AS LONG AS THERE'S TV ... WHO NEEDS REALITY?

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Read it here first: The next step in the evolution of entertainment will be wiring your own home with hidden cameras and watching your own family on television non-stop rather than interacting with them personally.

The tagline for CBS' latest exercise in voyeurism is `` 'Big Brother' - They Live. You Watch.''

Kinda says it all, doesn't it? Even though TV sells time to advertisers offering you hundreds of different ways to have entertaining life experiences, what it really boils down to is the networks know we're all pathetic couch potatoes. Has anyone somewhere wondered, why can't we be the ones doing the living?

``Big Brother,'' in case you haven't heard, has rounded up 10 Americans prone to exhibitionism and shamelessness, tossed them into a maximum-security home on a studio lot in the Valley with but two bedrooms and one bathroom for 89 days and is displaying all the glorious, messy results on national TV. The show airs for a half-hour Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, and for an hour on Thursday (when it's live) and Saturday (when it basically recaps the week's fun and excitement).

What makes ``Big Brother'' truly extraordinary and ground-breaking and all that is its Internet component, ensuring that nothing the 10 guinea pigs do is private. Four different streams of live behavior emanating from the house are available 24/7, allowing folks - who would get arrested for peeping into their next door neighbor's home - to ogle and goggle and have their minds boggled by the frictions and frissons experienced by people who will become famous simply for being famous.

Of course, there are any number of performance artists and narcissists and venture capitalists who have created Web sites where the bored and slack-jawed can watch them living their lives and/or baring their breasts. (One has even filed a silly lawsuit against CBS, claiming ``Big Brother's'' live Internet streams are their idea.) But those are rarefied sites with cult audiences numbering in the hundreds, maybe thousands, most likely dozens. ``Big Brother,'' by dint of having a network-television forum advertising the Internet component, could have millions of folks spying on our bickerers and lovebirds.

But what might we see were we to log on at any given moment to our own lives? Would we be as interesting as the ``Big Brother'' 10? In order to give you budding voyeurs an idea of some of the pulse-pounding entertainment you'd able to catch, we've created, ahem, a fictional family. You be the judge.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE 

KEVIN, a widely admired pundit who observes the human condition as displayed on television.

CATHY, his widely admired wife, whose job pays much better.

DONNA, his widely admired 10-year-old stepdaughter.

AMY, his widely admired 7-year-old stepdaughter.

RUBY, an 11 1/2-year-old, widely admired but nearly immobile golden retriever.

OLIVER, a cat that'll not likely figure into this equation much.

STREAM EVENT 00028/Thursday/0703 hours/dining room

KEVIN (Entering, rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation): Ah, what's better than the whole family starting the morning together with a healthy breakfast!

DONNA: What? What's your problem? You never join us for breakfast!

AMY: You're always asleep until after we leave for school!

DONNA: You're usually asleep until we get home from school!

CATHY: How long do you think you can keep up this loving-father facade, anyway, smart guy?

KEVIN (Looking around nervously): Um, is there some way we can shut these things off?

STREAM EVENT 02867/Friday/2108 hours/living room

(KEVIN, CATHY, DONNA and AMY are playing Pictionary Jr. KEVIN and AMY form one team, CATHY and DONNA the other.)

CATHY: OK, the category is Animals. (KEVIN and CATHY examine the card - the subject is ``Swan.'' They begin drawing furiously.)

AMY (Examining KEVIN's scribbling): A camel! Moose! Warthog!

DONNA (Examining CATHY's drawing): Swan!

CATHY: Yes! (CATHY and DONNA high-five one another).

AMY: Swan? Swans don't have four legs! You dope!

STREAM EVENT 05691/Saturday/1013 hours/driveway

KEVIN (Dribbling basketball, shooting it toward goal, bouncing it off front of rim): Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, bouncing off side of rim): Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, bouncing off rim, off backboard and to ground) Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, hitting backboard and missing rim entirely) Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, hitting back of rim, circling it once, twice, rimming out) Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, complete air ball) Damn! (Retrieving ball, shooting, it bounces around rim, then somehow manages to fall in). And Jordan again brings Utah to its knees!

