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But these shows also target a timely anxiety: the middle class's fear of falling. The things these shows give away-health care, a house, college-have been among the foundations of social mobility. You might not be rich, but if you worked hard, you could secure them and give your kids a shot at doing even better. But all are becoming wildly expensive. The Scholar minces no words about these worries. College, says its narrator, is "the single best chance to grab a piece of the American Dream. But now the price of admission is threatening that dream." Even Fox's Nanny 911 and ABC's Supernanny offer a fantasy to time-strapped working parents: a child-care professional who swoops in and solves your family's problems.
In this moment of crisis, these series swing into place like a virtual social safety net. (All we're missing is a reality show on which 10 seniors compete to get their pensions restored.) And there are plenty of takers. In the Three Wishes pilot, the townspeople line up in droves to pitch their wishes to producers, like peasants petitioning a medieval lord. "The whole parking lot is filled with people humbling themselves asking for a hand," Grant says. "It's a beautiful thing."
In tough times, people often turn to a higher power-sometimes even higher than TV. It's hard not to see the effects here of the postelection focus on spiritual values. Grant doesn't talk about religion on Three Wishes, but Christian music is her claim to fame. There's a quasi-spiritual cast to Home Edition (and not just because an itinerant carpenter works miracles across the land). Participants talk openly about prayer, and the show often involves local churches. Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, attributes this to a greater religious openness in American culture. Boyd draws a connection to TV's coverage of Pope John Paul II's death, which he says made it seem "as though everyone in America had converted overnight to Catholicism."
Regardless of the spiritual-or commercial-motivations, it's good to see TV using its resources for an act of charity other than giving Jenny McCarthy a sitcom. And you can't help tearing up when you see a little girl ask for an operation so she can do gymnastics again. While these shows do a social good, not just by helping but also by telling viewers they have the power to help others, they portray a particular kind of social contract as well. There is a great deal of talk of community in the small-town neighborhood sense and almost none in the national sense. They emphasize recipients' faith, their positivity, their unwillingness to blame others. Hardships are a result of fate, not cutbacks or social priorities. No one wonders why people in a rich nation forgo college or surgery. The solutions to problems are entirely private (in exchange for product placement) and local. It's federalist TV.