But even the staff has a heart eventually, choosing loudmouthed but determined Dawn Marie over the relatively innocuous Melinda. "Dawn Marie is a train wreck in high heels," says Ringo, "but she's also a fascinating woman, and I would like to see [her] go all the way."

Still, the creators of "The Family" won't let the compassion of the house staff slow down their compulsion to expose their contestants as common folk. In "The Family Craps" competition, family members are asked to speculate about the results of an absurdly insulting quiz they took earlier. "More than half of you have had sex in another family member's bed. True or false?" Hamilton asks with a pompous sniff, apparently oblivious to the fact that he's only demeaning himself. "Someone here has spent a night in jail, true or false?" (That one, by the way, is false.) "More than half of you have worn someone else's underwear ..."

Such blatant jeering poses a question: Does "The Family" really aim to compare this middle-class Italian family to millionaires who employ butlers and stylists, or to compare them to upper-middle-class WASPs who presumably sail and play tennis, have lovely table manners and don't screw in each other's beds?

"Competing against each other is what we've been doing our whole lives," Anthony tells us, and it shows. But while we're urged to judge the family's open confrontation as unseemly, it's not easy to do so. These people may be irritating and a little dense at times, but they're also very straightforward and honest with each other. There's shouting and tears, but everyone seems perfectly comfortable with it. In fact, the lowest insult among them seems to be an accusation that one or the other is acting "fake." Shame doesn't come from repressing too little (as it might in so-called classier circles), but in repressing too much.

In the end, we feel the most sorry for the show's editors. It must be frustrating for them, trying to drum up shock and moral outrage among a family that seems immune to both. The best they can do is repeat some of Anthony's bolder comments over and over again. "My dad trying to control everything annoys me, because I like being in control," he tells us. "Beating my father would be the most satisfaction I could possibly get out of this game." How sick, how primal! Or so it might seem, until you realize that he's probably said the exact same thing to his dad a million times before. What insights does his mother, Donna, have to share? "My son Anthony is a friggin' horndog," she offers. Sure, it seems tense when Anthony condemns his mother for putting Cousin Maria on the chopping block, at least until we see that Donna is right there, a few feet away, and so is Maria, and neither one seems all that upset by any of it.

Ultimately, despite the fact that the family is clearly comfortable with its internal feuding, the show's producers seem determined to cast the competition in a negative light. If they wanted a viciously mean vibe, why didn't they cast a family of hopelessly repressed, passive-aggressive types who communicate in coded language and veiled insults? While even the house staff has quickly caught on to what's interesting and likable about this family, remarking on how tenacious and frank they are, the show's creators are still stubbornly beating home the story line they pitched months before the show was even cast.

This attachment to a prefabricated plot is emerging as a fatal flaw of bad reality programming. It's a flaw that superior shows like "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" avoid by creating drama out of what's really happening, presenting the full range of experience -- tense exchanges, warm moments, comic relief -- instead of stubbornly focusing on mean-spirited behavior and insults.

Thus, while players on "Survivor" enjoy the luxury of being skillfully edited until they're larger than life, members of "The Family" are reduced to cartoonish, squabbling ghosts of their real selves. No wonder no one is watching.

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