Nerve Insider : reality television

Busty Bachelor Winner, Meet Joe Francis…

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:41:00 GMT

The latest Bachelor: London Calling “winner” Shayne Lamas got way more than just some big-ass bling and the pet name “Monkey”…

She’s also snagged a six-page spread in Girls Gone Wild…the magazine. (They have a magazine?).

People reports: Girls Gone Wild publisher Joe Francis says Lamas’ appeal is easy to sum up. “Shayne has a genuine ‘girl next door’ quality,” he said in a press release. “But she also happens to be very hot.”

Sadly, he wasn’t able to convince her to pose nude in the mag. Because that would have been degrading…

[Via Jezebel, via People]

A Sneak Peak at the Apocalypse, er, Trailer for Ali and Dina Lohan’s New Reality Show

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:29:00 GMT

Man, talk about the Age of Consent. Here’s the trailer for Living Lohan, E!’s upcoming portent of the apocalypse/reality show. You only have to wait until Memorial Day to see the whole shebang (if the world lasts that long). But you can see the trailer in all its glory after the jump...

Per E!, “Living Lohan will follow the mother and slightly-less-famous daughter duo as 14-year-old Ali begins her ascent into stardom and attempts to follow in her superstar sibling's limelit footsteps.

The unscripted half-hour series will feature momager Dina as she does her best to strike a balance between family and career, helping her mini-me navigate the waters of budding stardom while doing her best to help the teen avoid some of the all-too-familiar negative trappings celebrity can often bring.”

We can’t wait to compare this show to the Ryan Seacrest-produced Denise Richards reality show.

And now I cry onto my keyboard...

“Farmer” Wants a “Wife”? We Want More!

Nicole Ankowski — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:07:00 GMT

What to expect from the CW’s latest international import? Farmer Wants a Wife, the Bachelor-meets-bumpkin reality dating show premiered last night, and I’ll admit my excitement was tempered by a bit of Bachelor-esque ennui. Yes, I religiously watch everything from America’s Next Top Model to Supernanny (love Jo!). But the one “reality” show I stopped watching years ago was The Bachelor. (It just hasn’t been the same since Jerry O’Connell’s brother handed out the roses.)

I expected a similar, cheesy set-up from Farmer Wants a Wife: a vaguely sexy Farmer-hero (check); a bevy of cute-to-psychotic amorous ladies (check); a farm (check) and a ridiculous goodbye-ceremony (holy hen cages, double-check with a gold star!). We even get some local color, when a diner patron tells the cameras, “I think city girls are wild up front. Country girls are wild in the back.” Yee-haw!

I did not expect to be charmed by the ladies. The show begins with Matt, aka The Farmer, a 29-year-old college grad and grain farmer in Portage Des Sioux, Missouri. With his bristle-brush blond hair, six-pack abs and entirely non-Farmer’s-tan tan, he’s not bad on the eyes. He says he’s willing to do the show because, despite his abs, wifely pickings are slim in a town with a population of 351 people.

I don’t know if I totally buy that he rides his tractor shirtless 24-7, but his grand half-naked entrance made all the ladies swoon. (That, or the heat.)

The young ladies, who range in age, hometowns, and heel heights, are all city-dwellers who say chivalry in the city is dead. Living in New York, it’s hard not to feel empathetic – though don’t we all think the grass is greener on the other side of the Hudson? My friends in San Francisco envy my friends in Ohio who envy my friends in D.C. who think the Chicago girls have it easy, who then say New York is where the men must be…It’s easy to understand why a girl might finally say, “I give up! I will gladly huck and muck and milk cows for the rest of my life, if I can also find true love.” I’m sure being on the TV show didn’t hurt, but still…

The girls are flown in small planes to a rural airstrip, where they totter around in ridiculous heels and glare silently at each other, and the expansive, prairie landscape. They’re driven, via schoolbus, to a borrowed farmstead where we first see the Farmer…shirtless, tan, serious and chivalrous, racing his tractor towards them. And that is truly when the girls lose their shit. He carries one off the bus and she nearly swoons. Brooke, 23 and from Texas, is basically in love by the end of the show. Kanisha, or KJ, 25 and from California says, “When I look in his eyes I travel out to space.”

