Want further proof that change is sweeping the nation? Look no further than MTV's trailer for the new Real World, Real World: Brooklyn. Rather than advertising the show as a relentless, vodka-infused fuck party, as it has for years now, the station is attempting to sell the upcoming season as one of introspection and growth. ("What are you hiding?" asks the clip.)
Let's get real: Real World: Brooklyn is going to be nothing more than an excruciating, vodka-infused fuck party – this time with stressed out war vets handling knives!!!!!! – but it is interesting that MTV is suddenly trying to pretend there's still some meaning to its anemic pet project.
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Errant, temperamental meathead Danny Bonaduce has been ordered by an LA judge to pay $16,000 a month in spousal and child support to his ex wife, Gretchen. Before you get all depressed that someone like Danny Bonaduce has $16,000 a month to just give away, remember how much of himself he has to part with to come across that wealth. For instance, part of his divorce settlement allowed him to keep the rights to Gretchen's former title for use in an upcoming reality show: The Next Mrs. Bonaduce.
In other news, thank god Prop 8 passed! Can you imagine how completely ruined the sanctity of marriage in California would have been if it hadn't?
As if it weren't already too much of a propaganda channel programmed to let us baby killers on the coasts cram our ideas of fun – fashion, haute cuisine, gays – down the throats of the red states, Bravo is now cooking up a show whose pomposity handily trumps Top Chef and Proj Run: "'Polo,' a docu-series about polo players and their significant others."
How exciting! Now, as the economy slows to a trickle, everyone with time to waste from losing their jobs can cozy up to their TVs and watch a show about young rich people in love who play a tremendously expensive game to the delight of older rich people. Doesn't that sound like your idea of fun? You'll finally be able to use "chukker" during Scrabble.
Oh who are we kidding, you won't be able to afford cable or Scrabble by the time Polo airs. Forget we mentioned it.
What is it about this tool in a fuzzy hat that makes girls swoon and men bow down at his feet? The guy at left is Mystery, as you may or may not know, and he has his very own slot on VH1 called The Pick Up Artist. It's also my current favorite reality show on television (yes, there are things I like more than The Hills). Sure, it's not exactly a masterpiece, but the premise is strangely addictive: Mystery takes nine guys who have terrible luck with the females and turns them into "pick up artists." Sounds skeezy, but it's actually quite heart-warming: Turns out not all males are cocky d-bags who just want to get some action at a bar at 2 a.m. Who knew?
So Mystery teaches these guys how to approach women on a day-to-day basis without looking like a creepy pervert — and, somehow, it works. The show is in its second season and I still can't get over how enlightening it is, even after multiple episodes. Of course, some men are being enlightened as well — and have even tried to use the techniques on me and my friends. Here's a hint, guys: It only works if you don't sound like you're reading off a cue card.
Anyway, last night was the premiere episode (which will likely be rerunning all week, for those of you playing along at home), and each contestant got the makeover treatment. My early favorite (and new crush): Matt Radmanovich, the 26-year-old property manager from Redondo Beach, Calif., whose only girlfriend dumped him after he flew to England to surprise her (aww). He has a large gap between his front two top teeth and a forest of chest hair that could keep anyone warm in the winter — and he cleaned up beautifully. Check him out after the jump.
The Lifetime channel is making it very clear that it's sick and tired of being a punchline B-list comediennes use when talking about what they do when they get dumped or are on their periods.
First the network sneakily snatched away Bravo's trendy reality program Project Runway. Now it's delving even deeper into the hip fashion game with a new original reality series, Blush: The Search for the Next Great Makeup Artist. Because culture just doesn't celebrate the useless but moneymaking fashion industry enough!
Yet despite its similarities to shows like Runway and Shear Genius, Blush also promises to be quite different—it's going to be much, much worse. That's because it's basically a goddamn unabashed infomercial.
Former wrestler, Predator actor, and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is about to add another notch under his ever-widening belt: TV Show host for truTV:
Jesse Ventura will be working on a new conspiracy-theory series…Ventura will travel the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory's validity.
TV AUDIENCES CONTINUE TO DWINDLE "Every season premiere Thursday night drew a lower rating than last fall, as returning favorites such as ABC's 'Grey's Anatomy,' CBS' 'Survivor' and NBC's 'The Office' tripped across the board. ABC firmly won the night, as expected. Its two-hour fifth season premiere of 'Grey's Anatomy' (18.5 million viewers, 7.4 national adults 18 to 49 rating and an 18 share) was the evening's highest-rated and most-watched show, with each half hour growing in the Nielsens. Yet 'Grey's' was down 17% from last fall’s one-hour opener. Lead-in 'Ugly Betty' (9.8 million, 3.3/9) slipped 15%, marking its lowest-rated debut to date."
