Trash TV Extravaganza!

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.  (For more like this, visit our reality TV blog at TheTVGeek.com)

Let’s kick things off with the Flavor of Love 3 reunion show…

They did things a little differently by starting the show with comedian Samore doing a short little roast of Flavor Flav. Then she asked a couple of the girls some questions. Ice was first and talked about how she was totally repulsed by Flav and thought he was super unattractive. She then said that being on the show has done a lot for her career and went on to clarify what she meant by saying that she gets really good tips at Hooters now. Wow, what a career! Didn’t she claim to be a radio personality when she was still in the competition?

After the first commercial break, host Lala let Flav take the floor as he debuted his newly shorn head. He looks kind of like a black version of the fake old man from the Six Flags commercials.
We moved on to my favorite Flavorette, Shy. She combines all the loudness of New York, the ghetto behavior of Saaphyri, and the unattractiveness of a crackhead, tranny whore. She came on with a sob story about how embarrassed she was to be known as the girl with stinky breath. C’mon, Shy! It can’t be worse that that girl Somethin’ who shit on the stairs!

Next, they prepared a video vignette about Hotlanta, who they branded as a total alcoholic. Yawn! Drunk broads acting crazy and embarrassing themselves and their families on reality shows are nothing new. Of course, there were more tears during that segment.

They began the next segment with “What do you get when you mix a forehead and alcohol?” Obviously, they were going to be talking to Sinceer, that hideous giant-foreheaded Klingon. A new weave and a boob job doesn’t change the fact that she’s repulsive, and an alcoholic to boot. Yawn again!

Sinceer got into a fight with Bunz about yelling “That’s why your momma’s dead!” to her during an argument. When asked how she felt about Sinceer saying that, Bunz responded, “Fuck you and four motherfuckers that look like you!” That was certainly one of the most amusing quotes of the night. Again, there were tears when Sinceer complained about how hard it was to be on the show because she really loved Flav.

After another commercial break, they started showing the clashes between Sinceer and Seezinz. Then each girl sat on the couch and sipped tea while enjoying conversation about foreign policy. No, just kidding. They screamed bitchy insults at each other and threatened to beat each other’s asses.

After what felt like an eternity, we got down to talking about the final two girls. Black was up first and she continued to keep up her ridiculous blaccent through out her interview. She was dressed like she was going right from the show to the Rock of Love auditions, but of all the girls, she’s one of the least horrifying to look at. Her segment was mere seconds long and we headed right into the final section of the show.

The winner of the show, Thing 2, took the stage after some video clips of her time in the competition. She looked a lot better without those bangs she and her twin sister were sporting during the season.

The big shocker of the show was when Flav revealed that one of his girlfriends was pregnant when he began the first Flavor of Love and basically dumped Thing 2 on the air to spend more time with the child’s mother.

There was another huge twist when Flav proposed to his baby mama right there on the reunion show.

It looks like that’s a wrap on the Flavor Flav dating show universe. Thank God!

Moving right along to Denise Richards: It’s Complicated, which might have been more appropriately titled Denise Richards: It’s Contrived.

It seems like the premise of the show is going to be Denise Richards trying to find love as a single mom and 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 Richards’ 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, Richards 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, Richards coldly stares down the guy and snappily 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 Richards 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.

Finally, the crown jewel of the evening, Living Lohan!

Dina Lohan, self-proclaimed White Oprah, also began her show by talking about how she’s a single parent. When will women in 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, funny, or interesting as her sister and she doesn’t stand a chance when 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 sure 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 someone, alleged to be 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 her other daughter 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.

Anyway, that’s about as much reality tv as I could take for the evening. If you enjoyed these reviews, or you’re looking for more reality tv reviews and recaps, check out our new reality tv blog at TheTVGeek.com.

UPDATE: This article was referenced in Page Six by the New York Post on May 30th! Check it out HERE.