Hello all. Forgive me for the lack of posts this week – my computer, Charlie, had a massive virus in his hard drive. Luckily, I picked him up from the computer hospital today, and this means I can get back to blogging. While I was computerless, I got in some quality TV-watching time, including the premiere of a show I’d been meaning to watch, Southern Belles: Louisville. The show, which airs on SoapNet, is sort of like a Real Housewives show, but they focus on younger, single women who – obviously – live in the South. Already, my favorite Belle is Hadley, whose edit so far is “the one who didn’t come from money.” She dropped out of graduate school to pursue a job as – what else? – an assistant. While we didn’t get to see much of Hadley’s job yet, we learned that she works as a PA for a film producer based in the Louisville area, and there are plenty of “cute” shots of her carrying crazy amounts of dry cleaning and coffee. I really hope they show more scenes of her working. Til then, here’s a webisode of Hadley talking more about herself and her background:
Tag Archive for 'reality TV'
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Did you ever see that SNL sketch with Christina Ricci that parodied Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The show was called Who Wants to Eat, and the premise was that they took the program to a third world country where instead of winning money the contestants won food. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard that not only was NBC planning another season of Donald Trump’s show The Apprentice, but they were specifically looking to cast people who had lost their jobs or otherwise suffered because of the recession.
Andy Dehnart of Reality Blurred managed to reprint parts of an NBC casting call before it was pulled down:
The headline said “Donald Trump wants to put America back to work,” and said the show is “on the hunt to find the best and the brightest minds in America at a time when employment opportunities are scarce,” and instructions said potential cast members should “explain why you should be the next Apprentice as well as how the recession has affected your life.
Dehnart speculates – and he’s probably right – that the casting notice was taken down because they were ahead of schedule, not because they contained damning information or spoilers or anything.
From an MTV press release about one of their new fall shows, The Stylist:
This new reality series follows a diverse group of struggling junior assistants as they toil for three glamorous, highly successful celebrity stylists. The series follows the young junior assistants on the job – music videos, movie premieres, photo shoots – and in their personal lives as they find romance, plot against each other, and try to make it big in a cut-throat industry. At the end of each season, one junior assistant will be signed to a stylist contract with the Margaret Maldonado agency. The Stylist turns the reality competition format upside-down, with no staged challenges or eliminations. The jobs are real, the stakes are real and for these young people, the prospect of success or failure is very real. Organic performance evaluations will always allow the viewer a sense of who’s ahead and who’s in trouble. And because the junior assistants are always faced with the knowledge that only one of them will get signed, they are always looking into the faces of their competition.
A couple of things.
1. What the fuck is an organic performance evaluation? Is it made of soy? Does it require compost?
2. The show is produced by Bunim-Murray, the people responsible for The Real World and – even better – The Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Will Coral be on this show to make fun of the assistants? Because I would watch that.
3. Why did they choose this title? Are they aware of the existence of Stylista?
4. “Cutthroat” is one word, no dashes.
Although some gossip bloggers went back and forth about the status of Jessica Zajicek’s job as Kathy Griffin’s assistant, Jessica herself is confirming that she has definitely quit and will not be back either in Kathy’s employ or on My Life on the D List. That leaves former backup Tiffany Rinehart [in the picture, holding Kathy's Emmy) as the new #1 assistant - but will she get an assistant of her own to fill the vacant slot, or not? [Side note: there's something about a second assistant becoming the first assistant that makes me want to imitate a Miss America pageant host.] A press release for the upcoming fifth season of My Life on the D List reads:
Returning to the new season are Kathy’s ‘peeps’ assistant Tiffany Rinehart, tour manager Tom Vize, her beloved mom Maggie and her unruly dogs Chance and Pom Pom.
Um, I totally don’t get the Peeps reference. Can anyone out there with a better memory than me tell me what episode/reference it comes from?
Also, will Tiffany take over the Team Griffin blog that Jessica used to write? Right now if you go to the old TG link, you get an error message saying the page doesn’t exist anymore.
Alec Baldwin, whom I’m probably required to love forever for his portrayal of head honcho Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, has not had a serious longterm relationship since the end of his infamous marriage to Kim Basinger. That said, he’s rarely without a beautiful woman on his arm, and this time the woman is a pretty darn surprising one. Last week, Baldwin arrived at the premiere of his new movie Lymelife with Johanna Cox. If that name rings a bell, Joanna’s claim to fame is winning the Elle magazine reality show Stylista. She apparently works as a junior editor at the magazine, which was her prize from the show. She’s 29, and he’s 51. I don’t know if it was just a date or if it’s the beginning of something major, but my brain might have just exploded from the amount of assistant/boss stuff going on in this post.
