DaveChung.com - A Guy’s Blog From Girl World

I love reality TV. I love it and I don’t pretend that I’m above it. Why? Because I’m not.

This weekend, I finally caught a few episodes of two of E! network’s newest reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane. While I can’t really say which one is “worth watching,” seeing as they don’t really add a lot to society, nor your outlook on the world, help in the fight to stop global warming, etc., I can definitely say that Keeping is by far a better show.

First, what kind of drove me crazy about the shows was the fact that I didn’t find their lives to really be all that outrageous. Sure, they have a lot of money, but when you live in Los Angeles (like I do), I think that so much of this spoiled craziness just becomes normal to you. While I watched Kimora Lee go shopping for multi-million dollar homes in Beverly Hills, I watched her do so while knowing that I’ve been to people’s houses in Beverly Hills that weren’t that far below on the “fab scale” to what Kimora was shopping for. Of course, this is after I’ve lived in Los Angeles for six years and have been to a red carpet event or two, but it was definitely weird for me to realize that I wasn’t so shocked at many of the things on Fab Lane and Keeping that would likely be “out of this world” for many of the shows viewers. Just a side thought, but it was weird.

Not that fun

Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane is kind of like watching a gender-flipped Diddy-centric episode of Making the Band without the singing, cool fellas, and house drama, except that Diddy is a lot more fun to watch. Honestly, I just didn’t really understand what the point of the show was. I know that it’s supposed to follow Kimora’s life as the CEO of Baby Phat, but it was more about the work that the people who work directly with her have to do for her while receiving very little direction from the show’s main diva.

The show just isn’t very fun and while it’s over the top and very “fabulous,” it’s lacking the drama and excitement that normally makes a reality show a “can’t miss” reality show. I tried to watch a marathon, even with hottie assistant Mallory helping glue my eyes to the screen, but just found myself getting annoyed with the scatterbrained organization of the show. There are very few ongoing story lines that make you want to keep watching, but I feel like the main problem is that you don’t get to know the people well enough to really care about any of the struggles that they’re going through. As a result, you don’t like anyone enough to really care about the story, nor care enough to tune in again.

It’s “just ok” and I will not be watching the show ever again. Actually, even just thinking about how “ok” the show was right now really annoys me.

That brings us to Keeping up with the Kardashians, a Ryan Seacrest production.

If you haven’t caught this guilty pleasure yet and you’re a fan of The Hills and The Real World, this one is a keeper. Going off the “visual” post, let’s start out by saying that the show gives you an excuse to look at the beautiful Kim Kardashian for 30 minute periods at a time.

Say what you will, but she is hot.

So while the Kardashian klan (plus Olympian Bruce Jenner and his son Brody Jenner) is pretty spoiled, at least they have a store that they run, so it creates the illusion that this is where all the money comes from. The Kardashians are of course, the family of the late-Robert Kardashian, best known for being one of OJ Simpson’s lawyers back in that trial that no one heard about a little while back.Clearly, the family has a ton of money and Kim caused quite the stir for the family after being seen with friend Paris Hilton out and about on the Hollywood scene and making the obligatory sex tape that showed her hooking up with R&B has been and Brandy’s lil bro Ray-J. Put it all together, mix in Lauren Conrad’s ex-squeeze Brody Jenner, and throw in some Ryan Seacrest production muscle, and what do you get? A really entertaining 30 minutes of reality TV.

And yes, you get to look at Kim Kardashian

The show features Bruce Jenner having otherworldly patience, Kim being incredibly hot, Khloe and Kourtney being spoiled and less hot than their sister, Rob being normal, and mother Chris Kardashian pretty much disobeying anything that her husband Bruce asks her to do (thus, the patience). What’s great about the show is that all of the Kardashians have very distinct personalities and the Real World-like confessionals give viewers the opportunity to get to know them a little more. While it’s obvious that a lot of the confessionals appear scripted and are likely not shot at the most relevant time, the show is well-edited to give the appearance of real-time and despite the lighthearted nature of the show because of all the Kardashian silliness, it still has heart.
[youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxdxWq4jMg]
From never dodging the effect of Kim’s sex tape on the family to watching the family discuss whether Kim should be in Playboy or not (and she is in the December issue NSFW), the show is fun, but doesn’t seem too scripted for a family that is as over the top as this one is.

