on-one.
High school themes have a spotty history on television. The more realistic the show, the less its chances of survival, more often than not.
Fox ditched last year’s “American High” documentary. NBC and ABC, respectively, quickly canceled “Freaks and Geeks” and “My So-Called Life.” At the same time high school spoofs like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or soap operas like “Dawson’s Creek” pull in cult audiences.
But “Reunion” may have found the right formula for the reality of high school. The show combines the allure of scantily-clad twentysomethings with our eagerness to know how all those old high school stereotypes have played out in real (post-teenager) life.
Still, the real secret of “Reunion’s” success may be that the show doesn’t get too real.
“I don’t care about realism. I don’t want realism,” says Mike Nichols, co-executive producer of ‘Reunion.’ “This show is really about going back in time and getting a second chance. When do we get to do that? It’s a fantasy.”
In many ways “Reunion” is the broadcast corollary to the recent web phenomenon of Classmates.com, a site that reconnects alumni of high schools, colleges and the military. Ten years out of high school, the time frame that “Reunion” uses for the show, is exactly the age at which Classmates.com starts to see large numbers of classmates looking up people on the website.
The show certainly attracted viewers of a similar age Sunday. It rated most highly with women aged 12-34 (3.4) and it built audience across all demos as the hour progressed.
“Ten years out of school people start looking to validate their status. At the 10- year reunion you have people renting Porsches to look impressive,” says Scott Baillie, digital archives manager of Classmates.com and executive producer of the site’s own reunion-based reality show, currently in development.
“When we were in high school we all had a common reference point that builds the platform from which we launch our lives and our careers,” says Baillie.
It’s that urge to see if we can measure up, that just-under-the-surface competitiveness that drives the tension in “Reunion,” says Nichols. “The thing that will keep people with this show is watching to see whether these people live up to their labels, or can live them down.
“Is the nerd still going to be the nerd?”
“This cuts to the core of what makes high school great or very very unpleasant,” says Nichols. “But we also went into this first to be entertainers. ... It’s just a matter of distilling those things that make it great or scary.”
And if “High School Reunion” is too distilled for you, you can catch a more realistic take on the show on the internet. Televisionwithoutpity.com, which recaps just about every drama and reality show on television, has an alumnus of the very same Chicago high school rehashing the show with commentary such as “Dave -- we remember him and oh my God he’s a complete tool.”
Some things never change.
January 9, 2003© 200
3 Media Life-
Heidi Vogt is a staff writer for Media Life.
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