MANY REALITY shows and challenges on TV try to boost their ratings by going for controversy, sex and violence. Despite these in-your-face ploys, however, many programs quickly lose their ability to shock or excite, and soon fade away from view.

Once in a long while, however, a TV competition with deeper and rawer roots emerges, going for the jugular and practically forcing viewers to sit up and pay attention.

The latest shockeroo on the tube is the ETC channel show, ?Momma?s Boys,? which requires dozens of young women to compete for the attention of three yummy young men?with the approval of their respective ever-loving and sometimes smothering mothers.

Fastidious

The day we viewed the competition, two of the three moms were OK?but the third was a real monster! Her son was the best-looking guy in the bunch, so she was particularly fastidious about the (few) women who ?deserved? to be dated by her niño bonito.

Worse, she turned out to be a flaming racist who wanted only white, W.A.S.P. women for her son?no blacks, Asians, Latinas or mixed-race applicants, thank you very much!

Well, as expected, once the ?rainbow nation? women found out about her seething racist bias, the excrement hit the fan! They lashed out at her, prompting her to similarly lose her temper and heap vicious insults on their heads. The ?bloody? confrontation was a shocker, all right, and the episode?s ratings must have gone through the roof!

Well, bully for the program?s think tank for cannily, savvily plugging into deep-seated resentments like racist hates and festering mom-girlfriend rivalry. The ploy may have gotten out of hand at times, but it did serve a worthwhile function, because it forced viewers to reevaluate their own biases and stop behaving like monster moms to their own children.

Comeuppance

Expectedly, the program is also great in the comeuppance department: At the end of the telecast we watched, the monster mom?s son was seen passionately getting it on with a sexy woman in a jacuzzi?and she was black! Oooh, how the racist mom from hell wept and seethed at the sight.

Another detail: One of the female competitors was a Fil-Am, and she looked really nice?but, she was one of the first ?rejects? in the competition. Well, that?s how the reality TV cookie crumbles!