From the editor: Something so real

This week the National Institutes of Health began infecting volunteers with a mild form of the current flu bug, hoping to discover a more reliable vaccine.

Now, most sentient types avoid the potentially deadly virus. They know that even if the microscopic beast doesn’t flatten you for good, it can easily knock you around for a week or so. But these foolhardy volunteers know that at the end of a three week quarantine period, some government clerk will be handing them a check amounting to $3,000. Besides, it’s just a mild form.

I’ve survived the full blown form and its still lingering cough, so this soon to be pale group deserves our praise. What sort of person would allow some lab coat concerned only with data drawn from your wheezing body to spray them with a swine-based virus?

Unfortunately, their eventual plight was relegated to television news. The resulting 30-second clips and tightly edited sound bites left little room for character development, for drama, for Kardashianesque tantrums. “Death Spray” is a reality television natural, going completely—and, I might add, un-Americanly—unexploited. Lodged in “Big Brother” suites, visible to the scientists outside, the set up is perfect. Over nine days, at least one guinea pig is likely to crack up.

C’mon, there are worse reality concepts. Consider, for example, the “Real Housewives of” series, observing vacuous lives from Atlanta to ‘the OC.’ How about “Cutthroat Kitchen,” which turned former food television brainiac Alton Brown into someone who torments the best amateur cooks and rewards the worst, all for our so-called amusement? Television put Donald Trump forward as an expert on business logic. Even the original network mind-number and longest running of the modern reality programs, “Survivor,” suffers from overt gimmickry and irritatingly oddball casting.

I’m not even going to bring up “Battle of the Network Stars.” Sorry--no one should have to remember those days.

When you stop and think about it, this nation is made for reality-style challenges. Trump ran for president and is still called upon by at least one network for his “expertise” on everything. One recent gem: he was cold on a particularly bitter winter day, so global warming is a clearly a myth—despite the 109 degree summertime temperatures battering Australia at the same time, and the fact that scientists have long pointed out that climate change, if more than just a temporary natural phenomenon, will bring greater extremes on both ends of the thermometer.

There are challenges out there for all tastes. Certainly a dozen or so ordinary citizens could be lured by potential small-screen fame into “8 (Mile) Lives,” hosted M&M, in which the streets of Detroit put contestants through the ringer. Odds are they will all make it through the 16-week run unharmed, but we are talking about a bankrupt city.

OK—so what if each week a program took one politically partisan loudmouth and challenged him or her to sit quietly while another verbally shellacked the president, the tea party or whomever. Points would be earned for the length of time they held their peace, lost for the explosiveness of their response when they could, finally, take no more.

Of course, that might end up being confused with pretty much like any current talk show, albeit without the point system.

It’s possible to put together a true reality show full of drama, fear, breakdowns and all the other fodder of this genre. Let’s say, for example, we transform “Rachael vs Guy” from a food program featuring two of the more aggravating hosts on the network to something forcing them rely on their, um, knowledge and … (cough) … wits. Now that would be keen, right?

You got it—we force them to be panhandle Nebraska ranchers during a season of drought, punctuated by a few rip-roaring winter snow storms. The first victim would probably be Guy FIeri’s hair.

I know, too real. Practically as terrifying as the show where contestants clock in every morning, exist in drab cubicles and work to achieve goals in the hopes of pleasing upper management. At the end of two or three years of this, with scant vacation time, the winners earn a 5 percent raise.

Scary. Maybe a bout with the flu makes more sense.