Short of dispensing the latest celebrity mags and big bowls of ice cream from a slot in the middle of the screen, it’s hard to see how one’s trusty television could be a better supplier of escapism Tuesday.
After all, we’ve got Kathy Griffin returning with her Bravo reality show, “My Life on the D-List,” at 8 p.m., and everybody’s favorite “America’s Next Top Model” diva, Janice Dickinson, debuting a brand-new model-search show on Oxygen at 9 p.m.
What, you want a “Footballers Wives” marathon and a box of chocolates too? Don’t be greedy.
(And if you’re dead set on more substantial fare, there are two terrific “House” repeats starting at 7 p.m. on WFLD-Ch. 32, including the one about a young girl with cancer, who prompts this comment from Dr. House: “These cancer kids. Can’t put them all on a pedestal. It’s basic statistics. Some of them have got to be whiney little fraidy-cats.”)
Anyhow, you have to love Griffin’s ability to make fun of herself as much as the celebrities that are plastered all over Us and Star every week. On the way to visit a fan who’s ill, with a local news crew in tow, she’s brutally frank about her motivations; “If there was no press, I wouldn’t visit her.”
The remark is delivered with a knowing smile, but there might be a grain of truth there, and that’s why Griffin’s mockery of celebrities is so enjoyable — she doesn’t spare herself the same ruthless (and ruthlessly funny) treatment.
Griffin’s adventures in Tuesday’s episode involve a charity auction; the winner gets to spend the weekend at her house with Griffin and her patient husband, Matt. Given that this is the D-list, not everything goes as planned with the auction. The same is true of a trip to Louisville, where she’s presented with the keys to the city at a ceremony that wasn’t exactly mobbed. “There were tens of people there,” Griffin notes acerbically.
One thing you won’t see mentioned much is Griffin’s split from and subsequent reconciliation with Matt, reality TV’s most sane, engaging spouse. We may never know why they almost divorced and then got back together, but the glimpse we get of how hard it is to stay on the lowly D-list is reason enough to rejoice that Griffin has someone to share that perpetual scramble with.
By the way, after the successful launch of the fourth season of “Last Comic Standing” last week, NBC is rerunning the season premiere of the show, which features Griffin as a judge, at 7 p.m. A new episode follows at 8 p.m. on WMAQ-Ch. 5.
Now, may I present Janice Dickinson, “the world’s first supermodel” (those are her words), she of the unmoving Kabuki face and the perpetually uncensored opinions.
Let’s face it, “Top Model” has been missing something since Dickinson took her ‘tude away from the catwalk chronicle. In “The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency,” in which she is setting up — wait for it — a modeling agency, her full-on ranting-diva mode is proudly displayed, and, truth be told, is fairly entertaining if you’re into this sort of silly reality spectacle.
At least, like Griffin, Dickinson isn’t above poking fun at herself; she’s shown getting horrifying-looking Botox injections and jokes about hiring three assistants, “one for each mood swing.”
Would any of the potential models she picks in the show’s first episode ever make it in the real world as catwalk strutters or as the faces in glossy magazine ads? It looks like a pretty remote possibility, but then “Top Model” has never been about crowning a supermodel — it’s about cultivating a fantasy, a dream.
Working for Dickinson is probably more of a nightmare than a dream, but then, that probably makes for pretty darned enjoyable, if cheesy and loopy, reality TV.
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moryan@tribune.com
