Gentler side of reality television

When you think of reality television, maybe you think of Richard Hatch. Maybe you think of Dr. Will Kirby. Maybe you think of Trista and Ryan, or Andrew Firestone, or Darva Conger, or Evan Marriott. Maybe you think of Clay Aiken, Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Simpson, or Tyra Banks. You probably don't think of Yolanda and Colleen.

In fact, unless you have followed "Airline," A&E's breezy tour of life behind the counter at Southwest Airlines, you almost certainly don't know that Yolanda and Colleen are two of the unflappable, funny, often heroic supervisors who deal each week with a little bit of everything travel will bring. They calm the infuriated, they deflate the indignant, they deliver bad news to the foolishly hopeful, and -- surprisingly often -- they evaluate the intoxicated.

Quite a few passengers, as it turns out, arrive at the airport a little too early and head from the security checkpoint directly to the bar, where they pour margaritas down their throats until the boarding call comes. If they're too drunk, they can't board, and part of the unenviable task that Yolanda and Colleen face is sizing up, for instance, a drunken bachelorette party on the way to Vegas and breaking it to them that there will be no five-dollar breakfast buffet for them. Every week, the show offers fascinating glimpses at an aspect of life that almost everyone has experienced and almost no one knows very much about.

Broadening your horizons? Learning about someone else's struggles? This is not the reality television you have been warned about. No, this is the other kind. The simpler, less assaulting kind. And, for the most part, the basic cable kind.

Show can make a network
While networks crank out dating shows and gross-out shows and cutthroat competitive shows, basic cable channels have had some surprising successes capitalizing on the popularity of a different kind of unscripted material.

They have started to roll out a wide variety of niche programs that don't rely on scandal or misery as much as a certain geek factor — a recognition that almost everything is interesting to someone, somewhere, if it's presented in enough detail. Do you like airports? Animals? Weddings? Sportscasting? Cooking? There is a reality show just for you. Not only is this kind of "geek reality" an agreeable addition to the landscape, but it has breathed life into networks that existed for years with little to distinguish them other than reruns of "Murder, She Wrote."

Making a splash with unscripted shows is hardly new for cable. MTV took a hard turn away from its traditional focus on actual music when it sent the first seven strangers into a loft in New York in the first season of "The Real World."

That, however, was a story of an already hip operation that merely shifted its focus. The geek reality genre, on the other hand, has changed the basic viewership of channels that spent years gathering dust, entirely off the radar of the same demographically desirable channel-flippers who now embrace them.

The most familiar example is undoubtedly TLC, which was something of an obscure instructional programming wasteland before the launch of "Trading Spaces," a show that leveraged the willingness of a surprising number of viewers to study, for instance, the art of spray-painting a couch. "Trading Spaces" itself has burned through its audience so quickly that it is already resorting to an increasingly desperate array of spin-offs, gimmicks, and promises that someone will show up at your house with bags of money if you will just watch Laurie Hickson-Smith sew one more yellow pillow.

But in its wake, it left not only "While You Were Out," but the American version of the BBC's "What Not To Wear," as well as "Clean Sweep," "For Better Or For Worse," and a passel of other quick-fix shows that come to town, offer unusual advice about living some particular part of your life entirely on the cheap, and then blow out of town before anyone finds out whether the curtains (or the shoes, or the wedding bouquets) are being held together with staples. This is the stuff that has transformed TLC from a well-meaning educational lump into a sparkly, accessible parade of happy recipients of instant gratification -- the channel of choice for the cheap geek. (Now, hoping to push beyond this particular genre and pick up the medical geeks, TLC is beefing up its lineup and has added more and more hospital material, including the recent run of the terrific and entertaining "Resident Life" and the new series "The Residents.")

Geek reality has arrived
While TLC was the first to hit it big, it has increasingly high-profile company. Bravo seemed to be subsisting on James Lipton and old Riverdance videos until it crashed through the popular culture ceiling with "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Far warmer in execution than it seemed in concept, "Queer Eye" combined the nearly miraculous chemistry of its principals with some genuinely interesting insights about things like why men should stop shaving so fast. And with one show, Bravo arrived.

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Less well-known examples have aired elsewhere. The Food Network got into the game with "Cooking School Stories," a nifty documentary series about culinary school that wrung drama from such things as preparing a menu for competition, losing a critical tool at a key moment, and getting through cooking school with only one hand.

The network also borrowed from the BBC and showed the full run of "Jamie's Kitchen," which followed celebrity chef Jamie Oliver as he tried to transform a gaggle of disadvantaged college-age kids into chefs. It worked with only a few of them, but Oliver's keen interest in the students, his willingness to genuinely teach both cooking and professionalism, and his passion for food made it an engaging, addictive series, and helped add variety to a schedule that sometimes seems more than a little too reliant on Rachael Ray.

All around the dial, geek reality has arrived. ESPN is in the middle of the run of "Dream Job," an "American Idol"-style competition for a sportscasting job. These, take note, are people who care intensely about the highlight reel.

Animal Planet may even be your cup of tea, particularly if you're into animals and crime investigation, which seems to be the channel's new peculiar sub-niche. The Travel Channel is hipper than it has ever been as a result of having hooked itself early to the televised poker phenomenon — perhaps not traditional reality television, but another example of the same willingness to capitalize on the intense passions of a slice of the audience that might have seemed a little too narrow for a network to gamble on.

Without taking anything away from the entertainment value of good conventional reality shows, these are heartening developments. An overdue firing by Donald Trump is very satisfying indeed, but it's reassuring to know that if the person fired gets a little drunk at the airport on the way home, Yolanda and Colleen will be there to keep her off your flight.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.