Respect Authority

They came, they loved, they fought, they lost. They left alone, returning to strip clubs, trailer parks and housing projects across the nation, where they waited with bated breath for the call: not from Real, or Chance, or Bret, not from their bill collectors or baby daddies, not from the repo man or Chinese delivery person. They waited for VH1, for the network of lost souls, to ring them up and say the words every past dating show contestant wants to hear: “Do you want to be on Charm School?”

And so the ladies of both Real Chance of Love and the third season of Rock of Love joined forces for the first-ever Charm School to combine casts from different VH1 series. Hosted by the wisely-chosen Ricki Lake, who has no shortage of experience fielding verbal outbursts from women without pride, class or dignity, the show ran very little risk of being bad – and so far, it hasn’t been.

Although last week’s season premier was perhaps a more logical time to give my review – and indeed, lived up to expectations with Rock of Love ‘tomboy’ Beverly getting booted for pulling the hair of borderline-crazy porn star ROL-er Brittaney Star – it’s good that I’m able to give a more comprehensive opinion after watching this week.

As was to be expected, the show’s “cast” quickly split down the middle – with the Real Chance girls in one clique and the Rock of Love girls in the other. There remain a few wayward stragglers – Real Chance’s KO seems far too boring to even be on TV, and Brittaney Star quickly latched on to the Real Chance girls to avoid the verbal harassment coming from her own former cast-mates. Bubbles, the notoriously moronic Real Chance contestant, has also come under fire from her own people – who seem bizarrely offended by the fact that she speaks like a little girl.

What Ricki Lake, and fellow judge LaLa, were quick to point out was how cleanly the divide between shows became a divide between races—the majority of Real Chance competitors are black, and the girls from Rock of Love brought “white trash” to a new low this year. In this way, this season of Charm School has somehow become VH1’s déclassé attempt to address race relations in the country: the Real Chance girls are flabbergasted by the alcohol-fueled arguments between ROL ladies, whose development of verbal skills clearly tapered off somewhere around high school. Meanwhile, the ROL crew stages a late-episode mutiny over their inability to “conversate” when Real Chance cast members are screaming at them, or at one-another, or at nothing. At the risk of succumbing to the types of racial stereotypes this show simultaneously mocks and enforces – the white girls are petty drunkards and the black girls’ debate skills are primarily measured by the volume of their voices. Read More ›

So much television, so little time.

Even though Ricki Lake’s Charm School premiered this week, I’ll wait until the next episode to give my official verdict (spoiler: it’s excellent), in favor of reviewing Bravo’s latest contribution to the great big world of reality TV: The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

As telling as the fact that Bravo picked the country’s armpit for its latest incarnation of the Real Housewives franchise is that the show’s debut episode aired immediately after the first half of a two-hour reunion special for The Real Housewives of New York City. That reunion, a relatively small glimpse into what was actually seven hours worth of filming, amounted to display after display of shameless self-promotion and utter lack of pride. All those pressing questions you thought the housewives would never deign to answer directly to a national audience of millions - they did! In the first hour, the women spoke fairly candidly about every headline they’ve managed to snag since the show wrapped: Kelly got teary-eyed over the “assault” charge that ruined her sterling reputation, The Countess admitted she was dumped via e-mail by her husband of 16 years, Jill said she’s single-handedly keeping the economy together by spending as much on one handbag as the rest of us pay for a car.

In any case, I understand that watching self-important rich women bicker for two hours is not for the casual TV viewer, except in the case of The View. So moving on: The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Read More ›

Oh Bravo. Poor poor Bravo. 

After more than a year of legal battling over the future of Project Runway, the NBC offshoot officially settled, sending the PR over to undoubtedly excited Lifetime Entertainment and leaving us stalwart Runway fans to wonder: What will replace it?!

Well the day has come - last week Bravo aired the inaugural episode of The Fashion Show, a Runway-knockoff that’s about 89% exactly the same. Differences? Project Runway favorites; judges Michael Kors, Heidi Klum and Nina Garcia, are gone (to be seen again in the August debut of Lifetime’s long-since-filmed PR Season 6), as is designer mentor Tim Gunn, replaced by a subpar cast of characters who don’t even come close to the same level of personality. 

On The Fashion Show, designer Isaac Mizrahi and former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland take on the dual roles of mentors and judges: though Mizrahi makes a bonafied effort to fill the “I make snarky gay comments” role previously mastered by Kors, he alone cannot compensate for the utter borefest that is Kelly Rowland, whose contributions to fashion-related discussions are things like “Let me just say, I would never wear that.” At least Heidi Klum made a living wearing clothes (read: underwear). Joining the duo at judge’s table is IMG senior vice president Fern Mallis. Despite the fact that Mallis is responsible for Fashion Week, it’s pretty obvious why Bravo only used her as a stand-in judge during past PR seasons: she has the personality of a mannequin. Read More ›

So last night, in a fit of boredom, I decided to see what my cable provider offers me by way of free On Demand content. Perusing the channels available to me, and with so limited an attention span that I didn’t make it past the “A”s, I stumbled upon Animal Planet On Demand - where I found, and spent the next hour laughing at, Animal Planet rags-to-riches show Underdog to Wonderdog. 

