America's Next Top Model

"America's Next Top Model" Airing Wednesday at 8 pm on UPN If you had the time and inclination to flip on "The Tyra Banks Show" last Thursday afternoon, I'm guessing that either you were seeking some emotional candy when you should have been doing your homework, or else you're a young housewife looking to extend your post-Oprah buzz. Its set glowing like a New Age nightclub, the show restyles the conventions of daytime sob-sisterhood-the make-over magic tricks, the self-affirmative pop-psychology-for an audience that wants its earnest uplift trimmed in bling.

In any case, you flipped to channel 9 and saw Tyra Banks-the black model famous as a racial boundary-breaker, though perhaps more so for her regal forehead-in conversation with one Tyra Banxxx, who, as the orthography of her pseudonym might hint, had parlayed a resemblance to her namesake into a career having sex on tape. Banks had brought her doppelganger in for some nurturing and elicited, from the star of Naughty College Girls 35, a promise to quit porn. She then announced she would pay the girl's way through beauty school. It should have been a breeze to scoff at this processed-cheese altruism, but Banks' cheese is that of a den mother fondly grilling sandwiches. That she projects authenticity as well as any media star now in the firmament is key to the success of the reality show that paved the way for the chat-fest, "America's Next Top Model."

"ANTM" is, of course, a modeling competition, sort of a make-over segment expanded to a season's length. In this, its fifth season, the show has so far delivered a few fresh twists-a same-sex romance, the defection of a Texas beauty queen unwilling to assume a pixie haircut-but otherwise sticks to its formulae, which are as comforting as ritual. Ah, the instruction in how to "walk"! Oh, the demands to be "fierce"! Banks presides with the air of a hard-working high-school guidance counselor, and I can't wait until she starts bringing the contestants in for heart-to-hearts.

Where each installment of NBC's "The Apprentice," kicks off with Donald Trump saying, "Who will be fired this week?," the opening sequence of "ANTM" finds Banks wondering, "Who has what it takes to become America's Next Top Model?" The Donald wants us to reach deep into our bile ducts and guess whose failure to anticipate; La Tyra asks us who we're rooting for, implicitly invoking the merits of tenacity and discipline while she's at it. Which is not to suggest that the show's viewers lack cattiness, nor that its contestants are free of bitchery-only that "ANTM" is notably more good-natured than any other reality show that gathers young people in opulent digs and lets 'em at it. In contrast to the louts and loutesses on MTV's "The Real World," say, these women regularly express a range of human emotions. They're especially good with empathetic sadness. Nowhere else on TV can you witness more tears, more hugging, more tearful hugging. The show offers emotional voyeurism, but wholesomely. It's daytime for prime time.