94 Time August 17/August 24, 2020
ESSAY
Television,
now heal thyself!
By Judy Berman
I
f you’ve waTched any amounT of realiTy Tv,
you’ve witnessed a scene like the one that closes
the series premiere of TBS’s Lost Resort: a beauti-
ful 20-something woman, surrounded by scenery
straight out of the Garden of Eden, screams her heart out.
Her hot castmates look on helplessly, wearing skimpy ath-
leisure and concerned expressions.
On The Bachelor, this kind of meltdown would prob-
ably be about competing for a mate. The Amazing Race
and its ilk force exhausted contestants to work together
to complete challenges designed to incite conflict. But
in Lost Resort, the meltdown is the challenge. The series
transports nine people to a resort in the Costa Rican jungle
on what it describes as a “journey of self-discovery,” in the
care of “an eclectic team of alternative healers.” In this in-
stance, we are observing something called a “rage ritual”—
and, in a broader sense, one of the sillier manifestations
of a new trend in reality TV: the wellness show.
Wellness is, of course, a massive cultural force unto
itself. Too tenacious to be a trend, it’s more like a new life-
style paradigm for youngish, relatively affluent Western-
ers willing to pay a premium for high-end products, treat-
ments and experiences—all in the pursuit of practices,
from yoga to ayahuasca shamanism, that mostly originated
in the Global South. The Global Wellness Institute, a non-
profit umbrella organization for the $4.5 trillion industry,
defines wellness as “the active pursuit of activities, choices
and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.”
Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Goop empire sits at the peril-
ous crossroads of media and e-commerce, is perhaps the
most famous face of contemporary wellness culture. This
winter, she unveiled Netflix’s The Goop Lab With Gwyneth
Paltrow, a docuseries in which she and her staff test a suite
of buzzy practices. Also on Netflix, Down to Earth With
Zac Efron sends the actor around the world with his buddy
Darin Olien, whom Efron describes as a “guru of healthy
living and superfoods,” on a bro trip focused on wellness,
food and conservation. (The investigative series Un(Well),
coming to Netflix on Aug. 12, will either balance out the
aforementioned fluff or further confuse viewers.) YouTube
Original game show Sleeping With Friends challenges You-
Tube personalities to improve their sleep hygiene. And
HBO Max recently announced that it would partner with
the popular app Calm on A World of Calm, a series that will
enlist performers like Mahershala Ali, Nicole Kidman and
Keanu Reeves to narrate episodes designed to soothe.
Diverse though they are, all wellness shows share one en-
ticement: the possibility of transformation—for subjects on-
screen, the viewer or both. This is hardly a new theme. Ovid’s
Metamorphoses is written into the DNA of Western story-
telling, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest to My Fair Lady.
Just as it was in that musical, not to men-
tion in so many teen movies, physical
transformation was a favorite trope of
reality series in the ’00s. But since then,
an increased awareness of the dark side
of reality TV and a surge in pop feminism
have put an end to most makeover shows.
The new wave of wellness shows isn’t
just tapping into a novel market; it’s also
satisfying our hunger for transformation
stories. But is the spectacle of rage rituals
really nourishing viewers’ bodies or souls
more than what came before it?Reality tV was a Wild West in the
early 21st century—and horrific con-
cepts outnumbered brilliant ones. ABC’s
Extreme Makeover spent four seasons
combining the acute pain of cosmetic
surgery with the prolonged agony of bru-
tal diets and exercise regimens to trans-
form regular people into supermodels.
With 2004’s short-lived The Swan, Fox
upped the ante by restricting its “ugly
duckling” cast to women and pitting the
gut- renovated subjects against one an-
other in a beauty pageant. In her bookTimeOff Opener
PREVIOUS PAGE, THESE PAGES: TBS (2)
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The cast of Lost
Resort includes a
pastor experiencing
a crisis of faith and a
codependent mother
and daughter