Perhaps the best episode I caught was the episode that was filmed on the anniversary of Robert Kardashian’s death. The episode had some very honest and very touching confessionals by each of the family members who were recounting the memories they had about their father.

It was legitimately fascinating to watch the family look back on home videos they had with their late father and see what their lives were like in simpler times, before the sex tapes, celebutant status, and Hollywood scene took over their lives. I was really impressed with this episode, along with the preceding episodes that followed Kim’s struggles with posing for Playboy magazine because of the relative honesty of each of the characters and exceptional editing that make the show work.

Keeping Up made it onto my DVR and but Life in the Fab Lane definitely did not and I recommend that you pass on that one too.

Let’s face it, we’re a visual society.

On Thanksgiving, I got into a conversation with an older parent of my friend’s boyfriend about how visual our society has become. For him, he was referring to how President John F. Kennedy was helped by his dashing good looks during his run for the White House (this conversation started because I said that Barack Obama was “cool” and that I thought Hilary Clinton would benefit from doing the “Soulja Boy” dance during a stop on the campaign tour).

Of course, in my mind, I was thinking more about how most of my favorite celebrities and singers are incredibly hot. Case in point, my favorite celebrity and personality in all of Hollywood/Nashville is Carrie Underwood, who I believe to be the most physically flawless person to ever walk the planet. I love her music, but if I’m being honest, I know that it helps that I am cognizant of the fact that her face is singing it.OMG, I am hot!

Again, let’s face it, television is filled with a disproportionate number of hotties nowadays who are on the shows to make guys like me watch them. And you know what? It works. It really works.Taking into account that I am a guy and the fact that males are generally believed to be more visual than females, it works even more.

This got me to thinking, who are the hottest women on television today? Generally, I like to watch TV in silence, much like I watch sports. I don’t like it when people talk, nor do I like missing things, then rewinding them on DVR to hear what the person said. I like to watch the show in its entirety and enjoy all of it, in the visual and auditory fun that is the marvelous invention of video.

However, I have narrowed it down to two actresses/characters who force me, a devout television silentist (kind of like a scientist, but without schooling, nor a lot of thinking…ok it just means I like it to be quiet when I watch TV) to repeatedly say, “Oh man, she is really freakin’ hot” numerous times over the course of a single episode. I tried to stay away from extremely well known hotties (Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl, rated 78 on AskMen.com) and perennial hotties (Ghost Whisperer’s Jennifer Love Hewitt, rated 82 on AskMen.com) and came away with two very different actresses who I believe manage to steal all the eyeballs that advertisers are drooling over every second they’re on screen, or in the latter’s case, off the screen.

Chyler Leigh (Lexie Grey on Grey’s Anatomy)

Katherine who? Wait, there’s a hot blonde on Grey’s?

Let’s suspend reality for a minute and ignore the fact that Chyler is only in her mid 20s and has two children. Let’s forget the long masturbation scene with the over-sized dildo from Not Another Teen Movie that makes it hard for some people to see Chyler as a doctor.

Forgot about this one, didn’t you? You’re welcome.

Kids and dildos aside, if someone told me that another actress was actually capable of making me forget that Katherine Heigl was on Grey’s Anatomy, I would have thought they were lying until Chyler Leigh showed up as Lexie Grey, the half-sister of the incredibly annoying, grown-up version of a Dawson’s Creek character, Meredith Grey, this season. Her addition to the cast is much more of that of “just another pretty face,” as she’s actually a valuable member to a cast that has had so many off-screen distractions that it is refreshing to have a regular cast member who isn’t carrying a fee-ridden oversized amount of baggage to the set.Not only is Lexie Grey hot, but she’s intelligent and quirky in a way that is neither annoying, nor forced upon viewers. After seeing Chyler on Grey’s this season, I realized that Lexie Grey is pretty much the closest thing that we’ll ever see to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character from Party of Five, Sarah Reeves, interning her life away in Seattle hospital during a second season of her quickly cancelled spinoff Time of Your Life. Both brunettes use similar speech (in terms of intonation), speak simply, yet with a decent amount of intelligence, tell it like it is when they have to, are naturally beautiful, and are impossible not to look at while they’re on screen. Ok and really, they just kind of look like each other.

