VOTED MOST LIKELY TO HUMILIATE THEMSELVES ON TELEVISION.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

WHAT IS IT about reality-show participants that, with all available evidence to the contrary, they can convince themselves that they're the singular entity who will get through the experience without humiliating themselves? What mechanism in their brains latches onto the notion suggesting, ``Sure, it ends badly for most people who appear on these things, but I have divined the secret to come out with my dignity intact''?

That, more than the usual questions of who'll zoom who, is what occupies your mind most while watching the WB's new reality series, ``High School Reunion.'' My 10-year high-school reunion was one miserable evening at a Southern Indiana Ramada Inn near a regional airport with a lousy cover band and people who had already realized their lives had taken the wrong route. In ``High School Reunion,'' it's a two-week stint at a mansion in Maui, where everyone desperately tries to get into one another's skimpy underthings.

These dozen-plus graduates of an Illinois school have been selected mainly because they're high-school archetypes - nerd, bully, cheerleader, popular girl, flirt, homecoming queen, jock, ladies' man, class clown, loner, etc. They're all single and largely attractive, though none seems to have been selected on the basis of his or her sparkling wit.

And these shows always feature one or two people who shouldn't be permitted to cut their own steak, let alone allow a broadcast network unfettered access to their psyches. In ``High School Reunion,'' there are a few participants whose take on the world around them is so at odds with reality that you can't help but rubberneck and cringe the entire time, particularly when they're waxing delusional on their romantic possibilities.

Accelerating romantic aspirations is a plot device called the Hall Pass, which gives the possessor a bonus romantic date with someone of their choosing. These seem to fall more often than not into the hands of the more timid participants in order to wring drama out of their jitters over asking their dates out. Of course, why would these vain objects of desire turn down the guarantee of added camera time?

You feel bad when some of them aren't even remembered after a measly decade by their peers (who no doubt expended much of their energy in school, consciously or otherwise, making life intolerable for them). You feel bad when some of the kids start whining that the bully hasn't changed. You feel bad when some of the more fragile souls see their romantic hopes dashed. You feel really bad at the class clown's disastrous swimwear choice. You feel bad, period, or you just laugh sadistically at the whole thing.

Show biz, Martin Mull has famously said, is just high school with money. ``High School Reunion'' is show biz on the cheap.

HIGH SCHOOL REUNION - Two stars

What: Reality series landing participants in a Maui mansion for two weeks of sexual tension and heartbreak.

Where: WB (Channel 5).

When: 9 tonight, repeated at 8 p.m. Thursday.

In a nutshell: Standard-issue cynical reality fare.

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Photo:

The cast of the WB's ``High School Reunion'' engages in manufactured romantic foibles on Maui.