Celebrity used to be a fickle mistress, courting only the biggest and brightest Hollywood had to offer. But after “Celebrity Mole,” “Celebrity Boot Camp” and the dismal “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,” it seems her mystique has lost some of its appeal.
After all this molesting of “celebrity” by reality programming, it doesn’t seem like much of a shock she’s decided to shack up with a washed-up rapper, a televangelist with a love of mascara, a “Baywatch” bathing beauty, Ponch, the reality TV spokeswoman for unsafe sex and the world’s most famous porn st … rather an adult film actor for the second installment of “The Surreal Life.”
But unlike the dismal marriages of celebrity and reality TV, “The Surreal Life” is just wacky and entertaining enough to work. Sometime between Traci Bingham demanding she cannot take a bath in a raspberry-colored tub and Ron Jeremy talking about his large, uh, body of work (a record 1,750 films in his career), the show transforms into a lovely little guilty pleasure.
“The Surreal Life,” however, is far from perfect. In fact, it’s not even really that good, but each episode promises to be filled with plenty of “damn, he’s strange” moments that make it worth watching.
As the housemates (minus the often-missing Bingham, who is supposedly shooting another project during the day) settle in and relax in their Hollywood Hills hot tub, the conversations take an odd but serious turn as Jeremy and “The Real World: Las Vegas’s” Trishelle Cannatella begin asking Tammy Faye Messner and Rob “Vanilla Ice” Van Winkle about their religious beliefs.
Messner, known as a “good Christian,” begins talking about her devotion to the teachings of Jesus and her brief flirtation with rebel status after she was bleeped for saying “crap” on a religious television show. Van Winkle, however, thinks humans are decedents from ALF and may one day have the technology to return to their home planet across the galaxy.
Van Winkle is definitely set to be this season’s stand-out star. As the new Corey Feldman, Van Winkle has already caused plenty of drama in the house. Besides the alien incident, Van Winkle is also responsible for an in-house rampage, with pictures left from his celebrity days among the casualties. He also made it clear to the other housemates (and a bunch of shoppers at a local farmer’s market) that he will be eating only greasy Jimmy Dean sausages.
Another houseguest that makes “The Surreal Life” worth watching is “C.H.i.P.s” star Erik Estrada. Like no other “celebrity” before him, Estrada seems self-aware of his status as a B-list joke and seems content to ride out the show with as much dignity as possible. Having already taken a few shots at himself in “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” and in Cartoon Network’s “Sealab 2021,” it is clear he’s more than happy to mock the whole nature of celebrity. In his “Surreal” introduction, Estrada keeps it up by brandishing donuts for a pair of Los Angeles police officers.
If the teasers are any indication, the rest of the season seems like it may be just as campy as the first episode. Guest appearances by Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, Rick James, Sally Jessy Raphael and Andy Dick, as well as a trip to a nudist colony (hopefully Messner is already booked that day), ensure a cult following will be brewing behind this show.
With celebrity journalists tripping over each other to get a glimpse in Bennifer’s windows, “The Surreal Life” provides a voyeuristic look inside the lives of has-been celebrities and their sad, yet comical, delusions of grandeur.
