Attack of the Killer B-List

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But the shows are cheaper than scripted series, and a Mole stunt that involves a contestant getting soaked under a waterfall does gain a certain appeal when said contestant is supermodel Frederique van der Wal. Still, reality shows rely on, you know, reality: we watch them to see people's genuine, unrehearsed reactions, even in contrived situations. Can you expect that from people who have spent their lives performing? "You can tell when someone's acting," says Surreal's Carter, pointing to a genuinely moving moment when Neil talks about his daughter's death of cancer. But Abrego wasn't always sure. "I've seen them turn it on and off," he says. "There's a moment where Corey is crying, and to be honest, we're not sure if it's real." Feldman says it is, as is the series' denouement — he married his fiance in a ceremony officiated by ordained minister Hammer — and insists that the nuptials were not a stunt to juice his career. (Look what it did for Tiny Tim!) Rather, he says he did Surreal Life as a "science experiment."

Still, if many celebrities want to experiment with being real people, plenty of ordinary folks are willing to switch. On ABC Family channel's My Life Is a Sitcom, which premieres next Monday, eight families compete to star in a situation-comedy pilot based on their real lives. The would-be stars have their wacky home lives videotaped and evaluated by a panel of experts, including The Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormick. As executive producer David Perler admits, the show proves that the age-old declaration — My family is just as funny as the ones on TV!--"is really just a sentence." In one episode, we meet Joe Mozian, a stay-at-home dad from Old Greenwich, Conn., who seems to have learned how to be a husband and father by watching THE KING OF QUEENS. A relentlessly manic overgrown kid, he opens the episode with the one line you never want a show about a pudgy white man to begin with: "Hey, want to hear the new rap I wrote?" The network brings in a professional comedy writer to observe the Mozians, and she quickly concludes, "He is as close to a living sitcom character as I have ever met in my life." If My Life Is a Sitcom performs no other public service, it will be to demonstrate that that is not a compliment.

The reality phenomenon gets compared a lot with The Truman Show, but this version of it is more like 1983's The King of Comedy, in which would-be comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert DeNiro), an obsessive fan of late-night talk-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), kidnaps his idol to get a shot at doing his stand-up act on TV. It's no longer enough for Pupkin to admire Langford; he must become him. If Pupkin had just waited 20 years, he could have got a show on E! network. E!'s The Michael Essany Show, starting in March, will follow a young man from Valparaiso, Ind., who six years ago, at age 14, wanted so badly to become a late-night talk-show host that he did. Right then. In his parents' living room. Essany got a slot on local-cable-access television, persuaded Mom to run the camera, put a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline behind his desk and over the next six years managed to book actual celebrities, including Jeff Foxworthy and Carrot Top. Well, all right, they're actual celebrities compared with any you could book into your living room. It's both inspirational and creepy. Essany's dedication is amazing, but what he's dedicated to — transforming himself into a pitch-perfect rendition of a coolly ironic, middle-aged show-biz pro — seems a little unhealthy in a young man who should be fantasizing about doing things with Brittany Murphy other than interviewing her.

Essany's show and the others raise the question, What is the tipping point at which a real person becomes a persona, or vice versa? And is that transformation worth the glare of reality-show cameras? Feldman isn't sure; he's so mad at the media and the WB — which for some reason, he says, depicted him and his housemates as has-beens — that he has written a song about the matter, which he plans to put on a rerelease of his 2002 album, Former Child Actor. Then again, The Surreal Life is probably the only reason you know Feldman had a 2002 album. As for Manthey, she wants to parlay Surreal Life into an acting role in old-fashioned fiction television. "It's pilot-casting season," she says, "and there's been renewed interest in me because of the show." Reality may have changed the rules of celebrity, but the big dream is still the same: to become a true star, so hot and bright that you never have to worry about being real again.