The girls’ first challenge is to catch and cage chickens, which somehow seems easier than the evil masterminds behind the show probably had hoped. There are no cat fights in dirt clouds, though we do see an abundance of Daisy Dukes. L.A. girl Stephanie, 23, is the only girl who steps in cow shit. She’s also the only girl who is terrified of chickens: “Oh my god. I’ve never a seen a chicken. I’m afraid of them like pecking my eyes out. Because…I want to see. And I like seeing things. And I definitely need my eyes!”

True dat.

Kanisha wins immunity, and then the Matt takes the girls on a hayride…where they actually seem to talk. And listen to each other. It was like the reality universe had turned upon itself, and I couldn’t tell up from down from east from west. Did everyone like each other? Did everyone except Stephanie not mind the hay ride? Would someone actually find love? And then Josie started talking.

We’d already been introduced to the 25-year-old from Laguna Niguel, California (“My name is Josie. I think of myself as a ten-plus. That’s part of being Republican.”). But on the hay ride she lets it all loose, and the girls find a common enemy. (And my reality show-equilibrium returns!):

“I am a winner and I think like a winner, like George Bush says. I’m a goal-digger, G-O-A-L. I think that world might be coming to an end. And the Jews, the Christians, and the Catholics, we all are one and we have to stick together and fight.”

And speaking of fighting, “I fight for men like they do in the Middle East. Before somebody blows me up, I blow them up.” She is either an actress of the highest caliber, or a completely delusional young woman. Either way, you know the producers are keeping her around.

The one person I don’t buy in all of this is the Farmer himself. Matt comes off as the Ryan Seacrest of farmers. He’s too slick; he doesn’t stutter when he speaks; and he seems completely at ease hosting this gaggle of girls while the cameras run. (Also, he repeatedly says, “Let’s roll.”) Maybe it’s because he’s dreamed of such an opportunity for so long (word on the street is he previously had applied to be a contestant on The Bachelor). But he came off as eerily camera-ready. And not that interested in the girls.

Maybe it was just nerves. On his private date with Christa, he hand-made her mint juleps and they then sat on a swing and …talked? Christa giggled at every word he said, and obviously wanted to suck face. He gently pecked her. I didn’t know straight dudes who weren’t Southern or metrosexual hand-crushed fresh mint. Or maybe I’ve been citified so long I don’t recognize chivalry when it refuses to make out with my drunk ass, and then walks me to my doorstep.

By now I was snoozing through the show (virgins toilet paper a truck, fights break out, etc.), but then came the Goodbye Ceremony! Oh lord, the complicated goodbye ceremony! First the girls were instructed to stand by posts, upon which chickens in cages were perched. Then Matt went around to remove all the cages (thankfully, this process was edited out). Then the girls had to lift their chickens, root around in the nest, and find an egg. No egg? You’re out!

Stephanie was booted. As Matt said, “Miss Stephanie had a lot of City in her.” The eye-rolling that resulted from Josie staying on the show could have powered a farmhouse’s generator…but surprisingly, Matt said he had a good reason to keep Josie around. No, he didn’t want to sleep with her. But she did bring out other sides of the girls that he wouldn’t have otherwise seen. That, and there is no way the producers are letting her go so easily.

Until next time, let’s roll (in the hay)!

The Joy, the Pain: The Rock of Love 2 Reunion Show

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:27:00 GMT

Oh the slutty joy, the hair-ripping pain, the French strippers and the tears! Yes, last night Vh1 aired their Rock of Love 2 reunion show. It’s hard to beat the Rock of Love 2 finale, but they tried. It’s also hard to pick just one, perfect, herpes-flavored best-of moment. Was it when Heather tried to rip Daisy’s extensions out of her hair? Or right before that, when Daisy called Heather “Steve Nicks”? Or when Peyton sang onstage?

