Trash TV

I have a new guilty pleasure: Rock of Love (aka Win a Date with Brett Michaels)!

Brett Michaels is the lead singer of Poison, a washed up 80s long-hair band. Biggest hits were probably "Every rose has its thorn" and "Nuthin' But a Good Time," both of which feature prominently as the background music of the show. Brett Michaels claims that being on the road has killed every relationship he's ever had so he has a reality tv show to help him find a woman who can handle the touring life. I saw an episode or so while visiting San Francisco and I was instantly smitten. It's been a slow Netflix month so I thought I'd order the set and see if I liked it. Oh my god, I am totally sucked in!!! It is trash tv at its ultimate best!!

Brett Michaels is an interesting character. According to his website Brett is mid-40s but actually doesn't look so bad considering his party hard lifestyle. As an aside - does he have a receding hairline or what?!?! He's never shown on the show without a bandanna that covers his entire forehead and then some. Brett clearly loves to party and clearly loves the fact that he's got a ton of trashy women vying for his affections - wow, what an ego!! One woman (Lacey) is clearly a tyrant and he knows it but he loves that she's acting so crazy, ostensibly on his behalf. I like that he introduces his hobbies - music, motocross, motorcycles, football, etc - by saying "one of the things that I most love in the world . . . " I could have sworn that Poison was totally washed up and over but Brett spends quite a bit of time "in the studio" (you know, one of the things he loves most in the world) but I'm kind of thinking it's to give him something to do. It's totally hilarious and so so fake when the camera shows him casually playing the guitar when a girl interrupts him. At the end of each episode he hands the women he wants to keep an "all access pass" and asks them if they will stay and "continue to rock my world" - and manages to look totally serious while saying it! Despite all this he actually seems like a decent guy though I am skeptical that he actually wants a girlfriend out of the whole show. More exposure, perhaps??

The women on the show are out of control! Literally! They are some of the trashiest women I have ever seen - nutty, slutty, insane party girls!! They are fascinating to watch and I love to try to figure out what they're saying in between the censor beeps. Several of the women are "dancers" (ahem, strippers), others are musicians and others seem to have no direction in life other than to win a date with Brett. They love to drink, party, lay around naked, take lame sexed up pictures and verbally bash the crap out of one another. They argue over who's really "in it for Brett" and who just wants to be on tv. They all make out with Brett at one point or another, quite often in front of the other women while on a "date" with Brett.

I've only been watching the first season and the girls are so unreal that they almost seem like they're caricatures of themselves. A couple of the girls seem cool - Jes and Sam, in particular - but it's fascinating to watch the others. They think nothing of the ridiculous challenges they're made to do (slutty mud football, digging through a dumpster full of trash looking for a guitar pick to prove they can survive life on the road, creating an album cover, etc) and actually think they're connecting with him. Maybe they are, I don't know, but the whole show is just so crazy that it's hard to imagine anyone making off the show with their dignity in tact, much less with on the arm of Brett Michaels.