The Simple Life

Everyone has their opinions on this show. You either love it or hate it. Personally, I love it. It's a piece of harmless fun. A funny show with exaggerated concepts and unrealistic motives. But lovable all the same. If you take The Simple Life as simply just fun, then it's a great show. If you read into it, and examine every single aspect, it's not so great.

When it comes down to it, The Simple Life is fake. They want you to believe these girls (Paris Hilton & Nicole Richie), have been stripped of everything that's important to them (money, credit cards, cell phones etc...)When in fact that's not the case. When you see pictures of them and the title reads "On set of The Simple Life" - that pretty much says it all. It's not supposed to be set up, it's supposed to be real. Is it scripted? Of course. Should it be, given the description of the show? No, it shouldn't.

The BIGGEST thing that gives this away is the editing. It's awful. Throughout the course of the season, you see the girls wearing the exact same outfits, hairstyles, looking exactly the same as previous episodes. And something tells me Paris & Nicole don't wear the exact same thing (EXACT TO A T), as previous weeks ago. It's so obvious none of it is real. So, I guess if you notice this, then yeah.. it's a fake show. Not reality.

When they say at the end of the finale "Yeah! We did it." They want you to believe they survived a month without their beloved credit cards, when really the truth is "Yeah, we finished filming."

Network: Fox; Genre: reality-based/docu-comedy; Content Rating: TV-PG; Available: on DVD; Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4)

Years Reviewed: Season 1+

Coming so close on the heels of MTV's 'Rich Girls' it's in danger of being confused for the Hilfiger buddy comedy, 'The Simple Life' proposes the novel idea that we take rich young born-into-money socialite buddies Paris Hilton and Nichole Richie, throw them on a farm in a Midwest, country setting and watch the culture shock hilarity ensue. Unlike 'The Apprentice' in which everybody knows who Donald Trump is, Fox was faced with a nagging problem to their novelty - nobody knows, or cares, who Paris Hilton is. A problem made just as easily into a solution by the nick-of-time, what-a-coincidence release of the best Hollywood publicity grabbing machine of them all: the all-important sex tape. The change seemed to come in almost the dead of night, but one day we woke up and everybody was supposed to care who Paris Hilton was and what idiot thing had she said next. Entertainment Tonight was beating down the girls' doors. Paris Hilton is, of course, heir to the Hilton Hotel family fortune and Nicole Richie is, of course, Lionel Richie's adopted daughter.

That is exactly what 'The Simple Life' is all about. Despite producers from 'The Real World' and various other MTV drones, this show is born more out of the celebrity tabloid culture of hype and E! network star-worship than it is out of the reality genera. It is a novelty series but as much as it claims to be poking a little fun at the girls, at the same time it is feeding the beast - making household names and 15-second celebrities out of Hilton and Richie.

The girls are taken in by the Leding family (credited as a group on the intro), much to the chagrin of the mother and eternal, admirable patience by the father. It's hard to get a handle on it. We're supposed to laugh at the ineptness of the girls to do real work and yet, at the same time they are put to choirs, such as castrating a bull, that most people wouldn't still wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. The show promotes itself as another Look-at-the-Freaks rubberneck series but that's a hard pill to swallow (no pun intended) when the show is taking the views of Hilton and Richie as the protagonists as they gawk at Midwestern country life with condescension and disbelief. Those that want to see nepotism get it's comeuppance will be horribly disappointed. In the end, the concept appears to be mute as nobody learns anything and Hilton and Richie gratefully go back to their lives. 'Simple' manages to be as loud and obnoxious with it's depiction of middle America as Fox's 'King of the Hill' is rich and nuanced. Who's kidding who here?

