Babe Tube

By Joel Stein

The problem is the rescues. If Baywatch would just stick to the slow-motion running and random bikini contests and bring the thonged extras into the foreground, guys wouldn't need other television shows. Yet Baywatch insists, week after week, on these tedious lifesaving rescue missions. Let the fools drown, people. Prioritize.

Luckily, a bevy of syndicated hour-long action series is filling the need--Baywatch without the plot. The best among them is Pamela Anderson Lee's V.I.P. And with that show's ratings success last season and the continued popularity of the trend-setting Xena: Warrior Princess, syndicated television has created five more female action shows, many of which involve very little action but a whole lot of show.

Tuning in regularly are legions of hot-blooded men. "Young males traditionally like to watch two things--action and females," notes Gil Grant, executive consultant for newcomer Relic Hunter, who is paid for such astute observations. "Put them together, and you have a hot ticket." A hot ticket that translates easily into most languages. American outlets for these shows are shrinking as local channels that once filled airtime with this kind of cheesy programming have become network affiliates for the WB or UPN, which have expanded to six and five nights of programming, respectively. But the international market can't seem to get enough of buxom women in bikinis who enjoy a little kickboxing on the side. Following the lucrative example set by Baywatch, which airs in 144 countries, these action shows have gone global, and many of the new arrivals are joint productions of American and overseas companies. "The international market is what makes these shows work," says Jeff Dellin, vice president of research and program strategy for Studios USA, which produces and distributes Xena. "Domestic is the gravy." V.I.P., for instance, is already translated into 10 languages, all of which, somehow, are able to provide an approximation of "omigod."

It was the belief that there was not only a great character to portray but also a fortune to be made from her universal charms that interested Lee in V.I.P. "I took a lower salary on this show because I felt the back end could really be meaningful," says the woman famous for adding meaning to her front end. "I know a lot about syndication and what appeals to the international market. I make sure there are a lot of physical gags and comedy, explosions and beautiful scenery."

Each week the V.I.P. writers have a meeting to decide upon a lame excuse to show half-naked women. White-slavery ring? Trouble on a swimsuit photoshoot? The owner of a lingerie company under siege? Good enough. The writers' only requirement is to include one sexy scene and one action scene every 10 pages. But they don't even need to bother coming up with these flimsy premises; as bodyguard Vallery Irons, Lee wears 5-in. stilettos and a spandex minidress just to go to the office. "Val's wardrobe is her interpretation of being able to be everything she wants to be," explains Lee. "It's a sort of 'It could happen to you' kind of thing, that someone from a small town could end up in a glamour city wearing pink spandex and just be able to be a Barbie come to life."

And that she is. "She is a walking cartoon, a sight gag, and she knows it," says J.F. Lawton, the show's creator and screenwriter of Pretty Woman. "This year she is wearing the most ridiculous things in the world. Half the clothes come right out of her own closet." The show is in the classic giggle-and-jiggle genre. "We have more explosions and babes per minute than any other TV show. We're unapologetic about the sexiness," says Lawton. "But if handled the right way, it's not offensive to women."

The show has not yet found that way. Even in her newly trimmed-down state, Lee is outrageous. But V.I.P. is swiftly paced, self-consciously flip, includes a cleverly cast celebrity cameo in each episode (Loni Anderson has appeared as Lee's mother) and, most important, contains one sexy scene and one action scene every 10 minutes.

Relic Hunter, starring Wayne's World's Tia Carrere as a female Indiana Jones, is produced by France's Gaumont Television and Canada's Fireworks Entertainment. The opening of the first episode, which aired in September, featured Carrere's bikinied Professor Sydney Fox teaching her students a sexy African dance, followed by a scene in which she talks to her assistant while wearing a tasteful taupe lace bra-and-panty set. "We skate the line of historical frolic," says Carrere, delivering a line she'd never get to say on the show. "What I like is if there are children watching, maybe they will imagine going to Tibet or Berlin or any of these places." But the kids sure will be disappointed when they discover that few old churches house nude health spas.

Still, Relic Hunter is a masterpiece compared with Peter Benchley's Amazon, an adventure show starring former model Carol Alt and created by Benchley, who wrote Jaws. Not only is the series slow moving and badly produced, it doesn't show much skin. Instead of having fun with a story about a land of beautiful giant women, Amazon has six passengers of a crashed plane wandering aimlessly in the South American jungle. One would think the women's clothes would be shredded and useless after the first week, but somehow they always appear dry-cleaned.

In one segment, set in the drenching rain, a character offers up her shirt to shelter the group's campfire. But just when it seems like there will be some gratuitous seminudity, the scene devolves into a gruesome amputation ending in death. Plus, she gets her shirt back by the following scene. And when these women enter the Amazon, they get wet only up to the waist. It's like a whole show of nothing but lifeguard rescues. "One of the challenges we face is to keep the historical and anthropological interest alive while also having beautiful women in jeopardy," explains Benchley. How about you just find deeper rivers, Pete?

Likewise, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, produced by Animal House director John Landis and featuring Jennifer O'Dell, needs to up the babe quotient and tone down the silly adventure plots. But a couple of shows for next year look to have more potential. Former Baywatch star Gena Lee Nolin will star in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, in which she will morph her body into animals'. That can't be bad. The only catch is that Sheena will focus on saving the environment, which means the show will have to include a lot of leopard morphs to make it worth watching.

Even more promising is Cleopatra 2525, from Rob Tapert and R.J. Stewart, the co-creators of Xena, which still outdraws all these other shows, including V.I.P. and Baywatch. Cleopatra will have Xena's Jennifer Sky playing a stripper whose botched breast-augmentation procedure requires her to be frozen. When she's accidentally thawed in the 26th century, she, Hercules actress Gina Torres and newcomer Victoria Pratt get chased around by robots. But they too are going to spend their time fighting for the environment. There must be some FCC equation for how much sexual exploitation one can do for each minute of whale saving.

Can these shows last in a cable universe crowded with pay-per-view, The Man Show's ubiquitous women on trampolines and a score of ways to see topless women without sitting through bad adventure plots? Probably not. Unless, of course, they star Pamela Anderson Lee.

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles