Wednesday, March 14, 2007

America's Next Pussycat Doll - 1x02 "Welcome to the Dollhouse"

Even though I'm quite hostile to their biggest single, I was roped into watching the Pussycat Doll show because it'd been getting decent hype (Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+), Ken Mok is involved, and its contestants are required to wear booty shorts.

Sure, the girls have been "shaking" their "moneymakers" like "the rent is due" whenever they aren't being catty (because they're trying to be Pussycats, see?), but beyond that, the show is a standard reality contest with post-feminist girl-empowerment sprinkled throughout. Despite the amount of flesh on display, the show's shortcoming really is in the windowdressing: the elimination process ("Congratulations, so-and-so" makes me long for Tyra's comically tortuous "You're still in the running towards becoming"), stupid challenges that have superficial relevance to the competition but is just an opportunity to drop subjective anvils of "you're sexy, but not the sophisticated sexy that we're looking for," and so on and so forth. Honestly, the best part of the show is its version of the contestants' flames being snuffed out: the eliminee has to hang up her feather boa! OH SNAP.

As far as leashes are concerned, I'm going to watch one more episode to see exactly what's up with Sisely's "meltdown." And why do I care about Sisely at all? She's an ex-punk rocker, and I don't know if she's said anything yet about selling out.

Actually, she's an ex-punk rocker with red hair. That's the real reason.

Indie rating: Mogwai - "Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist

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