In fact, it's not. It's merely a financial decision. If she picks correctly, she gets as much as $100,000; if she doesn't, the man she chooses walks off with the dough. But we know the Fox producers won't punish a wrong choice by denying her access to her birth father. (That's next season?) No amount of stumbling or stuttering will forestall that long-awaited reunion, and so the game-show mechanics pretty quickly give way to the winding, wrapping trail of T.J.'s tears.

And, oh, those tears flow like wine. There's more crying to be had in a single episode of "Who's Your Daddy?" than an entire evening of Marsha Mason movies. And through every ablution, T.J. presents her damp face to the camera without a trace of reticence, without any sign that her private experience is being shaped into a public fiction. If "Who's Your Daddy?" is emotional pornography, as its detractors imply, then those same detractors must acknowledge that the T.J.s of this world are more than willing participants -- they are active co-conspirators. (It's what every critique of reality TV must contend with.) In vain did I wait for our heroine to toss off some variant of Phoebe Cates' immortal line from "Lace": "Which one of you pricks is my father?" In vain did I search her face for some sign of impatience over all the steeplechases thrown in her path. No, this filly is game from the get-go, hugging the hostess (grinning, tensile-necked soap queen Finola Hughes), skidding through every plot twist, giggling through the tears. She even manages to thank the impostors who've been trying to milk her of $100,000! (After one rejected candidate announces how proud he was to be "part of the journey you're on," T.J. answers, "I'm very glad that you were.")

So, if there is an unseemly lesson to be drawn from "Who's Your Daddy?," it's simply that adopted Americans are as willing as anyone else to parade their rawest and most intimate exchanges before the marauding camera eye. And if there's an unspoken lesson, it's that the families once wrongly tarred by society as "illegitimate" are, by the new rules of reality TV, the only truly legitimate ones. The climax of Episode No. 1 comes not when T.J. (correctly) picks Daddy but when the show's producers, in their own little coup de theatre, bring out long-lost Mommy. Mother embraces Daughter. Father, looking on with tear-soaked countenance (and with three of his other daughters standing behind him), announces: "We're a family again."

And the whole business is a staggeringly literal reenactment of the fantasy that, at one time or other, haunts many an adopted child: the myth that she will one day escape the stifling climes of her adoptive home and find solace and eternal happiness with the two people who gave her life. It's Oliver Twist, it's the Little Princess, it's Orphan Annie, and there's no denying the fairy-tale pull it still exerts, but all the same, I couldn't help thinking about the family T.J. left behind -- the family she makes only passing reference to -- the family that is quite prominently omitted from that final tableau. Indeed, in a show that makes such a fuss about answering questions, the one that's never even addressed is: Why, among all the people T.J. thanks, does she not single out the man and woman who raised her?

Like most reality shows, "Who's Your Daddy?" is too panderingly stupid to get seriously upset about. Scott Hallock and Kevin Healey are no worse than any of their gimcrack counterparts. Fox television has not yet stamped out civilization. But when it comes to deciding what a family is, it may be wise to look to sources outside of Fox. I'm going to say goodnight to my son now.

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