In the annals of cringe-inducing pop culture, few can reach the dizzying heights of Anna Nicole Smith. Last weekend’s episode of “The Anna Nicole Show” on E! (gotta love a network that includes an exclamation point in its name) was one of the most potent “Oh god I can’t look away” moments ever.
The producers cooked up having Anna and her neighbor do a sort of bastardized version of “Trading Spaces.” The neighbor would redo Anna’s office, and Anna would take over a spare room in the neighbor’s house. The neighbor, after spending a lot of time with a Feng Shui consultant lighting incense and ringing bells, simply slapped some paint on the walls and called it a day.
“What I didn’t tell my neighbor,” Anna said in voiceover, “was that my designer was a dominatrix.”
Anna and the gang painted the neighbor’s walls flat black, purchased armloads of sex toys and a sling, and turned the room into a sort of Kmart sex dungeon, complete with giant dildo (unconvincingly blurred out for TV) mounted on the wall, sticking straight into the room at approximately eye level. It was unspeakably horrible, but I couldn’t look away.
Now *that’s* good TV.