The Anna Nicole Show

If you like to laugh and aren't wrapped too tight then tune into this show. It's about……well it's about nothing (just like Seinfeld). In a nutshell the camera follows Anna Nicole around with her little entourage. One show had her looking to buy a new house another one she goes to an amusement park to ride the roller coasters etc. She's ditzy and seems like she's on her own planet. Is it an act? Who knows…who cares it's hilarious.

After watching this show, I feel yucky. Anna Nicole Smith is one of the most repellent 'personalities' to ooze across the TV screen in this generation. I use the term 'personality' liberally. She, nor her entourage possess even a modicum of insight, tenderness, humor or drama. A typical day in the life of Anna Nicole (and by proxy, a typical show) consists of people eating (sometimes in contests) , decorating her house, watching TV, shopping, driving around, going to the bathroom, throwing temper tantrums, sneering in a barely coherent girlish voice that sounds like she's perpetually drunk and consorting with various freaks and lowlifes. Sounds like anybodies boring life (save for the freaks and lowlifes perhaps...) but the producers of this show seem to think because Anna Nicole is super rich, it makes for an interesting TV show. Actually, it looks like the producers realized they had a problem so to enliven things, they occasionally dress her up in skin tight clothes that accentuates her rotund (and growing) physique, especially her rhino-sized butt. She eats so much food on this show that the viewer can actually see her putting on weight over the course of a few episodes.

Watch one episode. Anything more is gluttony.

First of all, before I comment on this, let me set the record straight. I don't watch much TV. I prefer not to. The overabundance of idiotic reality TV shows and ungodly irritating commercials makes me wonder how the human being can withstand such systematic torture for such prolonged periods of time. With the exception of "The History Channel", "Sundance/IFC", the news, and some documentary channels, TV is an absolute waste. And I realize I'll probably receive some sort of backlash because of my comment on television altogether, but in all honesty I don't really care because I'm entitled to my opinion just like you're entitled to your own. Anyway, one with "Anna Nicole Show"...

Wow, really, wow! I realize that TV's trying to cater to society's lowest common denominator, but this is ridiculous! Someone please tell me how this became one of the highest rated shows on the network! Please tell me why any of this is viewed as funny. For comedy, I find things funny because of timing and comedic talent. Anna Nicole herself is such a no-talent brain-dead, we wonder if she even knows her own ass from a hole in the ground. If the answer to finding Anna Nicole funny is that it's a "riot" to watch her bumble around from place to place with only one hemisphere of her mind turned on, then the answer doesn't make me laugh. It makes me cringe. Sure we like to laugh at people like Anna Nicole, but isn't there an infinitely better and vaster amount of things to watch besides that?

And again, those of you watching it and find enjoyment out of it...go ahead! Feel free to watch it! I'm not one to say watch it or don't. But watching something like "Anna Nicole" and seeing how someone show dull in intelligence can make so much money and celebrity causes me to fear greatly for the future generations to come, whatever those may be.

Network: E!; Genre: reality, documentary, comedy; Content Rating: TV-14 (for adult content); Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Season 1+

Wouldn't you know that E!: Entertainment Television was a cable channel that will look at the phenomenal success of the first season of 'The Osbournes' and have absolutely no idea what they are seeing. In trying to create their own version of the monster hit MTV docu-comedy, 'The Anna Nicole Show' mis-reads everything that is so engaging and likable about the Osbourne family. Based on the chosen subject of this show, they think we like Ozzy because he slurs his words unintelligibly or that we like Sharon because she's a spoiled Beverly Hills transplant. That, a few extra pounds and a trailer park attitude is pretty much all you'll find in Anna Nicole Smith - who E! wants to position as America's favorite strung-out, gold-digging over-grown baby.

Possessing not one shred of the wit, irony and evident unconditional love of 'Osbournes', 'Nicole' wants us to arrogantly mock Smith and feel better about ourselves watching her 1) house shopping while trying to find a bathtub she can fit in (no joke) 2) humiliating her son over the telephone and on theme park trips 3) being wrangled around by her handlers and specifically lawyer Howard K. Stern (an obvious tie-in in the making for E!) 4) giving us a fleeting but nonetheless traumatizing glimpse into her masturbation habits and 5) babying her dog Sugar Pie. That's it. That's the show people. If it sounds like your kind of television than you'll be in hog heaven, but you might feel awful in the morning.

This isn't hip it's just sad. I don't need my TV classy. I'm not going to call this exploitative or condemn people who want to make fun of what a pathetic individual Anna Nicole Smith has let herself become. I just need these type of shows to be funny, which this isn't. The problem with this kind of extreme television is that the results are just as extreme - it can be terrific (as evident by the perfect contemporary 4 star score I gave to 'The Osbournes: Season 1'), but when it falls it falls hard and lands flat on it's face. A miserable failure.

This show could have been a rich, stupidly funny satire of a celebrity who has outlived Hollywood's usefulness of her, but would Hollywood-worshiping E! really ever go for something like that? They just want this to be a drive-by car-wreck. It's about that much fun. "Anna" is nearly un-watchable, network constructed dreck, dragging not just through the episode, but from commercial break to commercial break. It's got a cute animated intro, I'll give it that. Reminds me of the 2nd season 'Strangers With Candy' intro. I'm sure that's not what E! was going for.

½

I recently took a bet from a friend that I couldn't watch the first season DVD set of The Anna Nicole Show all in one night. The bad news is I won this bet. I don't enjoy watching a mentally unstable or heavily medicated woman go about her life. I didn't enjoy her trip to Chipendale's. Nor her goin to see "Puppetry of the Penis". I could've lived without seeing Anna's toothless white trash cousin flashing multiple times AND I had no desire to see Margerette Cho make out with Anna. (although I always had Cho pegged as being like that). Oh did I mention that the DVDs are uncensored, so all of the above possibly scarred me for life. Also on the commentary for the Christmas special Anna herself says some of it is faked by the E! crew. My Grade: F