SEX PLOTS COME TO THE FOREFRONT OF CULTURE "In the life-imitates-art department, there's no better example than David Duchovny, a real sex addict - he recently checked into rehab for sex addiction - who plays one in the Showtime series 'Californication.' … Yet Duchovny's show is not the only place where once underground practices are moving into the mainstream. Opening Friday is 'Choke,' … starring Sam Rockwell as a sex addict; George Clooney plays one for laughs in the recent 'Burn After Reading.' Writer-director Kevin Smith's 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno,' opening Oct. 31, tells of platonic friends … who raise money by starring in their own sex film. … Coming soon to the WE network are 'Secret Lives of Women: Sex Addicts' … and a new reality series, 'Sex Change Hospital.' CBS recently broadcast 'Swingtown,' a summer replacement series about swinging '70s couples. And really pushing the envelope is Palahniuk's latest novel, 'Snuff,' about an aging porn star determined to have sex with 600 men in a single day."
Just when you thought MTV couldn't become more of a soulless corporation without transforming into subplot fodder for a John Grisham novel, the former hipness barometer outdid itself in one week by:
1) Canceling TRL, and with it the last shred of reasoning behind calling the Viacom subsidiary a music station.
2) Signing a contract that would allow them to stay at their Times Square location (that really only made sense to inhabit when TRL was on the air) with a $35-per-square-foot rent increase.
3) Destroying the rainforest for the sake of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge show that no one knew was still on the air:
Paris Hilton's ode to herself, MTV's Paris Hilton's My New BFF, debuts Sept. 30 with 16 women and two men competing to be her "paparazzi-ready" best friend. While hyping the show, Hilton said 300,000 people applied for the cast.
Like the story she tells suitors about being drug and disease free, this is a lie.
It was only an amount of time until America's obsession with B-list celebs reduced the country to watching 'Til Death star Brad Garrett receive a prostate exam on national television.
Pamela Anderson, on the premiere of her new reality show, Girl on the Loose, on Sunday: "PEOPLE BETTER BE WATCHNG THE OLYMPICS INSTEAD OF MY SHOW!!! You know how E replays things over and over — if people are interested it's always around."
America took Pam's advice and turned away in droves! In fact, more viewers tuned in for the season premiere of C-grade schlock Sunset Tan than for GotL, which you better check out soon if you have any interest at all. Contrary to what Pammy thinks, it's unlikely it will "always" be around.
MTV has put out a casting call for their newest shockingly ill-conceived reality show, Model Makers, which will feature young girls being judged on how well they slim down in order to prove their love of the catwalk. So disturbing, but not anything new for reality television, which as of late actually seemed to be pulling back from the precarious brink of Milf Island:
This, ladies and gentleman, is what's passing for a winning design on this dismal season of Project Runway. Yes, we know it was an outfit for drag queens, but come on!
An interesting theory we read on the Internets suggests that Bravo might be intentionally sabotaging Proj Run before it goes away to Lifetime, which is so catty and rude that it makes perfect sense when talking about a reality show about fashion. Discuss!
Look! Two clowns from two separate clownish reality shows – America's Most Smartest Model and Road Rules – have the exact same clownish face. It took us a while to realize this, but now that we have, we're excited to see if the reality-television-Charlie-Brown-circle-face gene these two are carrying exists in anyone else. Can you help us out?
We all know violent sexpot New York has no respect for herself – really, how could she? – but had you any idea how little she cares for the feelings of others?
In the newest episode of televised pockmark New York Goes to Hollywood, Pollard attempts to research Japanese culture for an upcoming commercial role. Of course, she goes about this not by heading to the library for The Book of Five Rings or scouring Wikipedia, but by asking every Asian person she sees if they can explain Japan. (To a Korean dry cleaner: "Is that the same as being Japanese, or, like, not at all?") HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hilarious! And ironic, considering how the underlying joke here – New York doesn't get that all Asians aren't the same – is pretty similar to one that's plagued blacks for hundreds of years.
We'd love to see how well Pollard would take it were a Japanese person to approach her and ask how she played a crackhead so well in Jungle Fever.
The upcoming NBC reality show Celebrity Come Dine with Me is an American spin-off of a popular British show where a celebrity host has four of his celebrity friends over for dinner, and then gets judged on criteria ranging from food (edible? Macro-biotic?) to entertainment (karoke? charades?). Somehow this will produce a "winner" from the range of hosts, although it seems like there is only one host/hostess per show, and implies the same guest "judges" travel from house to house, which would mean there are four celebrities in Hollywood that have nothing else to but run around town visiting go around and visit their other celebrity friends. This is different from what celebrities normally do, because there will be cameras following them here.
Transgender reality show contestants are all the rage these days, with a trans woman vying to win the dubious honor of waiting on Sean Combs hand and foot on VH1 and another on the latest cycle of America's Next Top Model.
Model-hopeful Isis, a 22-year-old Maryland native, describes herself as "a woman born physically male" who would "like to help people, but [is on the show] to follow [her] dreams."
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