Idiot Box Savant: "Cheaters"

I want to hump other people!

By Andrew Kiraly

Hey, I like a spicy snackgasm as much as the next iron-tongued sofa boar--I even take a certain amount of stupid, party-trick pride in my tolerance for hot stuff--but, man, the Savant recently suffered a serious knee to his ego's groin when he faced off with a canister of Cheetos Xtra Flamin' Hot Asteroids. Holy Mother of Chri--actually, I can't even think of a strong enough exclamation to express how hot these things are, so this outtake of some tortured face-to-keyboard pounding will have to suffice: AJF$E!FN%I!! I can only surmise that an embittered, vindictive Martin Mull, his lifelong dreams of cradling an Oscar next to his flaptits thwarted, captured a Frito-Lay plant and is now putting into motion his plans for world mouth domination by setting the oversized gauge marked "Tongue Sandblasting Powder" to gear-stripping ultramax. Seriously, have you ever tasted hate? Well, malevolence is one of Asteroids' main ingredients. Moments after popping one of the rust-red nuggets into my maw, my smoking tongue was flopping about in agonized throes a la spotted harlequin mallard vs. Exxon Valdez; a day later I was spraying napalm out my ass. So, if you're up for a cheap, life-changing event that will make your ass weep lava, Cheetos Xtra Flamin' Hot Asteroids are the ticket.

Anyway, the spray-tanned orc king of reality TV, Mark Burnett, has been in the news so much lately that you'd think he was an Iraqi sex pyramid photo. In case you dunno, Burnett's the brainiac behind "Survivor," "The Restaurant," "The Apprentice" and other reality TV gems in which you get to watch people act all realistic and shit. And I'll make the unfashionable admission here that I can't get enough of the stuff--so much so that I sometimes turn to off-brand product to sate my need that burns like Donald Rumsfeld's ire when he stays after work to make resumes and the printer jams. Naturally, Burnett's success has spawned a passel of second- and third-tier reality TV shows surrounding us like so many swarthy Hungarian suitors, but there's at least one trashy fave I watch with a fanaticism bordering on regularity, and that is "Cheaters," (KFBT, cable channel 6, Saturday and Sunday, 9 p.m.), the show in which would-be private eyes wearing Trench Coat Mafia costumes investigate, chase down and grill spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends who are caught doing zee nasty on the side. For some sorta-late-night shakycam venality, this is a wonderful show. Host Joey Greco and his crew follow up on the suspicions of people who think their other halves are cheating by busting some serious stakeout, secretly recording them--da dum!--dry-humping in apartment doorways, rendezvousing at slutty li'l hotels, even taking the raunchy XXX action into their own homes (tit-tays and hot, receiving mouths are, alas, blurred out)--all in grainy, night-vision footage that makes 'em look like they're trysting on a lunar base or something. Then the "Cheaters" cam-monkeys get back to the Suspicious Spouse and show him/her the footage, at which point said person usually fromples into a mass of weeping tapioca. Then Greco--who does a fine job throughout of remaining the stolid pillar of support, but not, you know, so supportive that he'd sacrifice footage of a good parking-lot wrassle--asks the cuckolded person What He Wants to Do. Invariably--through volcanic, gajorking, hyperventilating sob/coughs--he says, "I want to confront her!" (How convenient! Greco and crew just happen to know that she's out right now with her fling, just up the street, how about we confront 'em in flagrante delicto?)

This ass-clenching climax--the camera crew sweeping into nightclub or hotel like DEA thugs, the cheated party blubbering "Whatareyoudoing?! Howcanyoudothis?! Ohmygodohmygod!" in the condensed hypertext of the Pissed/Sad--is the chewy caramel center of "Cheaters." The guilty parties are always found in a rainbow of compromising positions--half-dressed, mebbe, in mid-impregnation, even occasionally in bondage masks or some other bit of freak--but the lesson is the same: Cheating can only bring heartbreak--and frantic slapboxing on a public sidewalk. Pow! Sucker punch to your promise ring!