A new reality: Do the right thing

LET’S get it out of the way up front: I absolutely cried. Twice.

Of all its potential uses, television’s ability to emotionally manipulate is one of its most underused. It has frequently entertained, sometimes shocked, and maybe not-quite-often-enough educated. But for the medium to blatantly abuse the goodwill of its viewers, to demand full-throated feeling above and beyond intellectual engagement, is a recent innovation.

Thanks to her daily talk show, Oprah Winfrey was key to this development. When celebrities need to unload, they choose Oprah. But she has also long given equal footing to the struggles of everyday folks. By broadcasting everyday concerns – in fact, by building an empire upon them – she has become somehow both relatable and aspirational. Be a little more like Oprah, or at least watch her a little more often, and you might become a little better yourself.

“Oprah’s Big Give,” which premieres at 9 tonight on ABC, is a logical extension of Winfrey’s brand and her first sustained excursion into prime time – other ventures, such as her book club, or the one-off “Oprah’s Pop Star Challenge,” were incorporated into her daily show.

The truly elegant stroke of “Oprah’s Big Give” is that charity becomes viral – each contestant, effectively a representative of Oprah, is required to activate several other people in the course of their mission. And presumably, if the show is successful, it will further mainstream charitable values, much in the same way “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” did when it launched in 2003.

The show also renders visible the various sorts of need that Americans experience: helping the homeless mother of two who fled domestic abuse is as worthy as helping a recent widow pay off her mortgage as is helping a soon-to-be doctor repay his loans so that he might offer free medical care to underprivileged children. All beneficence is created equal.

Executive produced by Bertram van Munster, who is also responsible for “The Amazing Race,” this is a dense affair, with contestants going up against one another in challenges of charity that involve complete strangers. They are then required to seek the aid of others in accomplishing their mission.

The participants are diverse in background, if uniformly warm-hearted. There’s a pageant queen, baby-faced dot-com millionaire, an Army captain who served in Iraq, a TV producer who is confined to a wheelchair.

Of the contestants, a few have some formal background in charity work – they’re virtual ringers. And in tonight’s episode, experience helps filter out the best givers. Some work the phones to ask big corporations for cash. Some go door to door. (One contestant is chastised for having fewer contacts to call on than her partner, which feels more like a slap from “The Celebrity Apprentice.”)

And there is some creativity on display: One team of givers provides the woman they are charged with helping with a financial advisor to accompany their windfall, a move so obvious it’s shocking it doesn’t occur to anyone else.

Hard to say goodbye

VANITY may not be the better part of charity, but it sometimes rears its head; a couple of contestants seem particularly aware of the camera. But in the main, it’s inspiring to see people devote their time and energy to something larger than themselves, placing themselves into utterly foreign environments and selflessly soliciting help.

Which makes elimination from the show that much more brutal. It is one thing to be eliminated from a competition for failing at a physical task, or for being snakelike, but for being the least successful philanthropist? Thus far, there have been no failures of goodwill, but not everyone is equally equipped with the capacity for transformative change.

What impact this will have on the recipients of charity from “Oprah’s Big Give” remains to be seen. “I wouldn’t be involved with anything that was going to humiliate or dehumanize or make anybody feel bad,” Winfrey recently told TV Guide.

Certainly some will fail – as is clear from the range of results tonight, success is never a fait accompli – but the consequences from coming up short have not been explored. And maybe they never will be – a curious last-minute donation from Jamie Foxx bails out one unsuccessful team tonight.

Perhaps a little contrivance isn’t so bad, though – there are lives at stake, actual people who are worth much more than a good narrative arc on a TV show. No one should be left worse off for signing on to have their trauma televised in the name of a little heartstring tugging. Tears, of course, do not pay the rent.