Have you noticed? They get shorter and shorter and more pungent. And the stories just seem to fly by. Fly by. Whoops, did I miss something?

In a blatant attempt to curry favor with the television establishment, Jon de Mol -- you remember Jon de Mol, the nice Dutchman who brought us "Big Brother," six days a week for three months, and we can't believe we watched the whole thing -- brings us the rather abbreviated "Chains of Love." This time, he's cramming an entire season's worth of senseless violence into a single hour.

Get ready for turbosluts in chains!

Not that we're excited, mind you, although the previews did taunt us with finger sucking. We've just been on this beat for way too long. We've become jaded. Hardened. Cynical. Mean.

Repetitive. Formulaic. Lazy. Bitter. Kind of flabby. We've spawned countless imitators who egregiously rip off our repetitive, formulaic, lazy, flabby, sleazy style.

In short, we can relate to "Chains of Love."

So let's start with a couple of quotes, just to get in the mood:

"Man is born free but is everywhere in chains." -- Rousseau

"Man is born free, but is chained to a group of women for four days in a Southern California McMansion." -- UPN

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You could be forgiven for being skeptical about this new reality show -- though, increasingly with these shows, reality seems like the wrong adjective to use. In reality, how often do you get placed in a mansion and shackled to four members of the opposite sex until a 300-pound executioner magically appears, signaling it's time for you to ditch one of them?

Maybe not that often. But if you did.

The deal is this: Four girls and one guy are chained together and placed in a "luxury home" containing a "gourmet kitchen," two swimming pools and, of course, a "custom-built bed for five."

In other words, San Diego.

Over four days, the primary chainee (this week it's a guy, but it can be a woman, with four corresponding male chainettes) gets to know his partners. Then, from time to time, he has to make a big decision:

At various points in the program, "The Locksmith" -- the impassive big guy, dressed all in black -- appears, and when he does, one of the women or men must be set free. On UPN, release from a Panhellenic chain gang is a bad thing.

A final twist is that the primary chainee has a cache of 10 grand. Each ejected person gets some cash. At the end of each show, he decides how much he and the last chainette get; he also gets to announce whether he's going to pursue a relationship with the survivor.

None of this, incidentally, is explained intelligently or clearly on the show. We just pick it up as we go along. We're also not sure how far the chain shtick goes. UPN's been coy about how the players handle the niceties of personal hygiene on the show.

We know what you're thinking: OK, so the premise lacks some of the primal appeal of "Survivor," back when "Survivor" still had some primal appeal. This is more like some bizarre pledge-week icebreaker gone horribly, horribly wrong. But we've been promised finger sucking. So we will wait.

The show begins in traditional Miss America fashion, with a beauty shot of the calm and tranquil California coastline. A voice, which we will soon learn belongs to "Madison Michele" ("Mr., uh, Michele?" "Yes?" "It's a girl!" "A girl! I'll call her Madison!" "Madison?" "Yes, after my dear, departed mother in Shanghai!")

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