Leave it to Fox to drag the bottom of the cesspool of reality show ideas and pluck out yet another dirty, ugly, tumor-encrusted piece of reality TV detritus.

Fox Nine strangers -- Jonathan, left, Adam, Tarah, Vanessa, Richard, Jamie L, Jamie G, Steve and Kelly -- locked in a bunker will decide who gets $1.5 million on "Unan1mous." Click photo for larger image. 'Unan1mous' When: 9:30 p.m. tomorrow, WPGH 'The Amazing Race' When: 10 tonight, CBS. Host: Phil Keoghan. 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' When: 10 tonight, Bravo. 'The Shield' When: 10 tonight, FX. Starring: Michael Chiklis

"Unan1mous" (9:30 p.m. tomorrow, WPGH) should benefit from its "American Idol" results show lead-in, but the change in tone is stark and may (one can only hope) cause viewers to flee.

Where "Idol" is mostly positive, save for Simon Cowell's withering critiques, "Unan1mous" is another show designed to bring out the worst in humanity.

Nine people are locked in a windowless bunker that's supposedly underground (I'm not buying that). It's sort of like a high-tech, futuristic "Big Brother" house. There they must decide, unanimously, who among them should get a $1.5 million prize. Slimy contestants that they are, these pillars of society begin concocting sob stories.

"It's like meeting a girl and feeding her a lot of b.s. so you can bring her home," says 30-year-old Jonathan, who tells the group he has testicular cancer. He doesn't.

This being a cheesy Fox reality show, producers have chosen contestants who will be at one another's throats, including a homophobic female minister and a gay guy who lets her push his buttons way too easily.

The first half-hour episode ends on a cliff-hanger, as the group of nine must decide which of three secrets about the people in their midst is the worst (one person carried live ammunition, one was a patient in a mental ward, another one filed for bankruptcy despite a $100,000 income). Whomever they pick will be out of the running for $1.5 million.

I'll give "Unan1mous" this: At least it's more efficient than some reality shows, wasting only a half-hour of a viewer's time. But that's still 30 minutes you don't have to spend wallowing in this muck.

'The Amazing Race'

For a more uplifting, worthwhile reality show, you still can't do better than CBS's "The Amazing Race" (10 tonight, KDKA), which is in the midst of a stellar comeback season after a misguided family edition last fall.

It's a shame so many viewers have abandoned the "Race" (ratings are down), but it doesn't help that CBS has scheduled this family-friendly show for 10 p.m., too late for families with children to watch together.

Tonight's episode finds the teams racing from Moscow to Frankfurt, smashing bottles or doing a German folk dance and driving on a test track. The worst that can be said about tonight's "Race" is that it relies too heavily on product placement.

Sure, some teams are better than others (love the nerds, Lori and Dave; don't care for dadgummit-spouting hothead Lake and wife Michelle), but so far in this edition, none of the contestants is wholly despicable. Everybody seems to get along, which is a great palate cleanser in a TV era that gives us "UNAN1MOUS."

'The Real Housewives'

It's "Laguna Beach" for grown-ups! It's a real-life "Desperate Housewives" set in the world of "The O.C."! Glomming onto existing formats is a television staple, and Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Orange County" (10 tonight) follows in that unimaginative tradition.

This one is not a competition, but a docu-reality show that chronicles the lives of five women living in gated communities in Orange County, Calif. Most of them are extremely wealthy, but like us, they have problems, too. Jo is "kept" by her fiance, Slade, who doesn't want her working. Instead, she just happens to run into Kimberly, another of the Housewives, at a restaurant. I'm sure that wasn't arranged by the show's producers.

Jeana, a real estate agent, is a former Playboy playmate with an 18-year-old son who dreams of playing professional baseball and a 16-year-old daughter who's on her second car, a 2006 BMW.

"That's how we show love in my family," daughter Kara says. "We buy each other things."

Entertaining in the way the problems of the rich often are, "The Real Housewives" is not mean-spirited like the competition in "UNAN1MOUS," but many of the values on display are just as morally bankrupt.

'The Shield'

The chickens are coming home to roost in tonight's stomach-churning 90-minute season finale of FX's "The Shield."

Watching this episode made me a little queasy, not because it was overly gory or violent, but because I had enough of an inkling about where the story was headed -- where it inevitably had to go -- and because I knew there was no way to stop it. A sense of nerve-wracking dread hangs over the show until the end credits roll.

Capping an outstanding season, "The Shield" wraps up myriad story lines (obliquely revealing the father of Danny's baby, setting Claudette up as captain), most notably the tussle between internal affairs detective Jon Kavanaugh (the incredible Forest Whitaker) and anti-hero Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis).

The episode also sets the stage for what will likely be -- what should be -- the last 10 episodes, set to air in early 2007. My bet is the show's final arc will be a showdown between smart, righteous Claudette and smart, deceitful Vic, with the latter finally getting his comeuppance for all the rules he's bent, all the laws he's broken, all the lives he's taken.