At the beginning of the first episode of his new reality show, Being Bobby Brown (Bravo, Thursdays, 10 p.m.), R&B singer Brown gets out of jail in Boston, where he was serving time for nonpayment of child support, gets into a limo and goes to visit the children whose child support he was just jailed for not paying. Being Bobby Brown is full of surreal moments like this, and as such, it's a cut above bland celebrity reality shows like Meet the Barkers and Newlyweds. It's not, unfortunately, the unbelievable train wreck of the recent Britney and Kevin: Chaotic, placing it on an uneasy middle ground that makes it less interesting than it could have been.
Brown is known far more widely these days for his drug-related brushes with the law and his marriage to equally prone-to-controversy superstar Whitney Houston than for his music. The most attention his songs have gotten in recent years was when Britney Spears covered "My Prerogative." Consequently, the first two episodes of Being Bobby Brown have little if anything to do with music. Brown gets out of jail, reunites with his family, has a court date for a charge of spousal abuse (which Houston dropped), gets hounded by paparazzi and goes on vacation to the Bahamas. Legal troubles aside, the actual content is not much different from the adventures of Nick and Jessica.
Brown and Houston, though, have one of the most genuine celebrity relationships on reality TV. They aren't putting on fake cheer like Nick and Jessica and they aren't in an obviously one-sided relationship like Britney and Kevin. They are both decidedly off-kilter, and not only thanks to their recurring drug-abuse problems. Although Brown is clearly the less-famous member of the duo at this point (he gets mistaken for both Usher and P. Diddy in a single episode), he's an equal partner in the relationship. There's nothing more loving (or disgusting) than hearing Brown describe in graphic detail the time he helped his wife with her constipation.
If that kind of thing is way too much information for you, then Being Bobby Brown, with its sometimes disturbingly candid tone, will be an immediate turnoff. Those bizarre moments aside, the show is too dull to be of much interest. The celebrity reality genre needs a serious infusion of originality to prevent it from a lingering death; Being Bobby Brown isn't it.
Elsewhere, Comedy Central is trying to fill the hole left by the unexpected absence of Chappelle's Show by hiring more former members of comedy troupe The State. Several former cast members of the short-lived MTV sketch show (far more influential than it was popular) are already on Comedy Central in the reality TV parody Reno 911!, and now three more—David Wain, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black—anchor Stella (Comedy Central, Tuesdays, 10:30 p.m.), a sort of sketch-sitcom hybrid adapted from the trio's regular stage shows.
Like The State, Stella is more easily admired than enjoyed, with its stars engaging in surrealist set pieces that are not about characters or jokes but juxtapositions of elements (the trio go before an apartment co-op board dressed as skunks or perform open-heart surgery on their landlord). Reno 911! benefits from having distinctive characters and actual plots; Stella, while daring, doesn't have enough genuine laughs to back up its Monty Python's Flying Circus-like format. Like another surreal sketch show on Comedy Central, Upright Citizens Brigade, Stella will likely only last a short time before graduating its stars on to more conventional comedy.