There will now be two celebrity diving shows

By Sean O'Neal | October 25, 2012 | 10:13pm

Aux Features TV

Forcing celebrities to hurl themselves off of raised platforms and into water for our amusement is an idea whose time has come, apparently, with ABC's very recent acquisition of Celebrity Splash being immediately answered by Fox's just-announced two-hour "special" and possibly series, Stars In Danger: High Diving. Like Celebrity Splash, Stars In Danger is based on a European format, as well as the fact that U.S. TV standards don't yet allow us to set fading celebrities on fire to punish them for still wanting to be famous. And also like the sudden, coincidental appearance of two American celebrity diving shows, Stars In Danger has its own apparent copycat overseas, where the Netherlands show that Celebrity Splash is based on has already been threatened with a lawsuit for ripping off the much-longer-running Stars and its innovations in making celebrities do things they're not good at.

Of course, ABC has already established through its Big Brother rip-off Glass House that all reality television is essentially the same, whether it involves self-centered strangers sharing a living space, or making people who used to have appreciable talents potentially injure themselves in exchange for their continued exposure, so who's to say what's original? Are we not all just drops in an ocean, occasionally displaced by the literal and metaphorical belly flop of some guy who used to be on a sitcom? Think about it while you watch people whose names you sort-of recognize fall down.