The recruits -- a colorful assortment of miscreants, manipulators and underachievers -- will spend 30 days under the vociferous tutelage of four deranged drill instructors. The producers of "Boot Camp" have watched other reality shows and learned.

Reflective moments, slow-motion bikini shots and wavy-haired paternalistic figures in shorts are great for "Baywatch," but reality TV is all about witnessing other people's psychic and physical pain from the comfort of our own depravity.

Here's how it works: Each week, the group, now numbering 16, elects a leader whom they will follow on some exhausting military-style mission. If the members of the squad complete the mission, they receive a small reward and their leader receives immunity.

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If they don't, they receive petty punishments and no immunity for their leader. At the end of each show, one recruit is banished by his or her peers. The banished recruit then gets to retaliate by eliminating another.

All of this rejection and revenge will transpire, naturally, on "Dismissal Hill," in much the same way that all of our criticism will transpire on "sarcasm bed."

Day 1: The drill instructors, three screaming jarheads and a vein-popping Napoleonette, have a default speaking volume of 100 or so decibels.

They have a charmingly proprietary sense of their surroundings. Everything they talk about is described as "mine."

The four eagerly await the arrival of a bus, inside which the new recruits slumber peacefully, dreaming of prize money and Jamie from "Big Brother"-level fame.

The drill sergeants climb aboard the bus and start screaming things like "Under my command, you're going to exit my vehicle safely but quickly! Start moving!"

Alarmed recruits run from the bus clutching their belongings. One man, a pear-shaped, 29-year-old real estate agent, given to statements such as "It's always a good day when you're Dave Thomson," sprints from the bus in a generalized panic.

Trendy recruit Katherine hops away on high heels. Shawn Yaney, a professional balloon sculptor, is intercepted while running to get into formation. His eyebrows do a little dance. Frankly, we can't believe this, either.

The recruits then sprint into a barracks (unless we specify otherwise, the recruits are always sprinting and the sergeants are always screaming) to be verbally abused by the sergeants.

Drill sergeant Rosenbaum, perhaps the most tormented of the four, loudly asks recruit Jennifer Whitlow what she does for a living.

"Campbell's Soup Co., sir!"

"What's the theme of Campbell's Soup Co.?"

"'M'm! M'm! Good!' sir!"

This response causes him to scrunch up his eyes and squat.

"LOUDER!"

This kind of exchange will apparently make up roughly 90 percent of the show.

Later, we'll notice that Campbell's is a sponsor of "Boot Camp."

That's why they call it "reality" TV!

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