TV preview of 'Find My Family': The pleasures are relative

Get out your handkerchiefs, yes, but you probably don't want to stop there. Better have Kleenex, paper towels, napkins, a few double rolls of Charmin, maybe some gauze, a shirt or blouse with long sleeves and perhaps a few packages of disposable diapers as well. "Find My Family," a new ABC reality show that arrives Monday night, isn't just a tearjerker; it's a tear yanker, a tear popper and a tear squeezer.

This show aims to cunningly and ruthlessly manipulate your ductwork until some sort of liquid emerges, so it might be wiser just to give in and let the teardrops flow than to fight the feeling. This is, after all, "a show with one simple mission," says host Tim Green. "We're going to bring families back together."

Whether they want it or not. It sounds like ideal programming for the holiday season now underway, although unpleasant truth be told, too much exposure during this period to members of one's own clan -- including those distant nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts -- might mean that a show called "Lose My Family" would have a better chance at plucking responsive chords.

But we all have to struggle with the hands we're dealt, don't we?

Each regular one-hour edition of "Find My Family" (as of Nov. 30) will tell two real-life stories of lost loved ones reunited. But on Monday's special 30-minute "sneak peek," we have to make do with only one, so that the show will fit snugly into a half-hour slot after a 90-minute "Dancing With the Stars."

The opener is the story of the Steinpas family from Brookfield, Wis., who pour out such a volume of saltwater in the course of their joyful ordeal that it would seem enough for an entire season. There's hugging and crying; there's crying and hugging. They bring forth a tsunami of emotional exhibitionism such as hasn't been seen since TV's freaky '50s and such artifacts as "Queen for a Day," "Strike It Rich," "It Could Be You" and "This Is Your Life."

It's true we're reaching way back for the comparisons, but then the producers of today's so-called reality shows often reach back to the same early era of voyeur TV, with the new versions so much easier to produce because of giant advances in miniaturized and portable TV equipment. Now television routinely takes us into the most intimate spaces imaginable where the most maudlin and embarrassing of reunions (and other causes of sweet sorrow) can be captured.

And now, our story.

Sandy and Scotty Steinpas, married for 27 years, faced a bit of a crisis in June of 1979, when, our host says portentously, "something happened that changed their lives forever." Sandy discovered she was pregnant at 15. "I had a big lump in my throat," Scotty says, recalling when he found out; but that wasn't the lump to worry about. Because times were tough -- like now -- the couple decided to put their baby up for adoption, and so little Tanya Ann was hustled off to another couple who cared for her all these years.

Then the Steinpases decided to forget about the legally binding agreement they'd signed in 1979, pledging not to search for their former baby or upset her home life. Why should Scotty and Sandy let a nasty old contract get in the way of their whims?

They hired detectives to no avail, but then "Find My Family" got wind of it and put the show's own operatives on the case. Presto, their rigorous searching discovered that little Tanya was now living about "eight miles down the road" from where Scotty and Sandy abide.

To think of all the dough they splurged on private eyes -- "boohoo" is right.

After considerable obfuscating, dilly-dallying and mush-gushy narration (Scotty and Sandy are "loving parents" who "lead a regular, quiet life" and stayed together "against all odds" when the going got tough), the stage is set for a reunion. Or rather, a tree on a hill is set. It's the show's "family tree," host Green explains, though exactly where it is and why participants from the four corners of the country have to be flown there for their showdowns is not clear.

Anyway, Green, who says he was adopted himself and that "finding my family . . . changed my life forever," pops in on Sandy and Scotty to say that their daughter has been found. Then look out for the waterworks, as Sandy keeps screaming, "Oh, my God!" while hugging and kissing her long-lost precious angel. In addition to Sandy, Tanya cries, Scotty cries, even Green cries. It's one big sopping mess, that's for sure.

To be fair, the situation is indeed fraught with emotion, even if there is something obscene about cheapening such moments by shooting them with minicams and what used to be called creepy-peepies. It really is amazing how far back in television history these for-profit invasions of privacy go -- and depressing to face the fact that they'll probably never go away.

Find My Family

(30-minute premiere; one hour thereafter) airs at 9:30 p.m. Monday (9 in future weeks) on ABC.