Okay, it definitely wasn’t when Peyton sang.

It might have been when Angelique forced herself on Bret’s lap. The now-retired stripper (and her self-proclaimed “Barbie ass”) was the first lady invited onstage with Bret and host Ricky Rachman. She told the sad tale of why she had to stop stripping after the show:

“It’z kind a zad I stopped dancing kauz I love to be a streeper and I really like — I like to be naked and everyzing. I had to retire bekauz everybody vant to just hang out wit me kauz zay saw me on tv, and it dozn’t work zis way vhen you are a danca. But I wood like tu do my lass danz fer you Brut.”

Then she crossed the stage, presumably flashing some sort of labial lusciousness, which resulted in Destiney making this face:

…and then Angelique gave Bret a lap dance, while he screamed for someone to please God put on some music.
Rock and roll! See Angelique’s lap dance right here, baby.

Next up was Destiney, who looked good. I mean, well-rested and glowing. Despite the sad fact that her father had just passed away, Ricky and Bret tried to get Destiney to admit that she is a psycho-groupie who wants to sleep with Bret because he’s the lead singer of Poison, and not just a psycho-girl who wants to sleep with Bret because he’s on TV.

Harsh. However, it was the beginning of Ricky being both the hard-ass voice of reason, making air quotes with his hands…and the genesis of me thinking he should host every reunion show. Ever. On Vh1. And across the galaxy.

Because then came Kristy Joe, the woman who went on Rock of Love 2 while still married. (I’m choosing to ignore the ridiculous Kristy Joe-Aubrey montage which implied that the two were lovers, followed by Bret’s ridiculous attempts to pretend he thinks it’s hot.) And Ricky totally called out Kristy Jo…and Bret!...and their gloriously effed-up “relationship”:

“I’m going to get everybody to hate me now, but it looked like the typical rock star girlfriend, that here you are – going after a girl that isn’t one hundred percent available – and there’s a lot of drama there, and maybe a little bit of psycho – and you want that because she doesn’t want you one hundred percent, and it’s going back and forth, and then there’s just so many issues…that you say, ‘You know what? I’m gonna cancel the subscription, I don’t want any more issues!’”

Which resulted in Kristy Jo rolling her eyes and trying to make her bullshit smell like Issey Miyake. Didn't work:

And then they brought the whirlwind force that is Heather onstage. The producers oh-so-shrewdly sat Heather right next to Daisy, her arch-enemy in blonde diva stripperness. Daisy revealed that she and Bret slept together the night before he eliminated her ass from the show:

“This is really frickin’ important to me. As a girl, being vulnerable, at the end of the night, that last night, you could have just said to me, ‘Hey, let’s cuddle, and just spend the rest of the time together.’ [audience laughter] But Instead, I felt like you were taking advantage of me and taking advantage of my vulnerability and my feelings. And you ultimately sealed the deal.”

Bret proclaimed: “I’m just a man, dammit!”

Daisy countered with: “I’m not just some chick that he can just sleep with."

Which resulted in Heather snapping: “Well you shouldn’t act like that!”

When ended in: hot, enlightened, chick fight! See it all here.

I was most impressed with Heather’s fighting technique. After pulling the hair, firmly grip the extensions/weave in Fist A. Then beat Fist B on the outstretched hair, trying to rip it from its roots. There’s nothing that makes me prouder to be a woman than watching one woman follicularly assault her sister. Gloria Steinham would be so frickin’ happy.

And then came the lucky winner of Bret's heart (and any vestigial VDs): Ambre. Oh, Ambre – what have you done to me? What will my life be like, now that Bret has found his Rock of Love (and Lust, and Like)? You’re too good, too normal…I can only pray it won’t last, and that not only will next year bring Rock of Love 3, but also your own looking-for-love spin-off. I’m going to go out on a limb and call it Ambre Alert! We’ll see what happens.

