Fantasy Island (9 p.m. Saturdays, ABC) Cupid (10 p.m. Saturdays, ABC) A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow New faces on "Homicide" season opener; Cameron Diaz hosts "SNL" Y E S T E R D A Y Peckerhead By Laura Miller Gleeful depravity: An interview with John Waters (09/24/98) R E C E N T_. T E L E V I S I O N Strangeness in the night By Joyce Millman What's a nice boy like Conan O'Brien doing in a place like late night TV? (09/14/98) Women are from Venus, men are from Vegas By Joyce Millman ABC's girl-talk show "The View" and HBO's "Rat Pack" movie have more in common than you think (08/17/98) Queertoons By Joyce Millman Gay-positive messages and campy humor find a TV home in "South Park" and other animated upstarts (08/03/98) American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Fishers of men: Two offbeat TV talk shows reinvent the celebrity interview (06/29/98) Buffy By Joyce Millman Love bites: Buffy learns about life (06/08/98) BROWSE THE TV ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

____TWO NEW SHOWS, "CUPID" AND THE UPDATED _________________"FANTASY ISLAND," REMIND US OF WHY __________SATURDAY NIGHT IS THE LONELIEST NIGHT. BY JOYCE MILLMAN | 1978. You're a teenager. It's Saturday night. Your parents are out and you're stuck home baby-sitting your little brother and sister. VCRs haven't been invented yet. Your parents are too cheap to pay for HBO. So you're watching boring old Saturday night TV. "Rhoda." "Love Boat." "Fantasy Island." Flash to the present: It's Saturday night and you're stuck home because you can't get a baby sitter for the kids. The only videos left at Blockbuster are "Gallagher on Broadway" and 137 copies of "Con Air." You're too cheap to pay for HBO. So you're watching boring old Saturday night TV. "Early Edition." "America's Most Wanted." And the brand new remake of -- "Fantasy Island." That, my friends, is what they call the circle of life. It's true, "Fantasy Island" is back, but it's a "Fantasy Island" for the '90s: The tone is more ironic and sinister; the special effects are showier (the sky over the Hawaiian island setting seems to be always filled with boiling dark clouds); Mr. Roarke, played by a frighteningly dour Malcolm McDowell, forsakes Ricardo Montalban's old white disco suit for stylish, ambiguous charcoal gray. And Tattoo? Gone. Roarke's diminutive assistant would have been way too cute for this Joseph Conrad Carnival Cruise anyway. (Da horror! Da horror!) He has been replaced by a raging queen (Edward Hibbert, the food critic from "Frasier") of a desk clerk, a sweaty bellhop with a beer belly (Louis Lombardi) and a shape-shifting Girl Friday (Madchen Amick from "Twin Peaks"). It's clearer than ever that Fantasy Island is some sort of purgatory, and the fates of the island's staffers and guests (who are procured through an existential travel agency run by Fyvush Finkel and Sylvia Sidney) are in the hands of the disturbing Roarke. Produced by Barry Sonnenfeld ("Maximum Bob," the movies "Men in Black" and "Get Shorty"), "Fantasy Island" -- the Sept. 26 premiere episode anyway -- hovers in some kind of conceptual purgatory as well. It's not whole-hog campy enough (the guests are played by nobodies, as opposed to the B-list washouts who turned up on the original) to work as a fun, knowing send-up. But it isn't out-there enough to qualify as cool, either. The new "Fantasy Island" gives us the same heavy-handed Rod Serling meets the Old Testament cautionary tales as before, parables designed to guilt-trip ungrateful viewers into counting their blessings. Bored husband comes to the island hoping to have an affair with the girl he thinks he should have married. Man neglects his family to seek "extreme" thrills because he fears mortality. Smart law student envies smarter sister and happily accepts a gift of "ultimate knowledge." Scowling Roarke punishes them all within an inch of their sanity and their lives. How much does HBO cost again? ABC's other new Saturday night drama, "Cupid" (also premiering Sept. 26), takes its place alongside such dateless-date-night classics as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Dating Game" and the short-lived "Relativity." In fact, "Cupid" may be the all-time perfect Saturday night and single show: It's cynical enough about the prospects of finding Mr./Ms. Right to make you feel justified in toppling another self-pitying pint of Ben and Jerry's, yet it's hopeful enough to make you vow to hit the gym tomorrow. Produced and directed by Scott Winant ("thirtysomething," "My So Called Life"), "Cupid" is a romantic comedy-drama about the nature of true love. Is it all in the head or in the heart? In this corner, representing romanticism, is Trevor Hale (Jeremy Piven from "Ellen"), a brashly charming guy who claims to be Cupid, the Roman god of love. When we first meet him, he's been picked up by the Chicago police and held for psychiatric observation, owing to the fact that he's going around telling everybody that he was banished from Mount Olympus for losing his edge and must bring 100 couples together without the aid of his bow and arrow before he's allowed back home. And in this corner, representing love as a rational choice, is psychologist-author Claire Allen (Paula Marshall), a renowned "relationship expert" who thinks Trevor is delusional but is nonetheless intrigued by the transforming effect he has on her therapy group for singles. Dr. Allen somberly advises her mopey flock to let go of romantic fantasies and settle for mere compatibility. Cupid guffaws in the corner, leaping to his feet with a passionately riffed rebuttal. When you find your true love, he tells the group, it won't be because you've stopped to "check off items on an ideal mate list!" Take chances, he urges: "You're gonna get hurt. So what? Have a beautiful train wreck!" No wonder the patients like him better than her. Judging from Saturday's pilot, "Cupid" looks like it's going to be part mating dance between Trevor and Claire, and part "Love Boat" without the boat -- Trevor's got those 100 Special Guest Couples to fix up, remember. But, believe it or not, "Cupid" is not as goofy as it sounds. The dialogue is deftly written and the stars are well-matched; Piven's puckish Trevor and Marshall's analytical Claire connect and mis-connect with wit and heat. "Cupid" has the potential to be an "X-Files" of the heart, an attempt to explain the most inexplicable phenomena of all. Trevor may or may not really be Cupid, but he sure seems to know why fools fall in love. And why Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week. SALON | Sept. 25, 1998