Tonight could go down in trash tv history with three of the trashiest shows imaginable all hitting the airwaves. Lucky for you, you have Trashwire to recap all the train-wreck mayhem. Think of this as a triple serving of Trashwire’s special reality tv coverage.
Finally, the crown jewel of the evening, Living Lohan!White Oprah also began her show by talking about how she’s a single parent. When will Hollywood shut the hell up about beFinally, the crown jewel of the evening, Living Lohan!
White Oprah also began her show by talking about how she’s a single parent. When will Hollywood shut the hell up about being single parents? Guess what, my mom was a single parent and I certainly didn’t have celebrity money, but I survived!
Just like with Denise Richards’ show, Dina flipped through the tabloids talking about how the press is so psycho over her family. It must be part of the E! formula to try to justify the fame level of their reality subjects to try to convince us that they’re worthy of their own series.
This entire show is clearly a vehicle to launch the career of Ali, Lindsay’s younger sister. Unfortunately, Ali isn’t as wild, talented, or interesting as her sister and her mother will seemingly battle her to the death for the spotlight.
The basis for the first episode was Ali’s music career. After receiving some tracks from her label, Ali was displeased and wanted to move in a different creative direction. Enter Dina’s associate Jeremy, a hip hop producer (I guess) who brought her some new “urban” songs that she loved.
Of course, Dina can’t stand not being the center of attention for too long and before you could say “disaster” we had switched focus to Dina battling to clear Lindsay’s name once again. You know, for as much as she claims to hate the tabloids, she sue does devote a shit load of attention to talking about them on her show.
The whole series borders on disturbing and you can’t help but feel dirty when watching it. When Ali explains that Lindsay is her biggest role model, you feel like you’re watching some kind of creepy exploitative kiddie porn. Take a scene where Dina is looking up a story about an alleged Lindsay Lohan sex tape on the internet. The story is complete with a still from the video of Lindsay going down on a guy. When Ali enters the room, Dina shows her the picture and they both remark that it can’t be Lindsay and talk about suing the site. Does anyone besides me think it’s weird that Dina showed her daughter a picture of Lindsay blowing a guy (allegedly)? I don’t think even Michael Jackson is THAT bad of a parent!
In a way, it’s fantastically trashy and fun to watch something this absolutely insane, but at the same time, I’m not sure if even we at Trashwire should be condoning this type of train-wreck series.
It’s a lot like eavesdropping on child abuse. Like when you can hear a neighbor beating their children, so you call the cops and then put your ear to the wall to hear what happens.
Moving right along to Denise Richards: It’s Complicated.
It seems like the premise of the show is going to be Denise Richards trying to find love as a single mom actress in LA. Instead, it looked like the same scripted trash-fest masquerading as reality that you see on every other celebreality series on the planet.
In the first episode, we met Denise’s family and her two assistants. All her attempts to seem like a down to earth celeb were pretty much ruined when she was a rude barking diva to everyone within range of her. She’s either going for an Osbournes style “foul-mouthed but funny” vibe or she’s just a total bitch who likes to cuss people out.
What a surprise, she even had a segment where she and her assistants sat around a computer talking about all the Denise Richards celebrity gossip on the net. I think she’s overestimating her own celebrity, because Denise Richards isn’t really in anyone’s thoughts as much as she thinks she is. We have Britney Spears to gossip about, not some chick who used to be married to Charlie Sheen and was famous because she took her top off and made out with a chick in a movie ten years ago!
In another painfully set up running theme, Denise is set up on a blind date by her best friend. This is all intercut with a b-plot about Denise trying to find sperm to get her pet pig pregnant. I’m not quite sure what connection the producers were trying to get us to make there.
On her date, Denise coldly stares down the guy and snippily replies to his questions about her personal life. Then when he says he liked Matt Dillion’s acting instead of fawning over her lesbo scene in Wild Things she gets insulted and accuses him of being gay.
It feels like this Denise is trying to gear this whole production towards being some kind of career vehicle for her, but she can’t really decide what kind of character she wants to make herself. Is she a struggling single mom? A family woman who bonds with her recently widowed father? A sexpot looking for a “hot guy with a big dick”? An animal lover and pig breeder? What are we supposed to take from this?
The best reality shows are either those like Big Brother that offer genuinely real human behavior or more scripted programs with clear cut characters and plots. Denise Richards: It’s Complicated seems to be neither.
I’m just not sure if this series is actually watchable. I’d compare it to Keeping Up with the Karsahians in that it’s just so scripted and cheesy that it’s not even worthy of the title of reality tv.