The premise of the show: a ragtag group of semi-authority figures/animal enthusiasts/psychos Animal Planet picked up hovering around the adoption cages at Petsmart pool their intellectual resources to rehabilitate a stray dog in preparation for its new life with an adopted family.

There’s: 
Andrea - Trainer
Ali - Groomer
David - Canine Carpenter
Ryan - Team Leader

First of all, what? If I were Andrea in this scenario, I’d be like “What the fuck? Why do these other douches even get credit? Team Leader!? What does that even mean?!” Having to train a wild dog is just a bit more complicated than building him a doggy house, or supervising someone else building him a doggy house. How does one get to be a “canine carpenter” anyway? Is it special, like getting a veterinary license? Are there certificates involved?

So the show starts with our heroes gathering together in a local coffee shop, which is already weird since why wouldn’t you just meet wherever the dog in need is? In any case, Ryan thanks everyone for coming, which suggests his role might simply be top of the phone tree. (When you’ve got a doggy carpenter on staff, it’s conceivable that phone tree originator would be considered a leadership role). Read More ›

I swear to God, once you program me with a conception of freedom and equality - I'll kill you.

That being said, the finale was a little… disrespectful. Not to the fans, but to the show itself. Obviously fan boys will have a problem with the loose ends (Starbuck and the millions of coffee shops named in her honor, God and his time traveling mind minions) but the real outrage should be directed at Ron Moore - who’s ego nearly swallowed the show whole.

Battlestar, from the mini-series, was always a show that paralleled reality but it did so without penetrating it. It was about humanity when its chickens came home to roost… then surprise-attacked us and turned our social/political world upside down. It was brilliant because it was about 9/11 without being about 9/11. And because the protagonists were both the heroes and yet also the instigators, it was about us without actually being about us, because ultimately Battlestar Galatica is a television drama, set in space, with space planes and killer robots.

When, thankfully, the show was picked up and transformed into a full fledged series, it was given the latitude to use dramatic representations of familiar social struggles – like abortion, religious expression, and civic freedom - to advance more entertaining plots that revolved around gratuitous, post-apocalyptic sex scenes and, of course, space battles.
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Though my reality television loyalty has long lain with VH1, the glaring absence of a new Project Runway season means I’m craving some slightly-less-flashy-but-equally-trashy editing of the Bravo variety these days. So it’s with a little trepidation, and no small amount of shame, that I’ve decided to tune in for the second season of The Real Housewives of New York City.

All things considered, it’s incredibly easy to watch this show - not only because its mind-numblingly inane but also because Bravo plays it at least five times a day. While past incarnations of the Real Housewives variety — several seasons of Orange County, and one paltry attempt in Atlanta — have left me wanting, the NYC version deserves commendation for its ability to bring the trash closer to home. After all, we EXPECT Orange County to be full of gaudy women with sugar daddies and spoiled kids. But with New York’s myriad definitions of what’s “hip,” and my personal participation in a definition that doesn’t involve gobs of money (only skinny jeans), Real Housewives is a depressingly accurate reminder that the starving artist image has nothing on an Upper East Side condo. Read More ›

Now past its infancy, reality television has in recent months become more and more like a pre-teen, both contemptuous of and utterly dependent on its parents. Recent incarnations of stalwart shows have thumbed their noses at the genre’s rapt audience; Fox Reality Channel’s slogan is actually “Blame yourself.” 

So it should come as no surprise that I Love Money 2 is even more meta than its predecessor, juxtaposing new levels of idiocy with tongue-in-cheeck attempts to be intelligent and timely. 

When host Craig J. Jackson introduces the first challenge - contestants must “swim” in a three-foot pool of smelly mud to grab as many gold coins as they can (original, I know) - he tells everyone to “root around like the greedy little pigs in the subprime mortgage market.” … Really Craig? Not only is the analogy completely unnecessary and out of context when you’re in Mexico, surrounded by bikini-clad money-hungry freaks, but this is hardly the right crowd. This is the same episode where contestant Tamara claims she would use the $250,000 prize money to buy a houseboat, which she would then sail around in …on the ocean.

Later on, Tamara adds that she has a phobia of water (which apparently extends to 3-foot-deep mud pits), then spazzes out during the elimination ceremony (during which, consequently, she is eliminated). After being booted, she proceeds to give the cast and assembled crew an eerily perceptive diatribe on their lacking morals:

“You’re a bunch of lying stupid idiots. You’re a bunch of assholes, the entire crew here. You manipulated and lied to me, you have no hearts and no souls. You humiliated me in front of national television, how dare you do this to me?! This is a bullshit show, you should be ashamed of yourselves, from [sic] exploiting these stupid fucking idiots. Fuck all of you, you’re a bunch of losers, and I’m a winner.”

