Y2K got us, after all: Last year bugged by dumb TV

The Y2K bug we all thought we'd avoided last Jan. 1 took its mischievous toll throughout 2000. Just consider the stuff that infected us on TV.

Postelection coverage was one notable example. For us viewers, tracking that chadadelic ballot brawl in Florida was like a fever dream blending C-SPAN with the Weather Channel.

Day after day, drama somehow raged from mind-numbing minutiae that kept the network pundits guessing. And hoarse.

Day after day, we followed this battle of apocalyptic politics as we might fix our sights on a TV weather map during hurricane season. For more than a month in the Sunshine State, conditions and forecast were in stormy flux.

No wonder comedians had a field day. We need only recall Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," whose solution for the recount debacle was inviting Bush and Gore to "stand in opposite corners of the country, call to Florida in a soothing voice and see which one the state comes to."

At their best, TV humorists were the voice of reason in a year of foolish abundance and abundant foolishness. When all was said and done, this was the unifying theme of TV 2000: People doing stupid things for money while we at home looked on.

Just think of William Shatner vamping through his name-your-own-price Priceline.com commercials.

And who among us can forget "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" last February? Aired by Fox, this was TV at its crassest as nurse/health-club habitue Darva Conger was chosen from 50 comely misses by Rick Rockwell, a show-biz wannabe with an iffy bank account and a crocodile grin.

But, wait! Darva had been kidding! All she really wanted was the free trip to Las Vegas, where the show was taped. Like those of so many who had come to Vegas before her, her impulsive marriage was a big mistake!

In truth, she was a simple girl who just wanted her privacy back, as Conger told every TV show that would have her.

Soon she was divorced. She kept the ring, then stripped in Playboy.

Now flash forward to November. For the big finish of his ABC special "Frozen in Time," illusionist David Blaine gained release from the midst of a 6-ton block of ice in Manhattan's

Times Square after 62 hours' entombment.

It was not exactly a Houdini-caliber escape. Blaine's egress was more like a package of peas getting chipped out of a freezer no one bothered to defrost.

During his 21/2 days on ice, Blaine took sustenance through a plastic tube as he watched the world go by beyond his reach. (Add a remote control and a La-Z-Boy and that would describe many of us.)

Then he was wrapped in blankets, placed on a stretcher and whisked away to thaw.

Proving what?

It would seem that, to paraphrase President Kennedy, Blaine chose this stunt not because it was easy but because it was dumb but paid well. And, unaccountably, millions of us shared with Blaine his silly exercise in passive suffering.

Likewise, last summer we watched "Survivor," which stranded 16 nobodies on a tropical isle with 3,683 (give or take) production people for a month of back-to-basics fortune-hunting.

The good news: "Survivor" was grandly crafted and wonderfully entertaining. All in all, it was a refreshing surprise (which the "Survivor" sequel CBS will launch later this month is unlikely to match).

Then came CBS' "Big Brother," which resembled nothing so much as those interminable movies Andy Warhol made of people doing nothing.

Unfortunately, "Big Brother," with its contestants living under house arrest and constant TV scrutiny, was meant to captivate viewers, not put them under with the show's lifeless video.

With three months of almost nightly airings before its half-million-dollar grand prize was awarded, "Big Brother" surely broke the record for face time splurged on inconsequential people. It may even have earned the title of Television's Dumbest Show Yet. The competition is sure to be fierce in 2001. We mustn't forget: The millennium is young.<