Reality TV That's a Cut Above

Ultimately, these shows work when they remind you why you care about the subject. They appeal to the curious part of you that leaned on the kitchen counter and watched Mom or Dad cook dinner or that lingers by construction sites. By showing the choices and ideas that go into ordinary consumer products--and using editing to speed up their creation like time-lapse photography--the series remind us that food, clothes and furnishings are not just frivolities but deeply personal expressions. The opposite happens with TLC's The Messengers (Sundays, 10 p.m. E.T.; debuts July 23), which, seeking nothing less than "the next great inspirational speaker," takes serious problems and renders them trivial. Ten contestants (among them a pastor, a surfer and an ex-cheerleader) deliver a speech to judges and an audience each episode after going on a "field trip"--which, in the premiere, involves spending the night on L.A.'s streets with the homeless.

If there's one thing more unsettling than a bunch of contestants dragging cameras to skid row as they vie for a book deal and TV pilot, it's seeing their responses critiqued as if they were singing a Christina Aguilera song ("You call that a speech?"). Messengers, to be fair, is self-conscious about that: in one scene, a homeless woman lectures TLC's cameras, "This ain't no damn zoo. These are human beings." She's right. This is possibly the best-intentioned--and creepiest--TV show you will see this year.

Of course, TLC did not invent the idea of inspiration as a performance, any more than Runway, Top Chef et al. transformed design, cooking and so on into entertainment. Isaac Mizrahi, Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart turned their fields into reality TV long before reality TV did, making their personae inseparable from their work. Says Kara Janx, who finished fourth on last season's Runway: Celebrity "is part and parcel of being a designer today. When people know the person behind the brand, they become invested in it." That said, she adds, "I want to die as a good designer, not as a TV personality." As if that were even a choice anymore.