Entertainment

TV: State keeps reality crown as NBC launches 'Treasure Hunters'

11:52 AM CDT on Monday, June 19, 2006

By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News

As rip-offs go, Treasure Hunters at least looks nice.

Production values are first-rate in NBC's filmic, far-flung effort to wed The Amazing Race with The Da Vinci Code while also reaffirming Texas as the undisputed "green room" of reality series.

Four of the show's 10 teams, which debut tonight, feature either native Texans or current state residents. That's almost as high a percentage as Fox's ongoing second edition of Hell's Kitchen, in which half of the original field of 12 contestants hailed from hereabouts.

The most Texas-like team, at least in the prevailing national perception, is the rowdy, proud and loud Wild Hanlons.

"Let's rock 'n' roll Texas-style," mullet-headed Pat Hanlon of Copperas Cove crows upon learning that the three-member Genius team is composed of aggressively brainy Southern Methodist University students.

Older brother Ben Hanlon, 50, joins Pat, 39, and the latter's 19-year-old son, Josh. The SMU-based Geniuses are Francis Goldshmid, 20; Sam Khurana, 21; and Charles Taylor, 22.

"It's almost as if you really have to dumb yourself down," Francis says during his team's brief, forced alliance with the Young Professionals. "But it's hard to when you're smart."

Absent any instant meeting of the minds, let's meet the YPs, who also have Texas connections. Drew Brown, 26, originally hails from Plano and graduated from the University of Texas before defecting to Boston. Drew and his 28-year-old sister, Taryn Brown, both played basketball at UT. The third team member, Chandra Lewis, 26, met the Browns on a cruise. She's an Austin native with a degree from the University of Houston.

The plus-size Brown brothers, all natives of Midland, also are pursuing Treasure Hunters' undisclosed grand prize. Middle brother Tonny, 38, now lives in Garland. Terrance, 40, is still in Midland while Keith, 43, has ventured to Corvallis, Ore.

All of the brothers tend to tire a little easily, particularly Keith. But they're in this together, as they keep saying. That's why their team name has no embellishments. It's just the Brown Family.

Advertising Texas as a great breeding ground for reality TV is merely a byproduct of Treasure Hunters. Tonight's two-hour premiere otherwise is thick with product placement ads, including a certain brand of cellphone, an official credit card and a Web site that can aid the teams in puzzle-solving their ways to apparent riches.

"It's out there somewhere," a narrator intones for starters. "A treasure that will change the lives of those who find it forever."

Be wary, though, because "getting there first means nothing unless you have the mental power to solve the clues that hide the treasure."

Separate contingents of five teams initially are sent to Alaska and Hawaii with no knowledge of the others' existence. It's a very picturesque start, even if the overall clue-solving might leave most viewers feeling pretty clueless. Exactly how the teams deduce where the deuce they're going is regularly left mostly to the imagination. Eventually they all rather magically arrive en masse in Lincoln, Neb. So chalk it up as a 10-way tie in Treasure Hunters' first hour. Just don't ask how or why.

Host Laird Macintosh mainly issues his marching orders via video cellphones.

"Pay attention to the natural order of things. But remember, history has a way of changing that natural order," he cautions as teams make their way to Mount Rushmore and its "coded messages."

One team gets eliminated tonight in rather anticlimactic fashion. Treasure Hunters then will move to Mondays at 8 p.m., with six pivotal "artifacts" still awaiting teams that solve the game's cryptic puzzles.

In total, they'll yield the key that unlocks whatever treasure NBC has stashed away.

Maybe the ultimate spoils will have a sponsor's logo on it, too. It's the way of the TV world, whether you're in Alaska, Hawaii or even deep in the heart of Copperas Cove.

E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com

Treasure Hunters

Grade: C+
7 p.m. Sunday, NBC (Channel 5). Hosted by Laird Macintosh. Produced by Brian Grazer, Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz. 2 hrs. tonight, with one-hour episodes continuing at 8 p.m. Mondays. (Note: Monday's scheduled episode could be pre-empted by a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.)