On that last point, and on a couple of grammatical details, she’s wrong. But the message sounds a lot like what I’ll be mumbling to myself every Monday night at 9 p.m. for the next 13 weeks. Minus the manipulation, humiliation, lying and national television. For me it’s mostly about the stupid fucking idiots. Read More ›

This has been a long time coming and I find myself - despite months of opportunity on both our parts - feeling a little guilty for taking the honor away from Lou, but it has to be said, and it has to be said now: Battlestar Galactica is the most underrated show on television. 

You see, it’s Friday, and Friday means a lot of things to me: jeans and a T-shirt, donuts at work, happy hour  at the stroke of 5, and various theoretical social engagements after. Yet on this particular Friday — one on which the social engagements have advanced from the mere theoretical to the planned and actual — I find myself legitimately bummed that my evening won’t include the 10 p.m. Battlestar viewing I’ve managed to finagle for the past two weeks. 

Oh I can see you scoffing: “Friday night is for, like, drinking” or “Science fiction shows are lame.” Well, ye of little faith, for one, I totally watch BSG WHILE drinking. Secondly, science fiction shows are (generally) pretty lame, which is why Battlestar’s ability to cross genre boundaries and entertain everyone from Lou — who has a TiVo season pass to at least three shows about space — to myself, a stalwart proponent of any show that features scantily-clad former strippers vying for the affection of a washed-up musician, highlights just how universally (no pun intended) awesome it is. Read More ›

America’s Best Dance Crew 3 premiered last Thursday, and at this point MTV has already replayed it so many times that if you even thought about TV in the past four days you’ve probably seen it. I will concede that it is my one vice — aside from “chasing the dragon” from time to time and, of course, Cee-lo — and it sure is a doozy. ABDC3 is, largely, insane. Fuck, even just look at that acronym.

The rules of the contest are easily more complicated than any of the dance moves, and, in fact, after dedicating myself to two seasons already, I still don’t really understand how a given crew eventually wins. My enjoyment of this tacky diversion, presented by Randy “Dawg” Jackson and hosted by the infuriatingly closeted Mario Lopez, relies heavily on the sheer spectacle of it all.

The crews clearly spend more time picking their outfits each week than actually dancing, and one of the judges is a perpetually high Lil’ Mama, who I’m fairly certain is actually the stupidest person to have ever lived, except for possibly everyone else on the show. Nonetheless, the dancing is often quite impressive and like, whatever, so what if I look forward to it every week and might even have a poster of Randy Jackson hanging above my bed. I don’t have to defend myself to you. Read More ›

Reviewing stalwart FX hit Nip/Tuck never seemed necessary to me - I suppose in part because past incarnations of the show came in my pre-blog days, when I foisted all random thoughts and opinions on my poor friends instead of the world at large. But unlike my affinity for VH1 shows, which has spawned a compulsion to defend the network and its trashy fare (and in turn myself), I’ve also just never felt that Nip/Tuck’s reputation as quality programming was up for debate. 

Last night’s long-awaited season premier has me rethinking. 

Not to worry, fellow N/T fans. For we devoted, who have stuck with the show since the beginning, or even newbie viewers who bought or rented Seasons 1 through 4 on a whim, the show is - as it always has been - unique, innovative, stylish and completely incredible. But for everyone else, who may have jumped into the fray last season, or tuned in last night to see what all the hype is about, I suddenly feel compelled to issue a note of warning that can in turn serve as my first open appraisal of a show I’ve been following religiously for five years: Nip/Tuck is batshit insane, and that’s what makes it great. Read More ›

Remember how in Batman Forever Jim Carrey’s Riddler steals people’s intelligence while simultaneously beaming television directly into their brains?

Well, Jim Carrey failed — ostensibly because Batman is the shit — but I’m 98% sure he wouldn’t have if Bret Michaels had signed on to beam Rock of Love Bus directly into the collective psyche of the masses.

It’s not that I expected ROLB to be bad, nor did I approach it with the same trepidation as Rock of Love Charm School, or the first few episodes of I Love Money. Bret Michaels, trashy girls, alcohol: these are the makings of great television, and VH1 would have been hard-pressed to fuck this one up. What I didn’t quite expect, however, was that the network, with its ever-lowering standards of both dignity and decency, still had the power to shock me.

I think I’ve mentioned this in the past, but the overall strength of ROLB is the fact that it’s predicated on the idea of Bret Michaels being an active rock star. In fairness, the first episode does include an actual Bret Michaels concert, and it does seem to be rather crowded – but being able to sell out a show in middle America does not, for me at least, equate to being the object of desire for 20+ women who would give up a few months of their lives to compete on national television for your affection. I mean, I’m pretty sure even Hootie still sells out a few shows.
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With the first season of HBO’s True Blood about to end, it’s high time I said what’s been on my mind for the last eight or so weeks: Anna Paquin is a terrible actress.

It took a solid five episodes for True Blood to become a must-watch show for me. Although I was enthralled with the plot from the beginning — it’s set in modern-day Louisiana except vampires have revealed themselves to society demanding equal treatment and after the invention of synthetic blood that they can drink to ‘mainstream’ amongst humans — the show’s execution is uniquely stylized, much as all HBO shows are, and it took a handful of episodes to really understand and accept True Blood’s eccentricities. Read More ›