Winners,losers and gun-toting straight shooters

Was Paul’s congee really better than Sarah’s steelhead trout in the most recent Top Chef finale? You’ll have to take Emeril’s word for it. The show’s viewers have never tasted or even smelled one of the winning dishes. Shows like American Idol and The Voice combine tyranny and flawed democracy,pairing haughty expert opinions with befuddling fan votes.

The hoary Survivor and similar contests are based on contrived challenges designed mostly to spur backstabbing and tears. Of course reality shows have other faults beyond their erratic ideas about best and worst. And hammering the genre for its indignity is like railing against fast food for its nutritional shortcomings. Both are ubiquitous for a reason; while the lizard-brain cravings each satisfies are nothing to be proud of,they’re not going away any time soon. Actual expertise,however,the kind that can be measured objectively and experienced fully from your sofa,offers satisfaction without the guilt,which is where Top Shot comes in.

At a glance it looks like any other reality competition. It is hosted by the blandly manly Colby Donaldson,a former Survivor contestant. It divides its group of telegenic Average Joes and (a few) Janes into two teams and crams them all into the usual spacious contemporary house. The contestants mingle awkwardly in group scenes and then snipe behind one another’s backs in confession-cam monologues. The show wakes up,however,when the guns come out. The timed challenges marry the suspense of a stopwatch with carnival whimsy. The contestants plug burning fuses and bowling pins,and shoot golf balls off tees from 100 yards away. They pick off sliding racks of paint-filled jars,and take out targets from speeding motorcycle sidecars and windmilling rigs.

The most gripping contests pair competing marksmen who fire at swiveling or sliding contraptions that allow them to knock off targets and undo one another’s progress at the same time. This is the History channel,so Top Shot embraces the branding with an array of arms from the past,ranging from longbows and a 19th-century cannon to World War I-era revolvers and high-caliber sniper rifles. But despite the gun porn the most potent weapon in the show’s arsenal is its slow-motion camera work. Gun smoke billows and bullets emerge languidly from barrels and smoothly puncture targets hundreds of yards away,setting off either a bright splash of paint or a fiery eruption,based on the whim of whoever decides such things. The episode-concluding eliminations between two shooters generally end in hugs,handshakes and other expressions of mutual respect,pointing up what some reality fans might see as a flaw of Top Shot.

What acting out and infighting there is on the show feels perfunctory and forced,perhaps because shooting is mostly a sport of microfocus and quiet concentration. It rewards decidedly non-Snooki-ish personalities,and even if a deluded prima donna did manage to make it into the competition,targets don’t lie. It’s harder to hide behind crazy when everyone just watched you shank a dozen shots on the range. The shooters seem like decent people but function primarily as program elements,working with the cinematography and the stagecraft to highlight the true stars of the show: empirical excellence and the binary charms of a competition unfolding in plain sight. Which is why,while the marquee dramas plumb moral gray areas,comedy is as subjective as ever and “reality” is mediated by bullies and clowns,some of the only tranquility television has to offer can be found,paradoxically,on a gun show. Sometimes it’s nice to just trust your own eyes.