Kind of similar, no?
Maybe it’s just me.

So yes, I know that I’m blinded by her good looks, but I cannot help but be impressed with how Chyler Leigh has managed to make me give a steaming, “two girls one cup” sized crap about Lexie Grey. On an established television show with distinct characters, it’s always a challenge to make us viewers care about “the new guy.” No one really cared about Mark Sloan on Grey’s and while he’s a great character, I still don’t know if we really do. However, Chyler Leigh has fit right in with the cast, despite the fact that she’s a couple years behind the rest of the group. We actually care about her romance with Alex and her dad’s alcohol problems. Why?Because she’s hot.

Kidding. Because she’s really a strong actress with just the right about of… dare I say it… cuteness to make her lovable and not over the top-quirky-annoying…like I believe some of the characters are on Grey’s. So Chyler Leigh, you are hot.

Moving on.

Kristen Bell - (Elle on Heroes, the voice of Gossip Girl on Gossip Girl)

Xoxo, Gossip Girl

This is one of those that I can’t really describe. While most got to know Bell for her role on Veronica Mars, I recently became a fan because of her role as the sexually-frustrated and lightning fetish-loving Company captive Elle on Heroes. I remember when I was test-driving my Scion xA, a car that I have the definition of a Love-Hate relationship with, the car salesman (obviously trying to earn commission) told me “A car is like a woman, sometimes you just love it. You might not like everything about it, but you just can’t explain it sometimes and you love it” (this was after I told him “The Honda Fit is a better car in pretty much every aspect, so I don’t know why I still am thinking of getting this car”… and I still don’t know why I did).And to me, that is Kristen Bell. First, she’s blonde and I have always had an affinity for brunettes. Second, she’s really not THAT hot based on physical appearance alone (AskMen.com gave her a 74).

Ok, so she’s kind of hot on physical appearance alone.

However, like Chyler Leigh to an extent, Kristen Bell is hot because her TV character is hot. Elle on Heroes is a sheltered tease with superhuman powers (so you assume she’s pretty athletic) that is just bad enough that it’s really hot. We haven’t really learned enough about her on the show to really get an identity for her, but what we have seen is evidence enough for me.

Even with everyone’s favorite (and now legal) “it girl” Hayden Panettiere on the show, Bell still manages to stand out in a cast of beautiful, beautiful people and when you look at the cast of Heroes, that’s saying a lot.

La la la, I am hot and everyone loves me.

Even more, Kristen is the voice of Gossip Girl on the CW guilty pleasure of the same name. So not only is Kristen Bell hot enough to feature on screen, but her voice is hot enough (and sounds completely different on a side note) to be compelling off screen as well. Unlike the narrator of Mary Alice on Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl is supposed to be one of the coolest girls around Manhattan and Bell’s voice fits the role just perfectly. Not only is she nice to look at, the ultimate “hard to get” tease, but she’s also really “fly” and hip with the kids.

Athletic, really horny, a beautiful speaking voice, and a little mysterious, Kristen Bell joins Chyler Leigh on my list of hottest hotties on television today.Sure, there are other hotties - Olivia Wilde from House, M.D., Autumn Reeser from The OC (if this show was still on, she’d be a top 2), Becki Newton from Ugly Betty come to mind - but these two stuck out to me as the perfect balance of looks and compelling television character that make them absolutely impossible not to notice while they’re on screen.

If anyone says looks don’t matter on television, it’s because they don’t watch television.