If you didn't think reality television could get any more crass than the grating weekly doses of collagen-injected OC busybodies, guess again. ABC is scheduled to air its new border patrol reality T.V. show during the same time slot as our desperate little OC housewives beginning in January. The big, bad show, brimming with border-defending men and women “working the front lines” is titled (fittingly, for a recruitment ad) “Homeland Security USA.” The show's producers were given “unprecedented access to the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security…Customs N Border Protection, ICE, the TSA
(Transportation Security Administration); USCG (United States Coast
Guard) and USCIS (United States Citizenship N Immigration Services.” Hmm. At minimum, the show promises to be a big, congratulatory slap on the butt to these reputation-tattered federal agencies. Too bad FEMA couldn't snake its way in there.
The show will stick its nosy little cameras into drug busts, border beatings and God knows what else. Anything to showcase the perils that lay lurking just outside our borders, which means the show will probably feature a fair dose of Mexican trap-setting. Given the fervor in this county for heroes and busts, especially when those busts involve Mexicans, it's possible that a decent chunk of the dedicated “Housewives” crew will migrate over to “Homeland” come January. The first episode sounds like some weird twist on both worlds: “a voluptuous 20-year-old woman from Switzerland with no working papers but a suitcase full of titillating surprises!” Later in the show: drugs in baby diapers, caught on tape.
Too bad those camera crews didn't catch ex-sheriff Mike Carona's forced resignation last year from the Homeland Security task force he pompously sat on until he was indicted. Odd thing is the department failed to kick him off his post after he unwittingly let a fake camera crew purporting to do the same big propaganda show in to shoot the county's top secret emergency defense center. Unlike Housewives, this latest addition in the disturbing realm of “reality” concoctions isn't going to focus on that kind of internal dirt. Too bad for us.
