The Simple Life - Season 1
What do you get if you take two done up, ditzy, attractive blondes who like to wear hardly any clothes. Take them to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The farmer has three innocent sons, uncorrupted. Ask the girls to work for their keep. A porn movie of course! Wrong. The Simple Life.
Paris Hilton is the heir to the Hilton hotels....
What do you get if you take two done up, ditzy, attractive blondes who like to wear hardly any clothes. Take them to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The farmer has three innocent sons, uncorrupted. Ask the girls to work for their keep. A porn movie of course! Wrong. The Simple Life.
Paris Hilton is the heir to the Hilton hotels money, and one time Internet movie 'star'. Nicole Richie is the adopted daughter of pop star Lionel Richie. They have been friends since birth and know each other backwards. They have more than obviously had the most privileged upbringing imaginable. This is why they were chosen to star in this reality TV show. The premise being that two spoilt kids from Los Angeles cannot survive thirty days in the sticks without Daddy's credit card. They have to live 'The Simple Life' which entails, shock horror, working for a living.
I disagree with the theory that you either like or loath reality TV. That's like saying "I hate comedies". Obviously a lot of reality stuff is absolute garbage. That thing with the camp guy at the airport being a prime example. Where this differs however is the two main protagonists are so alien to the world we know and love that it is addictive viewing.
Paris and Nicole give airheads a bad name. Serious bad name. They are constantly looking to get into trouble. Much to the consternation of Albert Leding. He is the patriarch of the Leding family, who the girls are staying with for the thirty days. He is, like the rest of the family, stereotypically 'Southern. That doesn't mean playing a banjo on the porch whilst chewing tobacco, but simply that they still believe in family values and traditional living.
You really warm to the Leding family. 'Curly' is the Grandma and is really sweet, she gets really maternal and protective over the not so innocent young ladies. Grandpa isn't featured a whole lot and tends to be pretty quiet. Albert and Janet are the parents of three boys, Justin, Cain and Braxton. Albert and Janet are just two honest hardworking people trying to raise their family. The two eldest boys (Justin and Cain) are shy and intimidated by the girls at first, but open up as the show goes on. The real star of the show is three-year-old Braxton. This kid is the cleverest toddler I've ever seen. One minute he's making sandwiches, then washing the dishes, swatting bugs and fits in answering questions like who is the secretary for state in the family quiz. Give that boy a show.
As I said earlier this is all about how much trouble the girls can get into. I have never seen anybody so unequipped for work in all my days (myself included). The girls are hired and fired all over town. The words second and day do not fill many sentences. They have jobs as varied as dairy workers to burger bar employees to dog washers. They manage to fail miserably at them all, whilst ensuing carnage and mayhem follow them everywhere.
The DVD is presented in 16:9 Widescreen and comes with a standard Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. The picture quality was average, as you may expect from a reality TV show. The sound wasn't much better, but not inaudible, and not inexcusable considering the genre.
The DVD has all seven episodes from the series plus an extra 'Lost Episode' and 'Reunion Special'. 'The Lost Episode' is basically things that weren't deemed funny enough to be in the final cut of the seven aired. It should be called 'The Homesick Episode' as all the girls seemed to be doing was pining for home. 'The Reunion Special' was an American TV special presented by a woman who with any more facelifts would have a beard. It was basically the family and the girls asked some questions about how they coped at the time and after the event. It also featured some of the disgruntled employers who had calmed down, no doubt because of the success of the show! At forty-two minutes long it crammed everything and nothing you wanted to know about the show.
The actual extra features section contained an eight-minute clip from the pilot show. This is where the girls are working at the dog salon, amazing as this may seem this is actually the best they did at any job.
There is Paris and Nicole packing. Does what it says on the tin really but does highlight where the shows producers slipped up. Paris' sister Nicky helps her pack and is a clone of her sister. How cool would it have been to have seen her in the show full time?
The final three pieces were just shorts to fill up space and not of any real interest. 'Shopping at Buffalo Bills' (a hunting store) shows the girl's model a nice line in camouflage. 'Can opener' shows Nicole tackle the age-old conundrum of opening her first tin. 'The Vet' has Paris trying to convince the vet she has operated on Nicole, without success.
I suppose to sum up this isn't that difficult. If you like watching glamorous girls fool about wearing hardly any clothes, and you want to be able to watch it with the excuse that it isn't porn, buy it!
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