Let's "conversate" about "Elimidate"

LOS ANGELES — Right now, I'm thinking I've struck gold. Jen, who models clothes for print ads, has just told Vincent she once killed an alligator by shooting him in the mouth. "We were hired to hunt alligators," she says, "because they kept eating the cattle." (Who knew this was a problem?) She now keeps its skull on her coffee table.

I feel like Jett Rink in "Giant" right after he struck oil. I've just discovered a Betsey Johnson model who put a hollow-point through Wally Gator's uvula. But suddenly, apropos of nothing, Vincent and the other three women with him change the subject. They order snow cones and talk about tattoos. A potential incandescent moment is gone. I curse the group for ending the gator-cide discussion and punch the TV screen.

I work as one of five post-producers on the syndicated reality dating show "Elimidate." If you've never seen it, your teenage kids have. (In Seattle, it airs on KTWB at 12:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.) For the uninitiated, the show involves a guy (or girl) called the "picker" who goes on a date with four girl (or guy) "players." The players compete for the picker's attention while he or she excuses them one by one. At the episode's end, the picker chooses one of the players as the winner. There's usually a Jacuzzi involved. "Elimidate" is very popular with 18- to 25-year-olds who see it as the ideal first date: Hotties swirl around you while someone else picks up the tab.

As with most reality TV, critics have accused "Elimidate" of being shallow. OK, it's not a cerebral show; debates about NAFTA and bond yields are rare. But c'mon, who would you rather spend time with: Bill Moyers or a model who defends cows from renegade alligator assaults? Is an assassin on "24" really any more nuts than a guy who shows up for a date carrying a fog machine? Why watch Ray Romano roll his eyes at Peter Boyle for the 238th time when you can see a girl break into a Puccini aria while playing Frisbee?

There are numerous myths about "Elimidate" that I'd like to address because, well, I work here and I'm paranoid.

Myth No. 1:

It takes no real production skills to work on "Elimidate."

Every week, I watch 25 to 30 tapes containing video footage of young people out on a date together. They've all been asked to be as colorful, aggressive and passionate as they possibly can for an entire day. This is like being asked to give a flea dip to a wolverine. It's nearly impossible for anybody to be captivating for eight hours straight. On an average day, I'm only remotely interesting for about three minutes, and that's after I've drunk cough syrup.

Therefore I must go through hours upon hours of impromptu conversation and interviews. I separate the wheat from the chaff, the grape from the vine, the Whitney from the Bobby Brown to find a theme or narrative that will carry an episode along to a logical conclusion while hopefully finding lots of good stuff in between.

What constitutes good "Elimidate" stuff? Well, conflict is nice. We like conflict. Sometimes there's enough yelling to fill the Fox News Channel for a month. Kissing is great, too, especially the long make-out sessions that stop just short of someone's tonsils getting shoved out the back of their skull. The best, though, is the incandescent moment (more on that in a bit).

Yet simply stringing together unrelated moments of invective and smooching with no connective links between them doesn't work. An "Elimidate" episode must appear seamless, with the conversation gliding along smoothly from one topic to another (the way real conversations never do).

The first thing you discover working on "Elimidate" is that people don't talk like characters in scripted television. They don't whip polished jibes off the top of their head the way Seinfeld did every time Kramer burst into his apartment looking for a pencil. Instead, they cross-talk, change the subject and call each other by the wrong name. They butcher conjugations, mispronounce words and speak in strange dialects. In other words, they talk like they work at the U.N.

I must transcribe everything that is said, uttered, or bellowed during a key moment or exchange which involves hours of rewinding and playing back tapes to figure out who's yelling and what they're saying — i.e., did she say "winch" or "wench"? I write up all the elements into a detailed log that an editor will use to assemble the first cut of an episode. This log, by the way, looks like a script. In fact, we call them scripts (I can see the "a-ha!" light going on above your heads right now.) This leads me to:

Myth No. 2:

"Elimidate" is scripted.

Oh, please. If this show were scripted, I'd have models debate gator whacking in every episode. I'd have them in bikinis while throwing Limp Bizkit CDs onto a bonfire. I'd compose other insults for the girls to hurl at each other besides "the '80s called and they want their outfit back" (or that ubiquitous chestnut "I'm classy, you're trashy").

Most important, I'd have epic dialogues filled with wry observations and biting comebacks, an equal mix of Oscar Wilde and Don Rickles. But then we'd have to write it, then cast it, then rehearse it, then shoot it until we had ... a sitcom, which the critics will say blows hockey pucks. So, no, it's not scripted. What's on the tape is what we must work with.

Despite this, the aforementioned incandescent moment appears from time to time. That's when real people show how really real they really are. It's the Oedipal young cop from St. Louis declaring how he wants a girl who looks just like his mother. It's the otherwise composed Baltimore woman who, out of nowhere, suddenly tears into a guy for three solid minutes like a piranha in a koi pond. It's Quilninius from Boston, if only because his name is Quilninius. And lest I forget the stoic New York Russian who looks into the camera and says with a straight face, "Gay people always carve sculptures that look like banana-shaped dolphins."

Ehh, some of you are saying, this stuff sounds kind of set up.

Myth No. 3:

"Elimidate" is entirely manipulated.

If manipulated means do our field producers ever direct the contestants where to sit and suggest a conversation topic, then OK, it's manipulated. Would you rather see a 40-minute discussion about working at Kinko's? No reality TV show just turns on the cameras and lets the cast go wherever they wish and talk about whatever they want. That's like putting Courtney Love in charge of a pharmacy — it's too scary to imagine what might happen.

So yes, we "manipulate" them enough to have them sit at a table after they've gotten their drinks at the bar, not stand there. We guide nervous players through their on-camera interviews so they don't end up sounding like Don Knotts quoting from "Finnegans Wake." If the conversation gets dull, we'll give them questions they can ask, like what's up with the handmade sculpture that looks like a banana-shaped dolphin?

Last, Myth No. 4:

"Elimidate" has no substance or educational content.

I beg to differ. I've learned a lot of things. They include:

• Twentysomethings have a preternatural knowledge of mixed drinks normally attributed to cruise-ship bartenders.

• The term "hooters" has been replaced by "sweater puppets."

• There's at least one adult male in America who is a dead ringer for Carrot Top.

• It's socially acceptable for a guy to call a girl a moose bag.

• Seventy percent of women born after 1980 are named Nicole or Heather.

• All women born after 1980 think body hair on men is the new leprosy.

• Ninety-eight percent of guys born after 1980 have had all their body hair removed. The remaining 2 percent are still virgins.

• "Conversate" is a verb.

As for Vincent and his four girls, they're on to something new. A girl named Autumn has just revealed that she has an 8- and a 6-year-old. When Vincent gapes with astonishment and asks how old she is, Autumn replies:

"Too young to have an 8- and a 6-year-old."

I feel my oil gusher coming in once again. Instead, Vincent turns around and continues ordering snow cones. The issue is dropped. I punch the TV screen.

Tom Reynolds: tomr79@sbcglobal.net