Since September, I've been sitting down to watch UPN every Tuesday night for the brilliant, complex and intelligent Veronica Mars, which the network just renewed for a second season, despite its abysmal ratings. You'd think that in order to build on the critical acclaim and word of mouth that Veronica Mars has been accumulating over the past several months, UPN would run repeats this summer for new viewers to check out.
Instead, in a move that will sadly probably garner much higher ratings than any episode of Veronica Mars, UPN is airing the highly anticipated Britney Spears reality show Britney and Kevin: Chaotic (UPN, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.), pairing it with the Jenny McCarthy sitcom, The Bad Girl's Guide (UPN, Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m.). It's like having a filet mignon and a glass of wine for dinner every week only to have them unceremoniously replaced with Cheetos and Red Bull (Spears' favorite beverage was smart enough to advertise during the show's premiere).
It's hard to know where to begin in talking about Chaotic, which is either the bravest or stupidest thing Spears has ever done. In no possible way could it be described as "good," "entertaining," "interesting" or even "coherent," but it does engender a certain kind of slack-jawed amazement. You sit there wondering, "Is this really on television? Are people really watching it? Why am I watching it? Wait, what's going to happen next?" I'd like to say that Chaotic represents the absolute nadir of reality TV, but we all know that something soon will come along that's even worse.
Until then, Chaotic is it. It's probably the worst TV show I've ever seen. The thing that some people forget about reality TV is that no matter how trashy and debasing it may be, there is actually an art to constructing a watchable reality show. You have to distill hours and hours of a footage into a compelling narrative with interesting characters. You have to shoot scenes that look professionally constructed even as they follow the unpredictability of real life. The best reality shows (and they do exist) get to real, important truths about people, tell compelling stories and look good doing it.
Chaotic isn't even up to the standards of the worst reality shows. Although producers have beefed it up with stock footage of locales and after-the-fact interviews with Spears, Federline and various associates, nothing can cover up the fact that Chaotic is essentially Spears and Federline's home movies repackaged for mass consumption. Shot almost entirely by the couple, Chaotic lives up to its title by being a jumbled mess of awkward, extreme close-ups, nauseating camera movements, drunken ramblings and brain-dead musings about life. It's like being stuck watching the vacation videos of the annoyingly lovey-dovey couple who won't shut up about how great their sex life is. Actually, it's not like that at all; that's exactly what it is.
Along the way, Chaotic accomplishes two important, undoubtedly unintentional feats: It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Spears is naïve to the point of being mentally incompetent, with her pathological need to be loved manifesting itself in flying Federline from LA to London to stay with her on tour after she's met him only once for a few minutes; and it kills any lingering attractiveness Spears might have possessed with its endless extreme close-ups of her face, revealing every pore and blemish imaginable. She also comes off as incredibly unattractive personally, acting crass, stupid, immature and annoying, just like most people do in their home videos, except they have the good sense not to show them on TV.
McCarthy's sitcom, while undeniably atrocious, is leagues ahead of Chaotic just by virtue of having a coherent narrative and passable production values. It tries to be Sex and the City as a traditional sitcom, with McCarthy as one of three urban friends on the prowl for love. All it really ends up as is a bargain-basement comedy with some faux-edgy lewdness tacked on, and by the end of the second episode, it's already undermined its own alleged women's empowerment message. Britney would probably love it.