Dalton Ross takes on Fox’s repugnant reality show, the bad ’’SNL’’ movies, and your e-mails

No one - and I mean no one - loves cheesy reality television more than I do. Married by America? Watched every episode. The Family? Worshiped it. (Poor Dawn Marie.) Paradise Hotel? Checked in every week. (Poor anyone who ever appeared on that show.) So naturally when I heard about the concept for Fox’s Unan1mous - nine people locked in a bunker together with a $1.5 million purse waiting just outside - I was jacked. It would be ridiculous exploitation, I figured, and it would be genius. Turns out I was right on the former and waaaaaaaaaaay off on the latter. Unan1mous just feels wrong, starting with the very title. Along with CBS’ Numb3rs, there seems to be some sort of movement afoot to put numerals in TV show titles. Well, 2 be blunt, it’s really ann0y1ng and lam3. What, is Prince suddenly programming network television schedules? And, if so, should I go out and buy a purple TV set and expect to see lots of Apollonia 6 videos?

The first batch of Unan1mous contestants just might be the most unlikable group of reality rabble-rousers ever. They include a mental patient (and when I say ’’mental patient,’’ I mean a bona fide mental patient, as in has done time in a loony bin and is still cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs); a person who pretended to have testicular cancer, to gain favor (yeah, live strong dude!); and a Bible-thumper who was kind enough to tell one of the contestants that he is basically going to hell because he is gay. These people, frankly, are vile. And that’s not to say they make good villains, either. They’re just plain grating. But Unan1mous’ awfulness doesn’t stop there. The host looks like some sort of dorkifed version of Seth Green (I realize that may sound redundant to some), and the production values are beyond hokey. Yet millions of people are watching this show. Of course, that’s because they’ve all just heard Ryan Seacrest crush some aspiring singer’s dreams of fame and fortune on American Idol and are simply too lazy to change the channel, but seriously, shouldn’t that excuse have died with the invention of the remote control? I mean, how difficult is it to press a freakin’ button?!? Hell, my limited attention span forces me to skip around every single commercial break, not to mention if 30 seconds of a program pass without a couple making out, something blowing up, or a model being handed a piece of paper by Tyra Banks. All I’m saying, America, is that there have been much better bad reality shows than Unan1mous. And, God willing, there will continue to be as well.