Entertainment

‘SECRET’ OF SUCCESS

If I had a nickel for every tear shed on “Secret Millionaire,” I too would be a millionaire.

Actually, make that a multimillionaire. This new, short-flight series, which premiered Wednesday night on Fox, is awash in tears – tears of sadness, happiness, gratitude, you name it.

Whatever the reason, there’s a lot of crying going on – in the show and also in living rooms across America. Come on, admit it: You checked out this show the other night and bawled like a baby.

You didn’t? Then I suggest you go and see a cardiologist because you must have a heart of stone.

How could you not weep? This show steers you right there with absolute certainty.

In “Secret Millionaire,” wealthy people spend a week in a down-and-out community where they masquerade as people who have hit the skids.

They take up residence in squalid quarters (including a motel room in Wednesday night’s premiere with more cockroaches than three episodes of “Kitchen Nightmares”), spend a limited amount of pre-allocated funds on cheap food and go in search of manual day jobs.

Among the locales visited Wednesday: Buras, La., a town hard-hit by Katrina; and Imperial Beach, Calif., the southernmost beach community in the state that was portrayed in “Secret Millionaire” and previously on “John from Cincinnati” as some sort of economic and environmental disaster area. (Ashley Murch, proprietor of Katy’s Cafe, a coffee house featured on both shows, assured me yesterday the I.B. is a lot nicer than that.)

Under these circumstances, the secretive millionaires inevitably cross paths with others in dire straits and learn their sad life stories by asking a lot of nosy questions.

The interviewees don’t realize it, but they’re really auditioning for charity. At the end of each show, the secret millionaires put on fancy duds and reveal their true wealthy selves and then hand out checks to those whose tales of woe moved them the most.

The millionaires cry, the recipients cry, and the nation’s makers of tissues reap a windfall as America wipes its eyes and blows its noses.

More than 7.3 million tuned in to watch and weep Wednesday night. Fox execs weren’t exactly weeping over those numbers yesterday.

“Secret Millionaire”

Wednesday night on Fox