Parody offers nervous laughs
One night after “Survivor” entered its 34th season, Fox asks viewers to sit still for “Kicking and Screaming” (9 p.m., TV-14), a comedy variation on the castaway competition theme.
Hannah Simone (“New Girl”) hosts this adventure that features 10 hardened survivalists, including adventure tour guides, a Boy Scout leader, a few military veterans and a self-described “mercenary.” It would be one thing to see this gung-ho gang compete, but it wouldn’t necessarily be funny.
They are paired off with contestants from a gaggle of pampered stereotypes, each one more clichéd than the last. One of the contestants is University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate Nakeisha Turk, who now lives in Atlanta. There also are models, former beauty queens, a few spoiled housewives and a flamboyant gay man more than willing to discuss his distaste for physical exertion. There’s also a delivery man who appears to be afraid of everything and hasn’t done any exercise since playing high school football.
The casting of reality show types for comic effect dates back at least to 2003, when the spoof series “The Joe Schmo Show” debuted on the fledgling Spike network.
Here, the members of the B-team seem so eager to discuss and, in fact, define themselves by their helplessness that their grizzled mentors take on the roles of therapists and counselors. In some ways, this show hearkens back to old documentary films about Outward Bound and similar organizations that use mountain climbing and other adventures to redeem troubled teens and teach responsibility and self-reliance.
Think hard enough about it and “Kicking and Screaming” also offers a damning metaphor for a society divided between a tiny cadre asked to go on multiple military deployments overseas and the disinterested and disenchanted millions who prefer a life of media distraction.
TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTS
› Juliette mentors Maddie on “Nashville” (9 p.m., CMT, TV-PG).
› A plane crash exposes a secret facility on “The Blacklist: Redemption” (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
› A race to contact a new arrival on “Colony” (10 p.m., USA, TV-14).
› Trash talk on the season finale of “Portlandia” (10 p.m., IFC, TV-PG).
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin. tvguy@gmail.com.