Entertainment

Giving and receiving

On Oprah’s Big Give, they’re practically the same thing

Josh Bell

Having already solved many of our nation’s problems, Oprah Winfrey turns herself to reality TV with Oprah’s Big Give (ABC, Sundays, 9 p.m.), a combination of the tearjerking, feel-good style of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and the competition-and-elimination format of shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. Race executive producer Bertram van Munster is at the head of the new show, which follows 10 contestants as they compete to most impress the judges with their acts of charity. One is eliminated each week, and the winner eventually gets $1 million, although in keeping with the show’s “we’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts—really” tone, none of the contestants was told there would be a prize at the end. So they’re all on the show out of a desire to help others (and certainly not a desire to be on TV with Oprah).

There’s a weird tension inherent in combining these two seemingly opposed strains of reality TV, and despite Winfrey’s assertion that she would never be involved with a show that humiliated people or made them feel bad, there’s definitely an element of nasty competitiveness that crops up during the contestants’ efforts to out-give each other. Even one of the judges, TV chef Jamie Oliver, remarks in the first episode on the strangeness of criticizing the contestants for the way they help the needy. Paired off into teams, the contestants generally work well together, but aren’t above sniping at each other just like the participants on less charitable reality shows.

Each team is assigned someone to help, so the show becomes like five episodes of Home Edition crammed into a single hour. If you tear up at the stories of down-on-their-luck families getting brand new houses, then prepare to bawl all the way through Big Give, which is crammed from beginning to end with sob stories. Even the contestants have their own inspiring tales of overcoming adversity. There is crying within the first minute of the first episode, and the whole thing is soundtracked to the greatest hits of wuss rock. It pushes all the buttons that Winfrey herself, who makes periodic appearances, loves to push on her own show, and makes philanthropy into a self-promoting spectacle, pretending that the contestants aren’t getting anything other than good feelings out of helping others.

Like any reality show, Big Give has its share of abrasive personalities (wheelchair-bound Carlana is probably the most irritating), and all of its participants are clearly happy to bring attention to themselves by being showily generous with other people’s money. Old pro van Munster packages the show slickly and entertainingly, and it generally moves too quickly to allow the viewer to ponder its dubious moral implications. By the time the judging rolls around, though, and all the emotional catharsis of the giving has subsided, it’s hard not to wonder: If all of these contestants are helping different people, if one of them gets eliminated won’t that mean fewer people are helped? And is throwing as much money as possible at these various problems really the best way of solving them?

If Winfrey really wanted to spotlight philanthropy, she’d see what happened to the recipients of her big gifts after the cameras left, if the money and the stuff they got really effected long-term change in their lives. But Big Give is not really about promoting charity; like most reality shows, it’s about promoting its stars, and at that it’s a well-made, if troubling, success.

Oprah’s Big Give ** 1/2

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