STREAM EVENT 07048/Saturday/1853 hours/dining room

(KEVIN, CATHY, DONNA and AMY are seated around the dinner table; RUBY lies beneath it.)

CATHY: I talked to Janie today and she told me about her and Reggie.

KEVIN: Mm.

CATHY: They broke up. I knew he wasn't right for her - you can just tell about a guy that age who drives a car like that. Too-wild or peripatetically bland men are the way to go, I always say.

KEVIN Mm.

DONNA: Mommy, can I have some cake now?

KEVIN: Eat your corn.

DONNA: I don't like corn. I hate vegetables.

CATHY: Sweetie, you have to eat some vegetables.

AMY: I love vegetables. See? (Shovels some into her mouth.) I love them. (She shovels in more, most falling to the ground; Ruby looks over, leans head a couple of inches in the food's direction, laps up what she can without moving and leaves the rest.)

DONNA: (To AMY) Shut up, you're just sucking up. (To CATHY and KEVIN) I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. I'm a rebel, and America loves rebels!

CATHY (To KEVIN): So anyway, Janie's going through a really rough time of it. I thought maybe we could have her over sometime.

KEVIN: Mm.

STREAM EVENT 09831/Sunday/1328 hours/den

KEVIN (Reading - perhaps more precisely, leafing through - Jean-Paul Sartre's ``No Exit'' when RUBY slowly hobbles up): Hey, girl, how are you? (Rubs mucusoidal gunk from beneath her eye; RUBY scarcely reacts.) Pretty dog! (KEVIN lifts RUBY's ear, looks in.) Ugh. (KEVIN fetches tube of medicine, squirts some in ear and rubs.) There's a good girl. (RUBY scarcely reacts. KEVIN pets RUBY, sizable clumps of fur coming off in his hand with every swipe across her back and cascading to the floor.) Aww, such a sweetheart. (RUBY scarcely reacts.)

STREAM EVENT 13316/Tuesday/2330 hours/KEVIN and CATHY's bedroom

KEVIN: Jeez, have you explained the concept of sleep to them?

CATHY: Well, they're asleep now. (They kiss. They kiss some more.)

KEVIN (Abruptly stopping): I can't do this! This is insane! Aren't there some activities that should remain private and sacred? Who in their right mind would invite the world to watch an intimate moment like this? Don't people have a sense of quiet personal dignity anymore? Why do people believe that a life is invalid unless it's filtered through the media? Why does everyone get so absorbed into the lives of people they don't even know, just because they're on TV or the Internet? Since when did frivolity become the national pastime? If people expended the same energy on making something of their own lives as they do in following gossip, their lives would become so interesting they wouldn't need to stick their nose in other people's business!

CATHY: Don't you think you've buried the lead?

STREAM EVENT 20227/Thursday/1548 hours/living room

AMY: Kevin, why did Nietzsche reject God?

KEVIN: Nietzsche placed the ``Superman'' as his ideal, the ruthless victor in the struggle for existence.

DONNA: Nietzsche's philosophy isn't very consistent or systematic, is it?

CATHY: Perhaps, but he was a superb stylist.

AMY: But Kant is perhaps the most influential thinker.

DONNA: Ah, yes, he spoke of knowledge in terms of being either ``a priori'' or ``a posteriori.''

AMY: He's such a downer. ``Life is pain''; ``Pain can only be removed by denying the will -''

KEVIN: His thinking was overshadowed by Hegel's idealism in his day.

AMY: I like being in a family. (RUBY laconically pokes her head in the room, a viscous string dangling from her mouth.)

STREAM EVENT 58889/Monday/1252 hours/home office

(KEVIN, unshaven, sits at computer, idly playing a game of computer solitaire. The phone rings; KEVIN makes no move to answer it, so the machine does. It is KEVIN's editor.)

EDITOR: KEVIN, are you there? I shouldn't have to remind you that the deadline for the reality-TV story was an hour ago. C'mon, pick up. I hope you did some reporting for this one instead of just making it up as you go along. Hello?