Then there is the show's biggest lumbering dinosaur of a problem: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. The two are the most unlikable leads you could possibly imagine. If David Caruso and Jim Belushi where thrown on a farm together it wouldn't be as cringe-inducing. And I don't need my TV leads likable. Anti-heroes almost always make for more complex and interesting characters. But anti-heroes have personalities of their own - something Hilton and Richie sadly lack. They are like pop culture sponges who have soaked up what the MTV culture has told them is cool and now spit their vapid, shameless personas back at us. Hilton, in particular, wears all the brand names she should, is rail thin and has long blonde hair. Not to be mean, but the girl puts herself together like an alien who had a general idea of what an attractive women looks like but horribly mangled the project in the details. She sure as hell thinks she's something though. Richie doesn't come off as the disgusting pig Hilton does. Not walking around with jeans riding so low the show has to blur out the resulting a** crack makes her look like the classiest of the two. But she's just as spoiled and lifeless. Her idea of being cool is to constantly say that everything and everyone is sexy.

So saddle up the tumbleweeds, race on down to the swimming hole, wrap the tin foil around the rabbit years and check out Fox's view of middle America.

Any serious discussion on the show's concept (will rich girls be able to survive in the country?) gets wadded up and thrown in the trash because Fox took the simplest approach to this show. It has the opportunity to play with a demographic (2 actually) rarely seen on TV and be giddy, bubble gum fun in the process. Instead it is dully handed to us sounding like a cartoon and riddled with stereotypes. It would seem by sheer happenstance everyone around them is living a country boy cliché and the show makes it look as 'Green Acres' as possible. It all wraps up with over-the-top twangy narration by David Richards.

'Simple' is also another reality show where the editing team behind the camera shamelessly jockeys with their celebrity leads for the limelight. The show is constantly calling attention to itself with the goofy sounds of springs and slide whistles. This is the tacky, crude, devoid of imagination novelty that the Fox network has re-invented itself to be known for. Way to go, Gail.

½

I'd forgotten how much of an improvement season 2 was over it's predecessor until I purchased it just the other evening at Best Buy for an unbelievably low $6.99! What a breath of fresh air to be taken off the farm and out of the dead-end town of Altus! It's so fun to watch these two girls in action as they breeze into the lives of unsuspecting "regular folk" and turn their lives upside down. It's outrageous to watch what they're able to get away with, but it makes you wonder how much of it is actually orchestrated. While I love the show, one thing I find most annoying is the reactions of the people that invite Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to perform these jobs. Come on, being surprised when they inevitably either screw the job up or blow it off altogether is like being surprised when Britney Spears shows her belly button - it's expected! I'm sorry, if I was a manager or proprietor of a business, as much as I adore these girls, if I valued my position as manager or my business I wouldn't allow them within 100 yards.

I think people put way too much effort into being overly-critical of this show. It's fluffy and doesn't require any thought to watch it. It's pure, unadulterated fun, and it's a wonderful escape. Now, I like movies and television shows that make you think as much as the next guy, but, tell the truth, don't you just want to sit back sometimes and watch a show that doesn't require you to use any brain power at all?

Although I, largely, agree with most of the basic criticisms offered by other reviewers, I could not help but feel a certain sympathy for Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and having some sense that, beneath their often obnoxious, misguided, and generally uninformed behavior; both ladies were fundamentally warm hearted and WANTED to be decent, if only they knew HOW to be so. Perhaps that is a naive assessment, on my part, given that they (and the residents of Altus) had to play to the cameras, to a certain extent, and that may have distorted everyone's more natural behavior. Still, (unless I was COMPLETELY deceived), the series looked like a cautionary tale of what often befalls clueless children of inherited wealth. The girls seemed to have been imprisoned in a cocoon of insular ignorance that crippled their capacity to function in a world structured more on self reliance and, perhaps, their parents owe them an apology for not teaching them the way Warren Buffett taught HIS children?

Nearly every review of the Simple Life misses its essence -- its a staged show. ALL reality shows are in fact staged, with a script. The "reality" part is a bit of improv. allowance, and the illusion that its really happening.

The Simple Life is just as staged as the Lucy show in that generation. Most of the jokes are already written. All the bits, even down to Nicole's purse getting stolen, are staged. If the girls did some of this stuff in real life, they know they would at least get a misdemeanor offense. Instead, a little town is signed up to play along with the jokes and pretend.

The moral condemnation of Paris and Nicole, as spoiled rich girls with low IQs, is just what the producers want adults to think. Any kid with a brain knows they are just goofing off, and its no more real than the Three Stooges. Relax, folks, the stealing and lying and screw ups are all jokes.