Posted on: Monday, April 26, 2004

COMMENTARY
Ugly ducklings put through the wringer

By Robert Bianco
USA Today

When TV gets this ugly, duck.

Hurtful and repellent even by reality TV's plummeting standards, "The Swan" is proof that the genre will plumb ever lower depths.

Airing at 8 p.m. Mondays on Fox, "The Swan" updates "Queen for a Day" bathos by making surgically supplied beauty the prize that solves all problems. Each week, two "ugly ducklings" hand themselves over to an array of Dr. Frankensteins, who rearrange their faces, fix their teeth, suck out their fat and lead them to the promised land of TV-defined self-esteem.

At the end of each hour, one is sent packing — having changed, but not, alas, enough. The other goes on to the series' "pageant," scheduled for May, whose winner will be declared the Swan.

There you have the sick glory of the concept. We convince these women their self-worth is wrapped up in their physical appearance, alter them to meet some unspecified standard of beauty, and then tell all but one, "Sorry, you're still not worthy enough."

Lovely, isn't it?

The show, of course, also supplies a therapist, which makes everything all right because we know how swiftly and surely game-show therapy works. It's probably an unintended bonus that these therapeutic revelations of doubt and pain also serve to ratchet up the show's emotional content.

Yet the oddest thing about this paean to plastic surgery may be that the women themselves seem to have no more input into their transformation than does the room being repainted on "While You Were Out." The decisions are made by the show's team of specialists — led by creator and "coach" Nely Galan, the kind of careless, mindless meddler whose "helpfulness" has made life more difficult for everyone else since time began.

Actually, the show isn't about the women or even their designers. It's about that pageant, referred to in nearly every sentence with such a mix of awe and excitement you'd think it was the Super Bowl, the presidential election and a cancer cure rolled into one.

"Kelly has to pull herself together and fight this depression if she's going to make it to the pageant," we were told in last week's premiere, followed by Kelly's "I will be completely devastated if I don't make it to the pageant." She didn't.

For balance, stay tuned to MTV for "I Want a Famous Face" a documentary series that follows people as they try to remake themselves into celebrities. MTV neither paid for nor encouraged this surgical excess, though the promise of TV exposure may have prompted some of these people to reject second thoughts.

"Face" shows the reality "Swan "obscures: the pain, the gore, the failures, the emotional repercussions. "Swan "is a commercial for plastic surgery, "Face" a cautionary tale.

Fox, of course, would tell you that "The Swan" did awfully well — 15 million viewers — in its premiere.