There's no better cure for the desire to get plastic surgery than watching people get it on television. At least that's what sane people should be thinking when they watch the new crop of "extreme" makeover shows infesting the airwaves. But, judging from the mountains of applicants these shows have, it seems they're having the opposite effect: creating a scary, zombie-like army of re-manufactured "beautiful" (formerly "ugly") people with permanently surprised expressions, blindingly white teeth, unnaturally large and disturbingly shaped breasts, and tiny noses.
It used to be that surgery on television was confined to shows on The Learning Channel about the inner workings of hospitals. Now, all that blood and guts is entertainment, as long as it's accompanied by the all-important "reveal" showing the magic that's been done to the poor people who weren't born looking like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. The mother of all these shows is Extreme Makeover (ABC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m.), itself an extension of the seemingly harmless makeovers popular for years on daytime talk shows, in which frumpy people get new wardrobes, hairdos, and for women, makeup.
Extreme Makeover added one element to the formula and created a phenomenon. The appeal of watching insecure, average-looking people with low self-esteem change their lives by changing their looks is apparently unlimited. The show's formula is so predictable that it's like comfort food for the self-conscious. No matter how bad you feel about yourself, you can always find solace in the realization that you're not nearly as screwed-up as the people on the show, who opt for surgery when usually all they need is the talk-show makeover.
The scariest thing about Extreme Makeover is the show's own sense of self-importance. Voice-overs constantly remind us how much the show is helping people, as if network TV had suddenly become a vehicle for philanthropy, and the plastic surgeon's office the equivalent of a soup kitchen for the unattractive. A recent episode featured two subjects who met and fell in love while recuperating from their makeovers, and though the romance wasn't orchestrated by the producers, the narrator never let up about how these two losers had gotten a makeover in both looks and love.
If Extreme Makeover is the cosmetic surgery soup kitchen, then The Swan (Fox, Mondays, 9 p.m.) is its Bum Fights. Where EM leaves off, sending the happily transformed emotional wrecks back to their lives to find new things to hate about themselves, The Swan takes things one step further: After getting their makeovers from the show's team of "experts," the female-only participants compete against one another in a beauty pageant, the last stage in certifying that they have joined the ranks of the Beautiful People.
Despite this ridiculously sadistic streak, The Swan, too, acts as if it is an admirable charity, and participants play right into the idea, chattering on about how their lives will be so much better now that they've got that boob job and tummy tuck. Although you may or may not be sentenced to eternal damnation for watching the show, its main problem isn't its slippery morals so much as how incredibly boring it all is. Even more formulaic than Extreme Makeover, every episode features two women getting similar procedures and denied the privilege of looking in a mirror for three months so producers can maximize the drama of the final big reveal. Then, through an undoubtedly deeply scientific process, one of the two is chosen to advance to the pageant. Who knows what secrets the eventual pageant may hold, but if initial episodes are any indication, it'll include plenty of filler.
As misplaced as their priorities may be, though, you can usually see why EM and Swan participants want to make improvements on their appearances. Lest we think that plastic surgery is only for the hideous, however, there's I Want A Famous Face (MTV, Mondays, 10:30 p.m.), featuring relatively normal-looking people going under the knife to … wait for it … look like their favorite celebrities. To be fair, MTV's advertising for the show is a tad misleading, as the only participants who've specifically undergone surgery to resemble stars have been professional Britney Spears and Elvis Presley impersonators who already look like their chosen idols. Other participants don't want to be carbon copies of celebrities so much as just emulate certain body parts: Pamela Anderson's breasts, Jennifer Lopez's posterior, and so on.
Shockingly, MTV's is the most responsible of the plastic surgery shows, with a disclaimer stating that subjects chose to undergo surgery on their own, and MTV is paying for none of it. Contrast this with Swan contestant Tawnya, who was chastised by her supposedly supportive makeover team for rejecting some of the invasive surgical procedures they suggested. Famous Face even presents the occasional counter-balancing horror story of cosmetic surgery gone awry, something you'd never see on one of the other shows, with their rose-colored contacts Lasiked onto their retinas.
The horror stories are almost redundant, though, since the parade of self-deluded freaks who see plastic surgery as the answer to life's problems is horrific enough. Once the swelling goes down and the cameras turn off, it won't take long for the participants to see that serious mental imbalances can't be fixed with a scalpel. Or, maybe they can. Coming next season: Extreme Lobotomy.