Enabling a Nation of Peeping Toms

On “Ricki Lake” the other day, a lesbian brought down the house when disclosing to her coarse, wide-bodied girlfriend that she was pregnant. The girlfriend’s jaw dropped. “I know it ain’t mine,” she said, causing a second eruption in the studio.

Ricki Lake laughed. The rowdy audience laughed. The pregnant woman laughed, the fetus in her belly becoming a punch line without anyone asking what would become of it. If this was on the level, was she planning to have the child? If so, how would she support it? How would she care for it? How fit a mother would she make? Who was the father?

So many questions, none of them raised as the show sped to its next lowbrow segment. Soon after the seed within her was mentioned, it became an abstraction, its purpose on “Ricki Lake” having been achieved, its fate trivial compared with what it delivered--laughter and hoots crescendoing en route to the commercial break.

On television, just about everything is fodder for entertainment, the gap separating lowbrow and no-brow not all that large.

A decade or so has passed since a self-described psychologist called the office with a sure-fire idea for a series that he wanted to produce and give a catchy title.

The man spoke passionately. Although logistics and legalities would have to be worked out, he was certain the concept for “Suicide Squad” was sound.

He planned to establish a hotline for people in Los Angeles who were so sad that they were strongly contemplating taking their own lives. This line would be manned by trained counselors who would do everything possible to discourage these callers from ending their lives.

If they could not be initially persuaded, it wouldn’t end there. No sir. This show had a heart, compassion. The counselors would take the next step, visiting these poor souls in person when possible, again reasoning with them, pleading with them tirelessly, tenaciously.

Should these efforts fail, though, what was even the most caring, the most benevolent, the most high-minded TV producer to do? The show must go on.

Camera crews would be dispatched to tape the suicides, which would be edited into a series of half-hour programs that would be syndicated to individual stations, as “Ricki Lake” is to KCOP here, and telecast to the nation.

The demented plan spoke for itself. If this guy was a shrink, who was treating him?

And yet . . .

Instead of someone who should have been wrapped in a net and bundled off, perhaps he was another of history’s prematurely derided visionaries with a brilliant idea a few years before its time. In 2001, “Suicide Squad” could be just the ticket.

That came to mind as the premiere of another show with heart and compassion flickered on the screen. It’s being run on midnight Saturdays on KCAL as a test. Its name? “Cheaters.” Its agenda?

“This program,” viewers were assured at the top, “is both dedicated to the faithful and presented to the false-hearted to encourage their renewal of temperance and virtue.”

Or whatever.

“Cheaters”--billed by its Texas executive producer, Bobby Goldstein, as the “real reality television”--plays “gotcha” with those accused of fooling around on their spouses or significant others. However disgusting, it reflects a national passion for voyeurism fed by TV ranging from the hidden cameras of newscasters to the CBS blockbuster “Survivor II.”

As do “Ricki Lake” and other shows of that ilk, moreover, it polarizes society by depicting or locating goofy little subcultures, raising them to prominence and then, in effect, holding them up to ridicule.

Consequently, viewers of a like mind have their dark feelings about life affirmed by what they see on the screen, while the rest of America gets to feel superior to these pathetic creatures who look like they’re auditioning for “Jerry Springer,” another hour of farce that runs on KCAL.

First on “Cheaters” comes the woeful tale from the injured party, sopped up by host Tommy Grand, his soft twang ever soothing, the pain on his face informing viewers just how deeply he feels the sorrow as he poses in his long black overcoat. This is not easy for him. His heart is breaking for these tree stumps. But what’s a smarmy host to do? This show, too, must go on.

Then comes the hidden-camera surveillance, then the confrontation between the “client” and the “suspect,” then the resolution.

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First up on this assembly line of suffering was Donna, age 44, appearing barely literate while telling Grand in her ratty house that her husband, Skeet, “will go outside and take the trash out and not be back for hours.” After a few minutes with Donna--arrrrrgh--you could understand why.

Nonetheless, it was time for the show’s “detectives” to “move into action” by secretly taping Skeet, first taking out the trash and then moving on to a house that was identified as his mother’s. He stayed inside for 45 minutes before emerging with someone identified as “his niece.” Even worse, she was “half his age.”

Same scenario the next day, this time with Skeet (the kind of guy you might find lifting his leg at a fireplug) telling Donna he was “goin’ to the store” before returning to “his mother’s house,” presumably for more action.

After Grand somberly reported back to Donna that the man she “once fondly called Skeet” was up to no good, and she saw videotape of him embracing his “niece” outside the house (don’t expect sizzle, for “Cheaters” says it won’t invade private property), it was time for the boffo moment.

As poor old Skeet walked down the street holding hands with his “niece,” whose face was electronically blurred, he was confronted by the black-clad “Cheaters” entourage of cameras, technicians and security men, with shrewish Donna, then Grand giving him what for: “You should be ashamed of yourself. For the love of God, man, here’s your wife!” A bracing reminder, if there ever was one.

Resolution was withheld to the end of the episode, when viewers were told that Donna now “keeps a close watch” on Skeet when he leaves home and that “further surveillance shows that his visits to his mother’s house have nearly ceased.”

Preceding that was a segment featuring a clash in a parking garage between Glenn and his lap-dancing girlfriend after “Cheaters” had shown him blurry images of her “going too far” with a man after hours.

Glenn to his beloved: “I can’t take it no more!”

Coming soon is the devastated newlywed whose bride “Cheaters” catches emerging from the apartment of another man, and a 20-year-old pregnant woman who suspects her lover of cheating on her with his former girlfriend. With deep angst, his heart aching, Grand reports to her that “Cheaters” has seen them “touch each other in a manner consistent with romantic interest.”

Withhold your own sorrow for these wretches. No one has forced them to go public with their stories and sign releases allowing “Cheaters” to display their faces. They are as ravenous for the camera as the show is to exploit adversity.

After all, adversity is entertaining. As long as it’s someone else’s.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.