Is...That.......Your...........................Identity?

If I were Jerry “The Beav” Mathers or Bruce Jenner, I’d be calling my publicist about now. After making an appointment with my therapist, perhaps. I’d be trying to get myself booked on one of those reality shows where they make a bunch of “C” and “D” list celebrities live in one house so they can compare rehab experiences. Or vote each other off. I forget which. All designed so that they’d be recognized in public.

This all comes after a week of feeling not so great, and when I feel not so great, nothing cheers me up like really, really stupid television. Game shows and reality shows are terrific for this. In particular, flashy ones where I don’t have to think too hard.

“Identity” fit that bill almost perfectly. I don’t know if you’ve seen this thing. It’s been running (as a test market, I guess) for the past five weeknights on NBC (the network that’s decided it can no longer afford to run comedies or dramas during their 8-9 o’clock slots so they’ve been filling them with cheaper, crappier reality shows).

It’s hosted by Penn Jillette, the speaking half of Penn and Teller. I liked their act, but perhaps Penn wanted a break, or at least needed a gig where he could actually work with people who talked back to him. (not including the audience)

If you haven’t seen Identity, the concept is thus: twelve strangers, many with rather odd walks of life or circumstances, are set up on a stage, and the contestant, provided with a visual list of these walks of life or circumstances (eg. Opera singer, child actor, alligator wrestler, etc.), must match the person to their identity. For each correct guess, the contestant gets a particular amount of money, and for each subsequent correct guess, the monetary value gets higher. The most they can win is a half a mil, which in these days of million-dollar game shows, seems like too much work for the effort (at least they don’t have to eat any Madagascar hissing cockroaches). The contestant gets three official “outs.” They get one incorrect guess, they can ask a panel of pre-selected “experts” (so far they’ve had body language experts, private investigators, etc.), or something called a “Tridentity” where they can pick one identity and three possible suspected strangers will be highlighted. I’m not sure about this, but I think that at any time Penn either thinks the contestant is stuck, or being a complete bonehead, he can ask the suspected stranger for a bit more information about themselves (usually something like their first name (and if they are a well-known “stranger” this is enough to make the audience groan), where they’re from, etc.)

It’s not too awful except for a few things that really drive me nuts. The biggest problem is too much unwarranted suspense. After a contestant locks in a guess, Penn will hold his hands out in front of his eyes and glare down the ends of his fingertips as if to make an “unsuspecting” audience member in a box disappear, and say in those staged tones “Is……that…..(yawn)….your……..identity!” After which the camera focuses full-body on the stranger in question, while he or she tries to hold a poker face for what must feel like hours, while I take a nap or make a cup of tea of something.

Then the person either ‘fesses up (sometimes in a creative way that showcases the stranger’s skill, like the fire-eater or break dancer) or tells the contestant he or she is wrong.

I also hate that the list of identities is only put up on the screen intermittently, and my memory is too short to deal with that. Wait a minute, I’m asking myself. Was that a Boy Scout Troop Leader or a Deadhead or the Michael Jackson juror?

Another thing that has nothing to do with the quality of the show is when the contestant is faced with a COMPLETELY obvious choice and they don’t get it. Like, Miss USA 2006 is standing up there looking totally gorgeous in a bikini and heels, holding that pageant pose, and the contestant misses her completely. This is the same contestant who pegged Bruce Jenner as a ventriloquist (funny, you never see his mouth move).

But the one that actually had me talking back to the TV was on the other night. The strangers take the stage, and at the beginning, they are cloaked in dim lighting and dry-ice smoke, so you don’t get to see them clearly. But I think I recognize the tall, elegant gentleman at the top far right. Is that…could it be…? Then they post the list of identities. And ‘nuff said, “Creator of Spiderman” is among them.

Stan Lee. Stan Lee is standing right up there. (Maybe he’s trying to drum up a little publicity for the next “Who Wants To Be A Superhero?”) And the female contestant, thirty-ish and cheerleader-ish, has no clue who he is. After she knocks off the first few fairly easy strangers, she just kind of shrugs her shoulders and guesses at him, because none of the other identities match up to someone of Stan’s age bracket. “’Cause, you know, Spiderman is, like, old, you know?” she says.

I take a deep breath and remind myself that just like I might not recognize Fifty Cent or Lil’ Kim (and I still can’t tell the difference sometimes between Gwen Stephani and Christine Aguilara), there are some people out there who don’t know who Stan Lee is.

Pikers.

Anyway…who knows. Maybe this was just a one-time deal, maybe Penn and his stagecraft got himself enough ratings to score a regular gig. But forget about trying to be a contestant. I want to be one of the strangers standing on the stage. And my secret identity will be…someone who knows who Bruce Jenner is.