CATCHIN’ UP: “Capture” features two teams, The Hunters and The Prey, vying for $250,000. (The CW)
What would you get if “The Hunger Games” and “Survivor” met on one of those horrific, formerly bucolic paradises that have become the go-to locales for cheesy reality shows?
If you guessed “Naked and Afraid,” you’d be right — but if you also guessed “Capture,” from the folks who brought you, yes, “Naked and Afraid,” you’d be right twice.
That being said, if you can’t take one more of these dopey “Survivor” ripoff shows — inevitably filled with people in perfect shape who lose clothing and weight as they struggle to beat the crap out of the other competitors — stop reading this, and go get a drink.
And a bag of chips.
If you really like these shows, however, have I got one for you.
“Capture,” on The CW of all places, pits 12 teams of two people each (The Prey) against one team of two (The Hunters) each week.
The Hunters, chosen by lot each episode, are taken from the teams of 12. At the start of each episode, The Prey are released into the wild from a high-tech platform that looks like something straight out of “The Hunger Games.”
After a few minutes of a running start, the hunters go searching for them using “talons” — which don’t look like talons but do look like “Simon,” the old electronic game with flashing lights that you held in your hand. The Hunters must “capture” two teams by zapping them with the talons, or they could be sent home.
The captives are put into an open-air cage until the next day, when The Hunters come back with more prey.
If not, The Hunters are put into the cage.
It’s like elaborate laser tag — with better-looking people than you find in most laser tag parks. It has a “Hunger Games”-type host, “Game Master” Luke Tipple, who announces stuff into the wilderness to freak out both The Hunters and The Prey.
The area they have to cover consists of 4,000 acres of wilderness, which is surrounded by a 10-mile electric fence.
Presumably, if you try to escape, you won’t be electrocuted as happens on NBC’s fake reality show “Siberia,”which has about as many viewers as the real Siberia has catering halls.
Anyway, the 12 teams are comprised of the typical suspects you find in every reality show.
There are the scheming girls, the gay couple, the brother and sister act, the homeless couple and the skeevy guys with waxed eyebrows that make me want to projectile-vomit.
Worse, they’re always saying how cool and handsome they are. To their mothers, maybe.
“Capture” is enjoyable in a “Hunger Games” sort of way — although instead of losers getting killed, they get thrown off.
The winners split $250,000 and all the TV exposure they can handle. Call me strict, but when they take the death penalty for losers off the table . . . I don’t know . . . these reality shows just lose that real edge.