The Osbournes slipped a few rungs down the ratings ladder in their second season on MTV last year, and in the cruel world of fad celebrity, where life is short, they’re likely to slip a few more in their third, which starts Tuesday night at 10:30 EDT.
It’s nothing personal, just the nature of the game and that Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack have a finite number of tricks and quirks.
Once we go into repeats on Ozzy’s absent-mindedness or Kelly’s teen infatuation with her own singing career, even some hard-core fans who consider “The Osbournes” the greatest goof in TV history may quietly find it less imperative to tune in.
Now, I may not be the best judge of this, since I never found the show very interesting in the first place. But none of the minidramas that kick off the 10-episode final season seem very compelling.
The primary topic of conversation seems to be an uncomplimentary remark Kelly made about Christina Aguilera last Christmas.
Seems Kelly didn’t like the way Christina was looking.
Then Christina said she didn’t like the way Kelly looked, either.
Cynics might say this is a way to drop another famous name into the show. Let’s be charitable and take it for what it’s worth, which is a couple of lines in gossip columns.
When Kelly discusses it with her mother, making it sound like it’s a matter of actual importance, Sharon suggests that in the future, if Kelly is asked about another female singer, she should just say, “She’s great.”
That’s the common-sense advice most mothers would give. But the Osbournes have another consideration: If they ever adopted that attitude, they would lose their jobs. Much as fans insist that good-hearted warmth is the program’s appeal, a show in which everybody says nice things is no show at all.
“But I don’t think she is (great),” Kelly says. “Why should I lie?”
That’s the show’s dramatic highlight, though not the end of the story. Kelly and Jack then get into a fight, when Kelly accuses Jack of betraying her by refusing to say he also hates Christina Aguilera.
Let’s be honest here: This is a discussion that would empty out an Internet chat room. Like, who cares? But maybe being on TV gives the exchange a kind of subliminal validation, as if it must be interesting because famous people are having it.
This season was filmed, by the way, before Jack went into rehab and Ozzy announced that he and his son were having “a race to see who could be first to get to 100 days sober.” Shame we’ll miss that heartwarming little drama. It would have fit so well into the family-values theme.
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