By Chris Cosci

By literal definition, good things are usually... good. But when everybody tries to duplicate the good thing, it often becomes a bad thing. And that's no good.

Take reality television. Arguably, the original reality television series Survivor was good. Critics liked it. Audiences liked it. It was good. Then, every other network decided to make their own reality television show. We were inundated with horrific attempts to duplicate that success. We were given shows like Temptation Island, Celebrity Boxing, and Are You Hot? This was bad.

This is a valuable lesson - one that was brought to everybody's attention in the educational film "Gremlins." "Gremlins" taught us that, without proper care, a good thing could multiply itself and eventually turn ugly, causing our world to become overrun by vicious, nasty things that are out to ruin our lives.

This movie has practically become a parable for the television industry. As soon as one network comes across a Mogwai, the other networks have to spill water on it to make its own sub-par copies. Then those darn networks go and muck everything up by feeding their clones after midnight, and we have to pay the price.

But reality television isn't the only genre to fall victim to this pattern. Almost every success story in television begins this agonizing chain reaction. Friends is another good example. NBC got lucky and developed a hit show about a group of friends in New York who always hang out together. Over the next couple of years, we were subjected to countless copies that were described as "like Friends, but they live in Detroit," "like Friends, but there are four of them," or "like Friends, but they all hang out in a Chinese take-out restaurant instead of a coffee bar." In reality, the best way to describe just about all of them were "like Friends, but not as good."

Now comes the latest source of trouble - The World Poker Tour. This show defies all sense of logic by turning a rather basic card game into what many feel is a suspenseful and entertaining spectator sport. With a cult following, it was only a matter of time before other channels tried to cash in on the Travel Channel's success.

So far, the worst replica I have seen is the World Series of Blackjack on GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network - now calling itself the Network for Games. The show tries really hard, maybe too hard, to be as good as the World Poker Tour. But its key fault is the game itself. Unlike poker, there is really no interaction between players. Each player's game is virtually independent. In poker, the competition is more intense because the competitors actually play against each other, bluffing and betting skillfully to intimidate the other players. A player with a bad hand can still win through persistence and deceit. In blackjack, a player with a bad hand just loses. Where is the tension in that?

Of course, we are still in the early phase of this new cycle. Blackjack may be just the beginning. What's next, The Go Fish Games? Bingo Showdown? The Super Bowl of Craps?

The irony is that what makes the original shows so popular is how different and unique they are. They offer audiences something new to watch, instead of tired retreads of older material. Call me crazy, but maybe if the networks tried to create new shows instead of copying others, they might be more successful. Of course, if one network succeeded at this technique, the others would all try to copy it. Then we would be right back where we started.