The Anna Nicole Show

Have you seen her recently?! Anna Nicole is now the spokesgirl for Trimspa diet pills because of her 40 pound weight loss. She's back!

Anna Nicole Smith was once a stunningly beautiful young model who had modeled for Playboy, Guess?, and Lane Bryant. Now she is a 36-year-old still-beautiful-but-slightly-overdone widow who has her own reality show in which she stars with her lawyer and best friend Howard, her 17-year-old son Daniel, and her personal assistant Kimmie. Wait, let's not forget Sugar Pie, Anna's tiny black dog that she takes with her EVERYWHERE!

Okay... well. What can I say? I enjoy this show because I enjoy Anna- she's my hero. Why? Simple. She's a big girl and she made it. I am also 5'11 with larger measurements and instead of feeling huge, I just say to myself "Anna's my size and she's gorgeous!" She makes me feel better. But don't get me wrong! I hardly approve of most of Anna's silly behavior as far as guzzling alcohol, swearing like a sailor, and having constant physical encounters with male AND female exhibitionists goes. But who the hell am I to judge the way she wants to live? I just think she's a kick to watch and I think it's really cute how she and Howard fight so much one wonders if they're really in love! Now THAT would be interesting... a new wedding for Anna? Well, maybe and maybe not, but watch at least one episode of the new season- that weight is GONE!

After watching this show, I feel yucky. Anna Nicole Smith is one of the most repellent 'personalities' to ooze across the TV screen in this generation. I use the term 'personality' liberally. She, nor her entourage possess even a modicum of insight, tenderness, humor or drama. A typical day in the life of Anna Nicole (and by proxy, a typical show) consists of people eating (sometimes in contests) , decorating her house, watching TV, shopping, driving around, going to the bathroom, throwing temper tantrums, sneering in a barely coherent girlish voice that sounds like she's perpetually drunk and consorting with various freaks and lowlifes. Sounds like anybodies boring life (save for the freaks and lowlifes perhaps...) but the producers of this show seem to think because Anna Nicole is super rich, it makes for an interesting TV show. Actually, it looks like the producers realized they had a problem so to enliven things, they occasionally dress her up in skin tight clothes that accentuates her rotund (and growing) physique, especially her rhino-sized butt. She eats so much food on this show that the viewer can actually see her putting on weight over the course of a few episodes.

Watch one episode. Anything more is gluttony.

Network: E!; Genre: reality, documentary, comedy; Content Rating: TV-14 (for adult content); Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Season 1+

Wouldn't you know that E!: Entertainment Television was a cable channel that will look at the phenomenal success of the first season of 'The Osbournes' and have absolutely no idea what they are seeing. In trying to create their own version of the monster hit MTV docu-comedy, 'The Anna Nicole Show' mis-reads everything that is so engaging and likable about the Osbourne family. Based on the chosen subject of this show, they think we like Ozzy because he slurs his words unintelligibly or that we like Sharon because she's a spoiled Beverly Hills transplant. That, a few extra pounds and a trailer park attitude is pretty much all you'll find in Anna Nicole Smith - who E! wants to position as America's favorite strung-out, gold-digging over-grown baby.

Possessing not one shred of the wit, irony and evident unconditional love of 'Osbournes', 'Nicole' wants us to arrogantly mock Smith and feel better about ourselves watching her 1) house shopping while trying to find a bathtub she can fit in (no joke) 2) humiliating her son over the telephone and on theme park trips 3) being wrangled around by her handlers and specifically lawyer Howard K. Stern (an obvious tie-in in the making for E!) 4) giving us a fleeting but nonetheless traumatizing glimpse into her masturbation habits and 5) babying her dog Sugar Pie. That's it. That's the show people. If it sounds like your kind of television than you'll be in hog heaven, but you might feel awful in the morning.

This isn't hip it's just sad. I don't need my TV classy. I'm not going to call this exploitative or condemn people who want to make fun of what a pathetic individual Anna Nicole Smith has let herself become. I just need these type of shows to be funny, which this isn't. The problem with this kind of extreme television is that the results are just as extreme - it can be terrific (as evident by the perfect contemporary 4 star score I gave to 'The Osbournes: Season 1'), but when it falls it falls hard and lands flat on it's face. A miserable failure.

This show could have been a rich, stupidly funny satire of a celebrity who has outlived Hollywood's usefulness of her, but would Hollywood-worshiping E! really ever go for something like that? They just want this to be a drive-by car-wreck. It's about that much fun. "Anna" is nearly un-watchable, network constructed dreck, dragging not just through the episode, but from commercial break to commercial break. It's got a cute animated intro, I'll give it that. Reminds me of the 2nd season 'Strangers With Candy' intro. I'm sure that's not what E! was going for.

½

I'm not sure why I enjoy this, because as other people have said, there certainly are grosser and more outlandish things on TV. These shows really are about nothing. One is about Anna looking for a house. Period. Another is about Anna having an eating contest with her attorney. Period. Another is about Anna going for a driving test. Period. And of course all have a sub-plot involving flambouyant Bobby Trendy decorating her house (which never seems to get done). I guess it all boils down to the fact that it is just amazing to watch someone who was so glamorous, sexy and unattainable turn into someone who doesn't care that she has crawled under a table and gotten her butt stuck between two legs! Her speech is almost always slurred so badly that it is very hard to believe she is not on pain killers or muscle relaxers and booze most of the time. But I love her!! I think her "Screw it" attitude is great! She just does not seem to care about anything! She knows there are cameras following her around at all times but thinks nothing of chowing down on Doritos and Stawberry Quik! I really feel sorry for her 2 assistants, Howard and Kim, who come across as being very desperate and secretly in love with her - both putting up with her childish temper tantrums. In one episode, Anna threw a fit and cursed out Kim because they were playing "Punch-Buggy" and Anna was insisting that the "new Volkswagon Beetles" do not count while Kim said that they did. So Anna got really angry - not "kidding around angry" but cursing her out and truly being p***ed off!! I guess Kim really doesn't have any other choice than to put up with it since she has Anna's face tattooed all over her body. Regardless of how heavy she is though, Anna still has a beautiful face, probably one of the most beautiful faces in the world. And it is refreshing to see a beautiful celebrity truly being herself, no matter how stupid and childish, rather than taking on the same boring mundane personality that is expected of them and that most other celebrities take.

I recently took a bet from a friend that I couldn't watch the first season DVD set of The Anna Nicole Show all in one night. The bad news is I won this bet. I don't enjoy watching a mentally unstable or heavily medicated woman go about her life. I didn't enjoy her trip to Chipendale's. Nor her goin to see "Puppetry of the Penis". I could've lived without seeing Anna's toothless white trash cousin flashing multiple times AND I had no desire to see Margerette Cho make out with Anna. (although I always had Cho pegged as being like that). Oh did I mention that the DVDs are uncensored, so all of the above possibly scarred me for life. Also on the commentary for the Christmas special Anna herself says some of it is faked by the E! crew. My Grade: F