Starting Over: They Say Reality TV Has Never Been so Real

One reality TV program tends to stand out, at least among regular watchers of daytime television: "Starting Over", an hour-long NBC program now in its third season. Its premise is bringing six women from different walks of life together under one roof to try to move to a new, stronger stage.

For some of the women, the issue may be weight loss or dealing with the after effects of gastric bypass surgery, divorce or efforts to leave an unhappy marriage, or to deal with the sadness and despair that has left them using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. Others come to jumpstart a career - or get out of one in the case of a recent housemate who had been an escort and stripper - or to move past conditions like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or an illness such as cancer.

At first glance, however, every "Starting Over" house since the first season has seemed just a little too glorious and manse-like. While the first season was based in Chicago, the two subsequent ones have been taped in Southern California where the second house sat by itself at the top of a soaring hill.

With these houses come an obligatory swimming pool, incredible landscaping, and lots of outdoor shots of buzzing bees and blooming flowers to remind you how beautiful life is even while you sit through "Starting Over" episodes that may discuss sexual abuse, child beating, and infidelity. In other words, the setting sometimes seems a bit too perfect for the subject matter. You also get the sense that the women are there for a luxury vacation rather than real work, a situation less apparent with the more ordinary first season home.

Each woman, called a housemate or SO sister, gets assigned one of two life coaches while all share the resident psychologist and only male regular in the cast. The life coaches give the women assignments and exercises to perform to help them understand the current difficulties they experience or to gear them toward what they want for the future.