But in the meantime, at least the girl got rid of the black undergrowth in her hair. She looks light-years better with the all-blond glow. And Bret appears…smitten! Truly smitten (never mind that in an outtake he bemoaned the fact that Heather had so pissed off Daisy, that Daisy wouldn’t f*ck him).

I mean, the dude was lovingly stroking Ambre’s shoulder while she talked about fate and kismet and their special journey.
Stroking. Her. Shoulder. Like newlyweds. Really old, annoying newlyweds.

Turns out that, although the couple weren’t technically supposed to see each other post-filming, Bret snuck Ambre on his tour bus (for “a little boom boom”) when he visited her in Chicago.

Why might it all work out? Ambre says seeing all his lady fans hit on Bret “kinda turned” her on.
Maybe she and Bret are meant to be.

We’ll see which way the wind blows. But seriously: Ambre Alert. Can’t you just see it now?

Lessons from The Biggest Loser Season Finale, by Will Doig

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:07:00 GMT

There are a few lessons one can take from last night’s season finale of The Biggest Loser.
1. It’s possible for a woman to win this show, even though men are predisposed to quicker weight loss.
2. It’s possible for some people to lose 50 pounds and still look basically the same.
3. Live TV – especially live TV starring people who have no professional TV training – is awesome.

Ali, the former competitive swimmer who’d let herself go, won the final weigh-in and, for this, a quarter of a million dollars. She’d lost 112 pounds and looked as diesel as an angry Mac truck. The other two finalists were Roger, a former football player from Alabama, and Kelly, a shy working-class woman from Florida. I was rooting for Kelly, because she’s older and divorced. She’s also had three miscarriages and talked a lot about how she’d always been huge and asexual and how now, at 38, she finally felt like a girl for the first time in her life.

It’s this kind of shit that gets me sobbing like a mental patient. I’m getting misty just writing this. Which is the entire point of The Biggest Loser – it’s the anti-reality show. There’s no sniping or backstabbing. Everyone adores each other. Grown men bawl and hug and say, “I love you, man” over and over again. Parents talk about how they want to set a better example for their children.

And then, little by little, everyone gets thinner. Not thin, per se, and you do feel a little bit weird when the girl who dropped a buck twenty still has a butt the size of the Great Pumpkin. But in general, everyone loses enough weight that you feel good about it. Last night, they brought back all the contestants who’d been eliminated over the past few months. Most of them had kept losing weight after the show ended, and they did little video vignettes for each of them, showing them continuing to work toward their goals by eating salad and running on treadmills in their bedrooms. Somehow this led to more crying. Curtis had needed to get his weight below 239 to qualify for health insurance, and he did. Bernie has a thin girlfriend and had wanted to become more attractive for her, and he was. In fact, Bernie looked hot in his fly little purple shirt and tie. Also hot: Jackie, who’d gone from still-sorta-chunky when she left the show a couple months ago to MILF-who’s-well-aware-of-it last night.

Which is one of the craziest things about watching The Biggest Loser from beginning to end: people who you found physically repulsive at the beginning are sexy by the end, and you feel superficial for not having found them sexy the whole time. It’s like being the bad guy in a John Hughes movie, the one who shuns the girl because she’s not pretty or popular enough, but then at the end, after her transformation, asks her to the prom and she laughs in his face.

At the final weigh in, you kind of figured Ali was going to win because Alison Sweeney had at this point reiterated approximately eighty times that if Ali won, she’d be the first female Biggest Loser ever. After all that buildup, to have Roger win would have felt disappointing, and we basically knew it wasn’t going to be Kelly, because while Kelly looked good, Ali looked ready to run to Athens with an urgent message for the king. She seriously looked a bit scary, like she’d kick your ass just because at 122 pounds, she can. That would have been a cool ending: Roger and Ali duking it out. But there was no duking. There was only confetti, and hugs, and crying, and a message for the kids: being skinny gets you nowhere, but getting fat and then skinny gets you a quarter mil. Food for thought while you gnaw on that Pixy Stix.

— Will Doig

What Lessons Are We Supposed to Learn from the Rock of Love 2 Finale?

