TV is the new reading

It's not really that complicated

This blog is exactly the sort of reaction this show was meant to quash. Oh well.

After a flutter of bad press that meant a lot more to Denise Richards than it did to anyone else, she got together with the people at E! and ...

Denise Richards. She's a Bond girl from 10 years ago whose otherwise limited range has secured her roles in such horror and sci fi films and mockumentaries as "Valentine," "Starship Troopers" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous."

Anyway, after her career largely dried up and the tabloids focused more on her relationship kerfuffles -- mostly that she'd started dating the estranged husband of a casual acquaintance -- so soon after her mother's death, Richards had to act.

Sadly, she can't. So instead, she got together with the people at E! and put together a "reality" show called "Denise Richards: It's Complicated."

I recall hearing somewhere that this show was supposed to be mostly about her life as a devoted single mom. In the episode I saw, her children were on screen for less than a minute.

Instead, the camera followed her around as she and her friends checked out the Perez Hilton Web site (where he said she dressed like an '80s hooker, which she decided to take as a compliment). Then she had a conversation with her father that had to be bleeped a lot.

Agreeing that her pottymouth was a bad influence for her kids, she made a pact with her father that she'd give away a pair of shoes for every swear -- which ultimately led to more swearing.

But most of the episode I saw was devoted to her trying to rebuild her image from what gossip magazines had said about her ... once. She contacted a tabloid writer about telling her side of the story. The writer informed her that rumors and gossip from two years ago isn't on anyone's news cycle. At which point Richards lost several more pairs of shoes.

She ultimately did get an interview with Redbook, so I suppose that's a victory.

After checking out "It's Complicated," and a couple other similar productions, I wonder if E! is really helping anyone with these "reality shows" about "celebrities." The Kardashians, the Anna Nicole Smith thing, that Paula Abdul and Bobby Brown nonsense all seem like a backdoor method of getting reels of "gotcha!" material for the inevitable court hearings and cautionary documentaries.

Maybe the old saying about giving people enough rope to hang themselves applies equally as well to videotape.

"Denise Richards: It's Complicated" airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on E!