NOEL HOLSTON | Opinion Reality television has some growing up to do

The WB's "High School Reunion" is a reality series in which archetypal members of a graduating class -- the homecoming queen, the clown, the star jock, the nerd, the wallflower, the nice girl who got preggers, the "vixen" who didn't -- are regrouped, 10 years after they collected their diplomas, and encouraged by TV producers to rekindle resentments, romances, prejudices and other silliness that you would think, or at least hope, men and women within hailing distance of the big 3-0 would be over and done with.
New episodes are airing Sunday nights, with repeats on Tuesdays.
Me? I'm dropping out. I've seen it all -- not just in the original "High School Reunion" last year, but everywhere I turn the dial. High-school behavior is so prevalent on TV these days, it's practically epidemic.
Conflicting standards
We live in a society weirdly conflicted where maturation is concerned. Various exponents of the media, particularly the music, movie and TV industries, encourage children, younger and younger, to grow up and adopt postpubescent looks, attitudes, language and sexuality. Then they encourage these premature teens to maintain their sophomoric state for two or three decades. If the Bible were written today, the oft-quoted passage from 1st Corinthians would read, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; when I became a man, I still wanted my MTV."
"High School Reunion" at least deserves the commendation "truth in labeling." It's up front about what it is. Other reality shows make some pretense to being adult when, in fact, they're predicated on stunted emotional growth, just like the WB show.
Just like high school
Consider this year's biggest new reality hit, NBC's "The Apprentice": Sixteen would-be business tycoons compete in entrepreneurial challenges that have about as much to do with corporate management as a fund-raising car wash. They gossip, feud, pair up and try to avoid being expelled by Principal Trump. Sounds like high school.
Or consider the reality hit that started it all, "Survivor," now going through a reunion of sorts itself: It's all about cliques, who's in and out, and who's been saying what about whom when he or she wasn't around. Sounds like high school.
"The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette," "Joe Millionaire," "Average Joe" -- name your dating show, rife with smiling treachery, and we're talking high school.
"American Idol"? The contestants, many of them actual teens, display a fair amount of composure and maturity, but the snarky judges and host Ryan Seacrest? High school.
Remember "Are You Hot?"? It put us back in the parking lot, waiting for the last bell, grading the passing parade of flesh. High school.
"The Simple Life"? OK, "high school" is not the proper characterization of Nicole Richie's and Paris Hilton's bratty behavior. Maybe preschool.
"Fear Factor"? Hey, grub worms aren't that much of a stretch if you've forced down some of the school cafeteria's unidentifiable glop. Gimme an "H," gimme an "I" -- what's that spell? High school.
Prank shows like "Punk'd," "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment" and "Scare Tactics"? Like giving wedgies on a grand scale. Sooo high school.
Beyond reality
Pinning the trend toward juvenilia entirely on nonscripted shows is a little unfair, however. Remember what I said about entertainment that celebrates prolonged immaturity? What more overt example of this could there be than "Friends," a sitcom in which characters now in their mid-'30s still behave, often as not, as though they were three weeks away from prom night. When "Friends" occasionally does a flashback episode, showing Chandler, Ross, Monica, et al. in high school, the only thing that's different about them is their haircuts.
The characters on "Will & amp; Grace" make the arrested-development cases on "Friends" look like the assistant district attorneys on "Law & amp; Order." Jack and Karen in particular have senses of giggly humor so infantile, they don't seem to have graduated from potty training, much less high school.
And to think that PBS used to have the educational-TV franchise all to itself.
XHolston writes for (Long Island) Newsday.