As the writers’ strike approaches Hollywood like some Ebola River virus, desperation has set in. The Rumpelstiltskins of Century City have been busy spinning out reams of "reality-based" shows to stave off the coming plot dearth. We’ve had Real World, Road Rules, Survivor, Big Brother, The Mole, Temptation Island, and now, I kid you not, Boot Camp. The level of brutality, stress, and vicious in-fighting has stepped up exponentially (and we still have that two-men-chained-to-a-woman show to look forward to).

A couple of weeks ago someone from Survivor had to be air-lifted out of the Australian outback after falling into a fire from exhaustion. We were shown the actual, agonizing scene as the contestant threw himself into the river to cool his burned hand. On last Wednesday’s episode of Boot Camp, Recruit Thomson had to be medically discharged for fear that he might die on camera of a tension-induced heart attack. Not for nothing are we constantly shown shots of menacing crocodiles floating downstream in both Survivor and Boot Camp. How long before some unfortunate "accident" in which a participant strays too far from the shore and, amid blood and foam, becomes fast food for a large scaly reptile?

What next? Gladiator: The Series in which ex-mercenaries try to exterminate each other with homicidal Soldier of Fortune weapons? How about Fight or Fry! in which death-row inmates battle to the death for presidential pardons? Or Say What? in which macho suburban dudes insult each other over their fiber-glass fences and then try and eliminate each other with turbo-powered garden equipment?

The set-ups of these "reality" shows have become so similar—the Kafkaesque rules, the dopey challenges, the voting off of contestants—you just knew the networks were going to have to do something to boost ratings. Actual dismemberment may be a bit much for the American public, but what about a fake-out? How can the reality-show execs resist faking some catastrophe, or will they go all the way?

And whadda they mean by "reality-based" shows? That’s a slick one they’ve run past us. Whose idea of reality is this, exactly? Reality created (and watched) by people whose idea of reality has been formed by Gilligan’s Island and game shows. I’ve met the type of people who think these things up and, believe me, reality is not something they know a great deal about. In their tasseled loafers and Armani suits they step out of their faux French Chateaux on Pacific Palisades, get into their chauffeur-driven BMWs and are funneled through their wall-to-wall day, past fawning "associates" and obsequious maître d’s to their air-conditioned offices and their corner tables at Spago. They live in a bubble. To them, reality is a concept. Reality is something you pitch at meetings—and about as far from real life as Heidegger’s thorny theories about Existenz.

These so-called "reality" shows are hallucinations of thin-air victims, I assure you. But then, the odd thing is that these people also control the shadowland reality, the hyperventilated reality of the twilight dream world of the tube. The hive sucks nightly on this electronic plasma that is both a compensation for our atrophied lifestyle and demoralizing work habits in the early 21st century, as well as a sort of federal synapse by which we all unite in ersatz rituals of sitcoms, manufactured news stories, and game shows. Our Plato’s cave, in which the Technicolor shadows become an eerie reality to which both the people who create these shows and the fantasy-glutted audience that watches them acquiesces.

And, in the somnambulistic world of television, everything is a re-run, a photograph of a photograph, and that is part of its appeal. We’ve seen it all somewhere before, we can’t quite remember where, but when it is regurgitated we feel reassured.

Hey, you’ve seen the movies—An Officer and a Gentleman, G.I. Jane, Men of Honor—now watch in horror as blubbering amateurs try to recreate the tear-jerking scenes from those movies. Why do these contestants keep insisting they’re not actors? We believe you, we believe you—really we do. In Boot Camp, the macho mush is laid on with a trowel. Macho mush, a term invented by my wife, refers to the part in a male-bonding movie in which the wounded soldier (mountain climber, etc.) tells his buddy, "Leave me here; go ahead without me."

And if you thought Richard Gere went a bit over the top in An Officer and a Gentleman, try Recruit Thomson making his one call home. "Mom, they’re being mean to Mr. Lemon," the big oaf whines. (Mr. Lemon is not what you might think—it’s Thomson’s lemon-shaped stuffed toy. Don’t ask, don’t tell.) Then we have to watch Recruit Meyer with tears streaming down his face when it’s Thomson’s turn to leave the pitiable little group. This is bathos with hot-and-cold running schmaltz.

On Boot Camp it’s called Dismissal Hill, but to me it will always be "getting kicked off the island." I’m surprised it hasn’t yet replaced "cashing your check" and "kicking the bucket" as a euphemism for death.

I’ve had enough, I tell you. I’m going into the reality-based business myself. I’m setting up shop as a "reality realtor." Here are a few modest proposals for some real reality shows:

Audit. A group of people with dodgy filing records are thrown together, they turn each other in, they steal one another’s scaly accountants and tax dodges. The loser gets thrown to the IRS for a grueling, humiliating—and televised—audit in which all their grubby financial deceits are exposed.

Cannibal Island. A plane crashes on a Pacific atoll, and after the survivors have gone through the complimentary nuts and pretzels they must choose whom to eat next. What a bonanza for sponsors! Heinz! Helmanns! Paul Newman’s All-Natural Pago-Pago Dressing. Thighs go better with Coke!

Mail Room. In which CEOs of various multi-national corps are put back where they claim they started out to see if they can claw their way to the top again. Those that fail must stay where they are—middle-management hell, mail elf, or refreshment trolley pusher.

Oscar Night. Using Steve Martin’s quip, "We’re voting someone out of show business tonight," as the premise, a dozen or so famously lame actors are forced to perform various demanding roles from Shakespeare and Chekhov and must agree to leave the profession forever if booed off the stage by a cabal of snotty, elitist critics from the New York Times and The New Yorker.

My wife has just come back from a week in the Czech Republic and caught an episode of Big Brother in Prague. Aside from the fact that they show people getting naked, she describes the show as "extremely kitschy, with San-Remo-festival/name-that-tune contests and a house-broken, pot-bellied pig." Oh well, in Eastern Europe they’ve probably had enough reality to last them a lifetime.