HOW desperate for recogni tion must you be to want a camera crew following you and your husband (who’s lost interest in you) around recording your miserable, and in some cases disgusting, life?
Enter the newest quietdesperation reality show, “Tuesday Night Book Club,” a line-for-line ripoff of Bravo’s not-terribly successful “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” which was, in and of itself, a reality ripoff of “Desperate Housewives.” This one is filmed in Scottsdale, Ariz., a city where, apparently, implants go to die.
In this version of desperateness, there are seven real women – all versions of one another with bobbed noses, fat lips and boobs that could fly over Macy’s on Thanksgiving.
The premise is a Tuesdaynight book club, which didn’t much exist before the show, was expanded upon and added to for the show – although the women bonded during the tapings.
If you were expecting the women would meet each week to dissect the nuances of Proust or Beckett, forget it.
The first book chosen, which they all admit they didn’t read beyond the first 20 or so pages, is Jan Weiner’s “Good In Bed.” This gives them the excuse to talk about sex – which they don’t seem to be having much of.
Maybe they should have read the book Only one, woman, Jenn, who calls herself a “trophy wife,” has a lot of sex. Of course not necessarily with her husband, a really unattractive, really rich, bald, out-of-shape guy who is always looking to wife-swap.
Then (and this is how they are described – all in terms of their marital status) there’s Tina, a 46-year old “The Divorced Mom”; Kirin, “The Doctor’s Wife”; Lynn, “The Newlywed” (in a horrible hatefilled marriage); Sara, “The Party Girl”; Cris, “The Loyal Wife”; and Jamie, “The Conflicted Wife.” Each episode gives us a week in their lives, with doses of laughably bad, voiceover philosophy like “Good friends, like good books are well chosen. They entertain us, offer us insight and help us make sense of the world.” Right.
If they actually did read, they’d know it was cribbed from Louisa May Alcott’s line, “Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more en joyable.” Kind of like good TV.
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“Tuesday Night Book Club”
[*] (One star)
Tonight at 10 on CBS