The Simple Life

I grew up on a farm. I didn’t like it, and it wasn’t for me, but I understand farm ways. This is a series about girls who have never even considered where the beef in the supermarket comes from, because they’ve never even been to the supermarket. Someone else does everything for them.

The Simple Life is a pretty simple premise too – take two spoiled rich girls and see what the hell they’d get up to on a farm. It’s the kind of ‘opposite arm of the spectrum’ that ensures there is never a show that takes a humble farm boy and drops him in the big city with an unlimited bank balance.

Paris Hilton, international supra-model and her best friend Nicole Richie (daughter of some famous ‘80s singing guy) are asked to spend 30 days with the Leding family. And that’s it.

"You lost your mind in Arkansas, Nicole…"

Unfortunately the girls, when billeted to various jobs around the community, don’t have any idea on workplace health and safety, nor workplace ethics for that matter, and judiciously fail on every account.

I remember seeing ads for this on TV and thinking I wouldn’t waste my time watching that, and didn’t, until it turned up on my doorstep in DVD form. I injected it into my player with the same antipathy. That is until I watched a couple of episodes and began to understand that it isn’t the girl’s fault they don’t have a clue, it’s the parents.

Okay, well, maybe once you turn 15 it’s your own responsibility to pursue the arts and literature and try to get a bare inkling of how Humankind got to this point in time. So, let’s call it even if we’re going to lay blame. At any rate, the show presents the classic theme of ‘fish out of water’ in glowing hot pink hotpants. (There are, incidentally, only about seven themes in Hollywood, and this is one of the most popular… see any film featuring Hugh Grant).

The Simple Life ended up winning me over, however. Paris Hilton is a genuine person who does have empathy toward her fellow humans while Nicole Richie, a little less concerned, does still hold a generous warm side (of course I’m only saying this in the hopes they’re reading and looking for a date).

But really, where this series attempts to show two spoilt rich kids as complete idiots, it actually ends up working in their favour and painting them as girls who are willing to try new things, regardless of how horrifying they may appear. And occasionally, they are horrifying. Ms. Richie seems keener to thrust her arms into a cow and that’s okay – it sure ain’t for everyone. Ms. Hilton, well, she stands around using her sexual power to her full advantage but seems way, way out of her depth when she comes head to head with Mr. Leding, the patriarch of the Leding household. He just ain’t buying it, spending much of his time laying down the law and averting his eyes from the ladies’ wherewithals. And good on him. His ‘fatherhood’ at least makes the show keep some control over the girls’ natural predilections.

That being said, it’s a fun series and one that does, granted, at first make huge fun of the girls’ inexperience with rural life. But then, without the producers knowing it (perhaps), the girls end up swinging it back in their favour and that was the biggest surprise to me because they obviously didn’t plan it that way. Their humanity just comes through naturally. I hate to say it, because ‘reality TV’ shits me, but this is worth a look.

Dammit.

Everything is perfect here, as you would expect of a show made in 2002. Here, in the future of 2004, we know the usual follies of such a venture, but back then the poor archaic fools didn’t know that their show could look so spectacular today. Better in fact, than some films made more recently (film artefacts in Paycheck?! Are you kidding me?). At any rate, everything here in The Simple Life is just that, nice and simple and clean. And delivered in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 with anamorphic enhancement. Uh-yuh.

Made for telly, you can’t expect more than Dolby Digital stereo and what do we get? …Well, Dolby Digital stereo, but that’s okay. That’s what we want for a TV show. There are rarely any dialogue woes, but for occasional mumbling from the players, but these are their natural voices, so one shouldn’t find fault. David Richards narrates and sounds like a sober Uncle Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard or whatever the old guy’s name was. There are also frequent references to Duelling Banjos from Deliverance as this has now apparently become the keynote for hillbillies forevermore, regardless of the fact these people are nothing like hillbillies. Damn superior Hollywood types.

They also throw in plenty of musical sound effects whenever a player (Nicole mostly, though sometimes Paris) finds something impossible to understand (i.e.: line dancing, a petrol pump, a loaded shotgun etc.) Generally though, Paris is protected by her ‘lesser’ friend. Nicole isn’t as beautiful, doesn’t model and seems more willing to get her hands dirty. This is in the same manner two young women, upon going to a fancy-dress ball, will dress as schoolgirls. One, stunning, reminds every man present of his schoolboy fantasies, while the other, knowing she can’t compete, will play it for laughs, with drawn on freckles and missing teeth.

It’s sad really.

There are a couple here, though nothing more than disc filler.

The first is The Simple Life Test Presentation. This is of course, where they took the idea and tested it cheaply in LA before expending millions making the show. It runs for 8:03 and features the girls working in a dog groomery squeezing anal glands. Whatever the hell they are.

The other extras lie in four outtakes which are basically deleted scenes or footage not worth including because they’re boring. There is a highlight though, good people who have read so far. The girls try on Camouflage Lingerie. Yes, it sounds horrible, but it happened. Honest to God, Camouflage Lingerie!

And, I’m not sure if this is an extra or what, but there’s the Simple Life Reunion which takes place after the seven screened episodes and the Lost Episode which features a tornado threat deemed too scary to ruin the show’s outward cheerful exterior. The Reunion was filmed six months after the 30 days had passed and is worth the look though the host Leesa Gibbons will make you question her sanity. She’s as cheesy as hell and as Ray Martin in quality.

The Simple Life is obviously a double entendre that ended up backfiring on the creators because the girls do end up proving that they aren’t ‘simple’, they are just uneducated in the ways of the ‘real world’. Well done to the girls because they genuinely look like they tried their arses off (mostly. Okay, I’ve worked in bars and I know honesty when I see it).

They’re not perfect but as some guy said, ‘Let ye who be free of guilt cast the first stone’ (I think it was in a Scorsese film…). They play themselves and that was, after all, the original idea. At least they aren’t liars.