Reality finds god

[this is satire]

It was only a matter of time before the entertainment juggernaut known as Reality TV cashed in on the sacred cow of American culture: religion. Where television executives once feared to tread, Reality TV producers have rushed in to capitalize on the religious zeal stirred up by Mel Gibson’s S&M masterpiece, Die Hard IV: Christ That Hurts.

CBS, hoping to benefit from the success of its Survivor series, will unveil its religious twin, The Chosen Survivor, later this year. The format of the new religious Survivor will be familiar to fans of the show. However, the sincerity of the participants’ faith will play a large role in determining the winner of The Chosen Survivor. According to sources, these judgments of faith will lead to intriguing and often bitter cross-denominational disputes, dividing contestants into warring factions and unusual alliances. The network promises not only private moments of thanks and praise but also angry condemnations for being forsaken in an hour of need.

Meanwhile, ABC has been quietly working on a religious clone to its popular The Bachelor and The Bachelorette series. The show, tentatively titled Changing Faiths, will follow a group of singles who convert to the faith of the eligible bachelor or bachelorette over the course of several programs. It is rumored that the paths of these chaste bachelors and bachelorettes and their respective suitors will be lined with material incentives, such as oversized checks and gold coins, as well as carnal detours designed to lead them into a great deal more than temptation.

FOX is also creating its own religious reality show called Test of Faith, in which participants undergo a kind of “religious hazing” by a group of “enforcers” from another faith. Winners are determined by which participant keeps the faith by withstanding the extreme pressure of the “enforcers.” However, sources close to the production state privately that taping of the show has been suspended indefinitely because so much of the program’s content resembled the recent pictures of abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

The critics are already weighing in on the pious twist to these new Reality TV shows. Carly Shuks, outreach director for the Family Entertainment Action League, said of the new shows, “The crucial difference is whether the religious sentiment comes out of the mouth of a real person or a fictional character created by some pot-smoking, atheist homosexual in Hollywood.”

Craig Falconer, television critic for The Providence Gazette, has adopted a wait-and-see approach with regard to the new crop of religious Reality TV: “Not God, Merlin or the Witches of Eastwick can save these shows from drowning in their own bathetic twaddle — that’s BA-thetic with a ‘b’!”