Books(in140) & Other Things

I finally got around to watching my PVR-ed premiere of Tyra Banks’ latest reality show, True Beauty, the show searching for America’s most beautiful person-on the inside and out!

It was painful. You can’t take the lowest-of-the-low concept and turn it into a profound statement about contemporary perception of beauty. Okay, wait. Tyra Banks can’t. But that’s what this show felt like.

Here are a few of my issues with the first episode:

The Premise
What sort of contestants are you going to get when you search for “America’s most beautiful person?” Vapid, self-absorbed and uninteresting ones. At least America’s Most Smartest Model had a self-deprecating sense of irony about it’s concept and contestant selection. True Beauty just went out and found ten conceited, not-so-smart, desperate-for-fame people they could find. Which is fine if you use that to your advantage a la VH1 and MTV. But ABC is trying to take some moral high-ground and make this show more in tune with early seasons of The Bachelor instead of I Love Money.

Vanessa Minnillo
Could a host be anymore condescending? I wasn’t buying her lecture about true beauty to the eliminated contestant at all and didn’t blame her for leaving in an uneducated huff.

Cheryl Tiegs
You know Cheryl had an epiphany a few months ago and went “oh crap, I need to get on this former-supermodel-turned-reality-show-contestant/judge-train and milk the last few scraps of recognition I have left” and signed up for the first thing that was offered to her. Which would be fine if she had a sense of humor about it. Her comments were boring and unoriginal and there wasn’t a single glimmer of anything interesting behind those bangs.

The Challenges
I get that the competition is about true beauty and true beauties would never check out their competition. But if I was in that chair, I totally would have looked! Did these people not learn anything from VJ, America’s Most Smartest Model? Do what it takes to get ahead! How dare the judges chastise them for it! (I’m probably really angry about this because I totally would have looked. And not been sorry for it.)

The Contestants
I get that this s the first episode and the contestants will reveal more aspects of their personalities as the show progresses. But there hasn’t been a reality-show cast this one-dimensional in a loooong time. It didn’t help that whenever the characters talked about something that wasn’t how hot they are, ABC turned it into this profound moment, complete with theme music.

The only contestant with any entertainment value is Ray, and thanks to ABC’s high-brow approach to this lame concept, all that goodness will be gone. Oh Ray. Why didn’t you and your purple polo shirt try out for I Love New York 2??

True Beauty could turn it around, if it wanted too. Give the contestants more alcohol and more freedom. Let the judges be snarkier and tell them get off their moral high horse.

Tyra has brought us the ultimate guilty-pleasure reality-television show in ANTM. She even brought us the this-isn’t-awesome-but-since-I’m-too-lazy-to-change-the-channel-it’ll-do-oh-wait-it’s-not-that-bad!-I-love- Kate! show that was Stylista. Ashton has brought us the harmless Beauty and the Geek. So I’m not entirely sure whose fault this is. ABC’s? ABC can do traditional reality pretty well. It hasn’t crossed the line into trash reality yet (unlike NBC-I loved 2007’s Age of Love! Cougars vs. Kittens! Hilarious!). Or have Tyra, with her 5000 projects and Ashton, with his 2000 endorsements, simply overexerted themselves?

In sum, it was a terrible show. And not even in a so-terrible-it’s-awesome sort of way. There is hope, but I think ABC, Tyra and Ashton all still have just enough integrity and not enough intelligence left to not go there. Which is too bad.

Note: It’s possible Brody Jenner’s Bromance is even worse. But Brody has a baby face no one on this show does.