YOU’D have to be a simpleton to think “The Simple Life,” the Paris Hilton/Nicole Richie “reality” show, has anything to do with reality any longer.
It’s now as phony as Paris’ hair color and as contrived and calculated as her celebrity.
What started out as fun and even funny – two rich Beverly Hills half-wits go live on a farm with an actual family (as opposed to whatever life forms raised these two celebutantes) – is now grim. And insulting.
It’s grim because looking at dog poop isn’t funny. It’s desperate.
It’s insulting because “The Simple Life” plays as though a lot of time has been spent thinking up the “spontaneous” stupidity that’s supposed to be real. In other words, will Nicole and Paris ever be able to reach the pinnacle of reality idiocy – that Chicken of the Sea moment?
This time out, Paris and Nicole will travel each week by bus to different gigs as interns. First internship? An auto body shop in New Jersey. (Auto body shops have interns? Who knew?)
The bus ride provides Nicole the opportunity to reach for her personal Chicken of the Sea moment: “Is Jersey a city or a state?” Hahahaha.
When they get to the auto body shop, Paris (who is slowly morphing into Morgan Fairchild) gets to shoot for her moment with: “Which one’s the engine?” Hahahaha.
The duo moves in with a New Jersey family who has recently lost its dog. This gives Nicole and Paris the opportunity to buy one! Hahahaha.
Despite the fact that both women have pedigreed dogs from super-high-end breeders, they want us idiots at home to believe that they don’t know the difference between the breeder of toy-sized dogs and, yes, Great Danes. Hahahaha.
“Do you have small dogs?” one of them asks upon entering the Great Dane breeder’s home. Do the producers really have that much contempt for the American public that they think we’d believe that they didn’t know? Puleeeeeze.
So they buy two – fully grown – to replace the host’s dead dog. Hahahaha.
Back at the body shop, they put on the uniforms, only to declare that wearing polyester without underwear is uncomfortable. Hahahaha.
Then they steal a police car (to go to a cosmetics store) and drive it all around town without being stopped by the police, despite the fact that they have the sirens blaring and lights flashing. Either the Bayonne police department needs a shakeup or this is a big setup. Hahahaha.
With any luck, Paris and Nicole will end up sooner rather than later on an Old Navy commercial with all the other TV has-beens.
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“The Simple Life”
[No stars]
Tomorrow night at 8:30 on Fox/Ch. 5