THE BRIEFCASE features hard-working American families experiencing financial setbacks who are presented with a briefcase containing a large sum of money and a potentially life-altering decision: they can keep all of the money for themselves, or give all or part of it to another family in need. The series premieres Wednesday, May 27 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
If you don’t believe Newton Minow’s assertion that television truly is a vast wasteland, you probably LOVE reality television and can’t wait for the debut of CBS’ new series, The Briefcase. It takes the exploitative nature of reality television to new heights (or depths, depending on your perspective). The idea is pretty simple: unbeknownst to each other, two families “experiencing financial setbacks” are presented with suitcases containing a very large sum of cash. With that briefcase comes a choice- they can keep it all for themselves. Or they can give some or all of the money to the other family.
Let the moral dilemmas, selfishness, and triumphs of the human spirit commence, eh? And don’t forget triumph over adversity, compassion, greed, pettiness, and the entire ugly range of human emotion to be laid out for our listening and dancing pleasure. Because if you can’t play on people’s emotions and circumstances for maximum entertainment value…well, what’s the point, right?
At it’s most basic, the idea behind The Briefcase is simple enough: give people a briefcase full of case and let humanity (or the lack of it) run riot. The exploitation of people experiencing “financial setbacks” is hard to miss, if only because the viewer is fairly slapped in the face with it. I understand the show’s subjects are hardly unwilling or unwitting participants. They’re on screen allowing their lives to be filmed of their own free will…because what red-blooded ‘Merican doesn’t want their 15 minutes of fame? If they choose to allow TV cameras to capture the breadth and depth of their day to day lives, that’s on them. Accordingly, the depths of my sympathy for the families involved is limited. They made the choice to allow their moral dilemma and the accompanying humanity to be captured in all its technicolor glory. It’s humanity I’m concerned about- particularly our willingness to sit in benign judgment over those whose lives and moral dilemmas spool themselves out on our television screens. What does The Briefcase say about society as a whole? Off the top of my head, I’d have to say nothing good.
But how sad are we for thinking that this sort of exploitation television is something wholesome, entertaining, and worthy of our time?
In each episode, two struggling middle-class families get that cash-filled briefcase. They have 72 hours to decide: Keep it all to pay off debts or give all or part of the moolah to the other needy family? (Neither family knows that the other faces the same dilemma.)
In the premiere, one family consists of an unemployed dad who had a heart attack but has no health insurance, a mom who makes $300 a week and three teen daughters. The other family consists of an Iraq war vet who lost a leg, his pregnant nurse wife (who gets no maternity leave) and their son.
Each family gets details about the other — and the chance to visit the other’s house when no one’s home (which is kind of stalkerish) to see how crummy their quarters are.
What good is a show like The Briefcase without a well-defined moral dilemma that could possibly be a flashpoint for some families who may already be in crisis due to their diminished financial circumstances? You may not necessarily believe money to be the root of all evil, but when the lack of it and the resulting difficult circumstances become entertainment fodder, it doesn’t take much to discern the potential problems. Even worse is the reality that filming the unspooling of a moral dilemma as cameras roll certainly isn’t going to ease the resolution of said dilemma.
As for the “triumph of the human spirit,” how else do you think CBS and the show’s creator are going to promote The Briefcase?”
“The Briefcase is an eye-opening look into what matters most in people’s lives, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster ride with a shocking ending each week,” series creator Dave Broome said in a statement. “I’ve been incredibly impressed by just how generous Americans are, even with shrinking paychecks and rising debt, when there’s little left to give.”
An “eye-opening look into what matters most in people’s lives?” That hasn’t been all massaged, manipulated, and positioned for maximum entertainment and commercial exploitation value? True, I understand that CBS is in the entertainment, not philanthropy, business…but did no one involved with The Briefcase stop to think about the downside of exploiting families in difficult circumstances? Or how the mere fact of receiving such a windfall could in and of itself alter the dynamics of a family in ways that may not necessarily be positive? Particularly if that family may already be in crisis?
Once these people actually have the potentially life-changing money in their hands, producers begin emotionally manipulating them, because this is a reality show…. [T]the contestants are then informed that they have three options: they can keep the money, give some of the money away to another struggling family, or give all of the money away. Over the next 72 hours, each family is then bombarded with details about the hardships another family is going through, sprinkled with a bit of Wife Swap-style stereotype baiting—one episode will pair up a married lesbian couple with a family of gun-toting Christian conservatives from Texas, for example—all while presumably being coached on the importance of selflessness off camera. After this three-day guilt trip, the families are brought face to face and informed that, unbeknownst to them, there were two briefcases full of cash the whole time. Realizing that the painful moral reckoning they just went through was completely unnecessary, their decisions are then revealed.
And their decisions are undoubtedly held up for scrutiny by the viewing audience, who will provide them with the thumbs up or down response as judgment and move on, free from the burden of duty or responsibility for their fellow human being. In the end, it’s not at all about the families and their difficult circumstances. It’s about manipulating each situation for maximum entertainment value…and maximizing ratings in order to make as much money as possible from the show’s sponsors.
Panem et circenses television doesn’t purport to solve problems; it’s about entertainment. I don’t think I’m alone in finding it abhorrent that the material circumstances of the participating families are manipulated for entertainment value without doing much of anything to address, much less solve, the underlying problem.
What’s CBS going to come up with next? Bum fighting? Pairing off heroin addicts and forcing them to compete for one remaining hit of their preferred poison? Filming recovering alcoholics as they face the challenge of being faced with a bottle and the possibility relapsing? Where does this ride down the slippery slope end? Is there nothing too manipulative, voyeuristic, or exploitative to put on television as “entertainment?”
As if I even need to attempt an answer to that question.