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:12:00 GMT

This is after she puked, but before they sucked face.

Well, he did it. Last night on the Rock of Love 2 season finale, Bret Michaels did what no reasonable reality television-viewer expected: he chose brains over boobs. Age over youth. A TV host over a tattooed stripper. In other words: Bret chose Ambre as his “Rock of Love,” leaving Daisy disheveled, sniffling, and crying for ice cream. Homegirl can go from hot-slutty to a hot mess in five edited seconds, flat.

In case you missed it…well…you didn’t miss much. And you know Vh1 will have the show on heavy rotation for the next week or so. But if you don’t want to waste an hour and a half of your life, waste five minutes and check out the highlights here!

If you haven’t been watching the show, Bret has narrowed his field of ho’s to two remarkably dissimilar ladies: Ambre (who chooses to spell her name in a unique way), a 37-year-old “TV host” who seems remarkably classy except for her bad dye job. And Daisy (who probably can’t spell Ambre’s name, much less her own), a stripper who has dated one of Bret’s band members in the past, and still lives with her “ex”-boyfriend in a one-room apartment. Why would Bret keep such a woman around, as she has a tendency to lie about her past constantly? Two big reasons, and you can guess what they are.

Bret did as he/the Vh1 producers always do: took his ladies to an “exotic” getaway in Cancun, Mexico. The format that followed will be familiar to any Rock of Love, Flavor of Love, or I Love New York fans: Bret and the ladies are greeted outside the hotel, where they are forced to admire some traditional Mayan dancers before the producers (wisely) being plying them with alcohol. Then the “final two” are taken to a room they’re forced to share, exclaim over tacky free schwag, then go have dinner with Bret.

At dinner, as always, dirty laundry is aired in a familiar, scripted format. Last night, Bret once again told Daisy that they have an “incredible physical connection” but that he was still a little wary of the “mystery” surrounding her past. Daisy questioned whether Bret and Ambre have any sort of “physical connection.” Bret surprised us all with a new, scripted question: maybe Ambre was such a driven career-woman that she just wanted to win the contest…and not so much Bret’s heart?!

Ambre put an end to this by sucking face with Bret at the table, while Daisy watched petulantly. I can’t really remember the rest of the conversation because I was so distracted by the glistening post-kiss spittle on Ambre’s upper lip. Baby, you had a napkin on your lap; you should have used it.

The one surprise: Daisy whipped out a pen and paper…with a list of questions for Bret! Why oh why did the editors cut out her list of questions? I would have actually paid money (um, four quarters) to hear the all-important list of life issues Daisy had prepared. Vh1 producers, if you’re listening: give us an “extras” video, stat!

The next day Bret and Ambre went on their solo date, which was too boring to describe except that, during their secluded couples massage, Amber realized she’d better work on yee ol’ physical connection with Bret. Thusly, we were forced to watch her straddle the man while massaging him. Oh yes.

And then.
At dinner.
She told him she wasn’t wearing any panties. And he asked to see. And she did a nice little Sharon Stone ala Basic Instinct move. Twice.

It was at this point that I puked a little in my mouth. I was actually on Ambre’s side this whole time (who wouldn’t be?). But this was a tad too much. While I respect the fabulous, strong, older woman that she is... I don't want to imagine what her twat looks like. Even if today is cunnilingus and cake day.

But I digress: Ambre spent the night with Bret. Then she and Daisy squabbled. Ambre’s point was that Daisy was a crazy bitch, but honestly, the editing made Ambre look much more bitchy than Daisy. Maybe it also made Ambre look so much more smart and coherent than Daisy, and I simply started pitying Daisy and her inability to complete a sentence.

But enough with feelings. Let’s get on to the boobs. For Daisy’s date the next day, Bret took her deep-sea fishing, which promptly resulted in Daisy projectile vomiting over the railing. Though Bret was psyched for this (chum brings the fishies!) he eventually turned the boat around, and made sure to still make out with the girl, after patting her puking back.

