Entertainment

‘Fly Girls’ is air travel gone glam

Too bad the producers couldn’t stop themselves from throwing a manipulative nightmare flight attendant into the mix of “Fly Girls,” the new reality show about flight attendants on the CW.

The ridiculous caricature — a bizarre throwback to a 1950s “stewardess” — of “Fly Girl” Nikole Rubyn turns what could have been a real reality show about working women back to the Stone Age. You know, the era when men flew for business and women flew to catch a businessman.

The show chronicles the “life” of five Virgin (as in the name of the airline) flight attendants who are hard-working, interesting people. Well, four of them are anyway. Ringer Nikole is there solely to play that reality show staple, the back-stabbing monster.

I guess it never was going to be “reality” since these “roommates” were chosen, according to published reports, after Virgin sent out a mass e-mail to flight attendants asking them to audition for the show.

I mean, you’d have to be a moron to honestly think that the four attendants just happened to be living together already in a fancy beach house.

OK, it’s TV, I can live with that silliness.

But it’s when they bring in Nikole — whom the producers want you to believe just hap pens to be moving in with them when they just happen to be filming a reality show–that plain silly becomes terribly stupid.

The other flight attendants who share the house are Tasha, an African American single mom with a 10-year-old son; Louise, an Asian-American who comes from a family that doesn’t approve of her choice to fly; Blonde Farrah, who looks like a blonde joke but is actually smart, nice and thoughtful; and cutesy, brown-haired Mandalay, who has problems with men. (Geez, maybe when you’re stuck with the same name as a Vegas casino, men just can’t take you seriously.)

Finally, there’s the evil brunette Nikole. If she looks familiar, it’s because she’s appeared in some three-dollar TV commercials which are posted on her Facebook page.

Unfortunately, the women do very little flying because they are always asked instead to attend fancy Virgin events where they throw back their shoulders and show off the Virgin brand.

They are also terrible actresses and sound slightly nuts reciting lines that must have been fed to them.

This could have been a really good show. Instead, “Fly Girls” ends up just an OK flight to fantasy land.