The only thing shittier than getting laid off would have to be getting laid off in public. So, of course, now you have a chance to do exactly that.
A new reality show called Someone’s Gotta Go is currently in production. The show (which will air, obviously, on Fox) “enters real businesses across the country and gives employees the power to decide which one of them will be terminated.” Here’s more on the show from Variety:
Each episode will revolve around a different small business — usually one with 15-20 employees — that has been forced to make staff reductions because of the sour economy.
The company’s books will be opened up to the employees, who will learn what everyone makes and what’s in their human resources files. Employees will also get a chance to say, face to face, what they really think of one another.
Ultimately, the employees will vote on who should be terminated. That person will likely receive a small severance, but that’s it.
Talk about a great opportunity for a layoff narrative, huh? And who the hell are they going to get to host this thing?
On last night’s episode of The Celebrity Apprentice (which is proving weirdly addictive this season), Donald Trump fired Khloe Kardashian. He did not fire her for incompetence (which might have been a valid claim); rather, he fired her when he discovered that she had been busted for a DUI before appearing on the show. He claimed that, had he known this information, he never would have allowed her to be cast in the first place. While Khloe was far from my favorite contestant this season, I’m not sure how I feel about her firing coming because of something that didn’t relate to her performance on the show. What do you think?
Here’s a clip of Trump explaining his decision:
.jpg "new york goes to work")
The economy has hit everyone hard – even also-ran reality “stars.” That’s why VH1 darling Tiffany “New York” Pollard has had to suck it up like the rest of us and go back to work.
Except…not exactly. Her new show, New York Goes to Work, will feature New York trying a variety of blue-collar jobs, from fast food employee to mortuary beautician. (Reality Blurred’s Andy Dehnart correctly identifies the show as “some kind of half-assed Dirty Jobs knock-off.”) If she does well at that week’s assigned job and pleases her bosses, she gets a $5,000 bonus.
I wonder if this downgrade means she still gets to keep her assistant? That’s the only part of this new series I find at all interesting.
Last night, I actually watched an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice. Last night’s task had the celebrities (who include Joan and Melissa Rivers, Brian McKnight, Dennis Rodman, poker player Annie Duke, and more) running hotels. This meant they had to do everything – from cleaning rooms to working the front desk. Most of the humor of the episode came from watching these people, who normally are guests in swanky hotels, having to wait on picky, prissy guests who demanded last-second front row seats to sold out Broadway shows and dinner reservations at A-list restaurants like the Waverly Inn. I have to admit, the whole episode gave me wonderful schadenfreude as I watched Khloe Kardashian prepare room service and Tionne Watkins (aka T-Boz from TLC) clean bathrooms. Some of them (like Tionne) had good attitudes about the whole thing, and some of them were totally horrified by doing the work of commoners. Basically, celebrities got a small taste of what their assistants’ lives were like. And I loved it. The entire episode (it’s an hour and a half long, so maybe save this one for when you get home) is here:
For those of you who may not have heard of British reality star Jade Goody, who died today of cervical cancer, I will try to give a brief summary. Goody grew up in a poor, troubled household in London. She briefly worked as a dental assistant before being cast on the hugely popular reality show Big Brother. She became a breakout star – loved by some for being a ‘regular person’ and ‘working class heroine,’ despised by some for being uneducated, overweight, and a negative stereotype. Love or hate her, the British tabloids chose her as a regular subject, covering every aspect of her life, from her relationship with TV host Jeff Brazier (which resulted in two young sons) to her continued adventures in reality shows, which included an-Apprentice like series where she looked for a personal assistant. She did another stint on Big Brother and made international headlines for her awful treatment of housemate Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actress. To make amends, Jade appeared on India’s version of Big Brother, where she learned – on camera – that she had advanced cervical cancer. Since then, she sold the rights to everything from pictures of her in the hospital to updates on her treatment, saying that she had to do what she could to earn money for her sons while she was alive.
Although Jade was always a controversial figure during her short life (she was 27 when she died), she definitely will remain a British pop culture icon. My aunt died of a similar cancer, and I know that Jade was in extreme pain toward the end of her life. Her choice to live and die on camera may not have been a choice I would have made, but I admire the way she was able to use pop culture to turn her life around. My thoughts today are with the family and friends of this former assistant.