And then came the ridiculous final ceremony, with Bret’s ridiculously shiny metallic suit. It was all a bit of a letdown: Bret told Daisy she’s beautiful but there was just too much “mystery” etc. etc. Daisy gazed up at him, wordless, her sad stupid puppy-dog eyes conveying all the heartbreak a shallow puddle-person can hold. Ambre looked like hell warmed over as she trembled and cried, first thinking she was going home, then realizing, “Holy hell, I’m stuck with this dude now, at least until the reunion show.”

As Bret said, “I was not looking for Rock of Like. I was not looking for Rock of Lust. I really was actually attempting to find Rock of Love.” Did we learn any lessons here (besides the fact that Bret knows puke can work as deep-sea fishing bait)? Did he really find love? Is it true that sometimes, even in Hollywood, the nice girl finishes first? Is there hope that our society is somehow less youth-obsessed and large breast-obsessed than previously thought? Or, is it all just a ploy to lure us in for Rock of Love 3? Only time, or Vh1's producers, will tell.

Ambre’s website, www.ambrelake.com, appears to have crashed some time today. But I did manage to grab her portfolio of poses. I was and am an Ambre fan: work your thirties, girl. You look fabulous. But…if you saw one of these pictures on a dating site, and then the lady pictured above showed up for dinner...would you tell her it's time to update her pics?

-- Nicole Ankowski

Take The Rock of Love 2 Poll: What Was Really Underneath Bret's Bandana?

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:24:00 GMT

Click on your choice to vote!

Rock of Love 2: We See Underneath Bret’s Bandana!

Nicole Ankowski — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Can it possibly be human hair? And if so, from what human?

Last night was a big night on Rock of Love 2. No, not because Amber lied about her age. Not because dumb-f*ck Destiny decided to get a tattoo of the Rock of Love logo on her neck, or because her father is dying of cancer (and that despite both of these facts, Bret booted her off the show).

No. What I’m talking about is…prepare your loins….Bret. Took off. His bandana.

I always thought the picture above was created through the magic of Photoshop. But no, this video proves that, apparently, Bret has hair.

Or some strange substance that looks like hair (whose hair, I'm not sure). Don’t you get the feeling there’s been at least an hour of professional teasing going on to get this volume? Why isn’t CNN headlining this news? Can the hair possibly be real?!?

video.vh1.com

Dolly Parton Week (!!!) on American Idol, Dolly Parton in Nerve

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:32:00 GMT

So, the moral of last night’s Dolly Parton-themed American Idol? One: what does it say about my relationship, that The Boy and I can only agree to watch American Idol together (while simultaneously kind of loathing it). Not that we opened a book or anything; there’s a metaphor for America in there somewhere…

Two: Dolly Parton rocks my world. Every world. She’s an amazing singer/songwriter with a deep soul, deep cleavage, and at age 62, she might just be your new sexual superhero. (Check out Ada Calhoun’s ode to Dolly, and her sexual proclivities, here.)

Three: Shouldn’t supposed, future American Idols be…um…a little better at singing? I don’t get it. And even the singers I think are fabulous (hello Carly Smithson) end up with the judges yawning their way through their reviews. (Or, with Simon critiquing her outfit. Dude hates a gal with curves.) But David Archuleta gets up there and the judges practically wet themselves. Maybe actually. Just a little.

I guess the moral of the tale: whatever you or I think of the singers, the shenanigans, or the show in general…at least this week will potentially give the proverbial “whole new generation” a taste of the genius that is Dolly Parton.

Check out all the finalists’ performances, after the jump.

Brook White sings “Joleen”:

David Cook sings “Little Sparrow”:

Ramiele Malubay sings “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?”:

Jason Castro sings “Travelin’ Through”:

Carly Smithson sings “Here You Come Again”:

David Archuleta sings "Smokey Mountain Memories":

Kristy Lee Cook sings “Coat of Many Colors”:

Syesha Mercado sings “I Will Always Love You”:

Michael Johns sings “It’s All Wrong But It’s All Right”: